You have not given any consents yet.

Don’t touch this!

Technical Product Manager
We touch so many different things every day, but how safe are they? The global pandemic has made us all think about our habits and focus on what we do and don’t touch. Here we look at how to take your printing contactless and keep both yourself and your colleagues a little bit safer. 

Stop the spread 

We all know that it is important to reduce the number of surfaces you need to come into contact with. The humble school or office printer is one of those touchpoints. As a hive of activity, it is something which a very high number of people will touch every day.  

Since contaminated surfaces can also lead to infection, this highly trafficked shared surface poses a high risk of infection for office workers and their families. As one of the most heavily shared surfaces in an office, regular cleaning and disinfection will help, but removing the need to touch the panel is more effective at reducing the risk of contamination.  

The most popular method to authenticate print jobs is to use the key pad to enter a PIN, or use a security badge and then the key pad to select and confirm documents. These seemingly innocent touches can easily spread contamination amongst employees and further afield. How can organizations protect their employees while maintaining core business processes and productivity? Go contactless. 

Contactless printing 

From payments to deliveries, so many of our usual day to day activities are now contactless, and it’s time for printing to do the same. Touchless technology will mitigate future virus transmission risk. Contactless printing allows organizations to comply with social distancing guidelines and, importantly, helps minimize the spread of any virus. Contactless print eliminates the need for people to physically touch a printer or multifunction device (MFD).  

Using print delegation tools in print management solutions such as YSoft SAFEQ enables just one person to collect printing rather than many. This will reduce the contact with others as well as the number of people touching the MFD itself. But this method still means that staff will have to interact unnecessarily and documents will have still been touched by someone else.  

One other way to support contactless printing is to use access card authentication with automatic release to print all jobs in the user’s queue. Using a card reader, the user presents their personal access card to authenticate. By changing the administrator settings to enable the automatic release of all queued print jobs, the user does not need to touch the machine at all.    

There’s an app for that 

Ensuring contactless use while maintaining the control and functionality of your print solution is made possible using our YSoft SAFEQ Mobile App. Acting as a mobile terminal, the app fully removes the need for users to touch MFD terminals to authenticate and release print jobs while maintaining control and management of the print queue as usual.  

To use the app, simply download it from the App Store or Google Play and register it using the email that you use within the YSoft SAFEQ system. Once successfully installed and set up, submit documents to print as usual from any device. To print, simply go to any MFD on your network and scan a QR code. This is used to identify the specific MFD or networked device for selecting finishing options that particular print device offers before printing. The app also lets users view job details, mark jobs as favorites and delete jobs no longer required.  



 

We believe using your mobile device to release print jobs should be as simple and secure as if you were using the printer’s user interface.The mobile terminal does just this while providing comprehensive print management in the palm of your hand.

Stay safe 

This global pandemic has truly impacted everyone and everything. Keeping you and your staff safe is a necessity, and not simply a nice to have option. By adapting and finding new ways to be agile in the way we work we can all do our bit to minimize the spread of any virus, both now and in the future. It’s time to think about how you use your MFD keypad and look at how the YSoft SAFEQ Mobile App can move you and your team to contactless printing.  

Stay safe, stay connected and stay smart. 

Luboš Bury
My job is mostly about understanding problems, gathering information and their interpretation. It is actually starting to be even in my work outside business hours. The reason is that my one and half year old son is trying to explore and experience everything. As I invest most of my free time in my son, I am also trying to teach him my hobbies. So, we bought a backpack (child carrier) to be able to hike together and the same applies to bike riding.
 
View all posts by Luboš Bury

Subscribe to our newsletter

US