Part II: Setup Printers for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

In this post, we finish our printer configuration for the Oracle Applications R12 E-Business Suite environment. In the previous blog post, we discussed how to use the LINUX tools to configure printers at the operating system level. In this post, we finish the printer configuration by showing you how to setup the printer in the Oracle R12 E-Business Suite environment within the Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) graphical interface.

The first step is to login to the OAM environment as the SYSADMIN user and to navigate to the System Administrator responsibility.



Now we need to setup the printer by register the device.



We enter the settings for the printer in the flexfields above.
As such you need to enter the values for the printer driver and print type.





We enter the values for the HP Laserprinter below



Next we need to configure the HP printer with the correct driver as shown below.



As part of the print driver configuration for the Oracle R12 EBS environment,
we have additional print considerations. For example, the Driver Method comes into play
depending on the command, program or subroutine used with the printer.

We also have Driver Method Parameters that allow us to spool file or generate
print output to standard input as shown below.



OK so now that we have configured our printer, we need to run some post-configuration tests to verify that it works. Fortunately, Oracle EBS provides a suite of utilities and diagnostic tests for us with Release 12.

To run these tests, you need to switch to the System Administration responsibility for OAM and navigate to Diagnostics-> Diagnostic Tests as shown below.



Under the basic tab for the Application Object Library, select RunALL
to generate diagnostics for the environment.



We have covered the basics of printer setup and for future reference, Oracle provides many excellent tips on advanced configuration such as PASTA setup with Oracle R12 EBS.

Below are some excellent references from My Oracle Support (MOS) formerly known as Metalink (http://support.oracle.com)


Pasta Overview Note: 420019.1

Note 356501.1 "How to Setup Pasta Quickly and Effectively".

Note 269129.1 "How to Implement Printing for Oracle Applications: Getting Started" for general driver information.

Note 365111.1 "How to Setup Pasta for PCL Based Printers "

Note 356501.1 "How to Setup Pasta Quickly and Effectively",

Once you run the test for the pasta printer, Oracle Diagnostics will generate an HTML file report to display the configuration details and status report for the printers.

My Oracle Support (MOS) Technical References

NOTE:356501.1 - How to Setup Pasta Quickly and Effectively
NOTE:728077.1 - How to Setup IX Library Quickly and Effectively
NOTE:365111.1 - How to Setup Pasta for PCL Based Printers
NOTE:189708.1 - Oracle Reports 6i Setup Guide for Oracle Applications 11i
NOTE:240864.1 - Activating and Configuring IX Library
Note 60936.1 Step By Step Guide to Set Up a Printer in Oracle Applications
Note 99495.1 Oracle Applications Postscript Printing
Note 112172.1 Oracle Applications Character Printing
Note 152285.1 Building a Printer Initialization String for Oracle Applications
Note 106186.1 How to Test an Initialization String Outside of Oracle Applications
Note 1014599.102 How to Test Printer Initialization Strings in Unix

Printer Configuration for Oracle R12 E-Business Part I: Preparation

In this blog series, we will cover how to setup and configure printers with the Oracle R12 E-Business Suite. As a systems applications DBA, we are tasked with the challenge of printer configuration. Often this is an overlooked item before Go-Live which severely impacts the project success because if the financial analyst or CFO cannot print invoices or financial reports, they will be unable to perform essential tasks even in this Green Day of paperwork reduction.

Part 1: Printer Setup Preparation
Part 2: Configure Printers with R12 E-Business Suite

Ok lets get started. We need to first prepare the operating system to accept our printers for usage before R12 EBS will be able to use the new printer. We will cover how to configure the Linux and UNIX operating system by using the lp facility with CUPS for printing. For reference with HP Printers for Linux, we download the software from

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install_wizard/index.html

Another good reference site for Linux drivers is the open source site

http://www.openprinting.org/printers/manufacturers/HP

We go to site below

https://launchpad.net/hplip

Download printer drivers for Linux


Our first step is to download the correct printer driver which in our case happens to be an HP Laserjet printer. We download this from the HP site listed below.



We follow the prompts and download the driver.



Once we have downloaded the print driver, we are ready to install it.
HP uses a download manager for Linux so we choose the Linux version and download it.



Good now we just need to install the software for Linux to configure our HP Laserjet printer. Once we have installed the driver we can run the CUPS utility for Linux to setup our new printer.

Next we need to check the status for the Linux/UNIX based CUPS print server

[root@tusebs etc]# /etc/init.d/cups status
cupsd (pid 5398) is running...

To add the new printer to the LINUX environment, you can use the web gui tool to setup new printer device for LINUX. Open a browser to:

http://localhost:631/admin

The CUPS printer utility will show up as shown below.



We use this excellent browser based tool to add, remove, adminster and monitor printer configurations for LINUX.

So now we need to add the printer to our environment with the tool.

Click the button in the tool for Add New Printer



Then click on the continue button.



After entering the printer name, you need to enter the device mapping for it.
For example, we used LPD/LPH host or Printer Jet Direct driver but you can also choose from other device mappings such as IP address for the device configuration and
then click continue.

Now we need to enter the device URI for our printer which
in our case, since our HP printer has a Jet Direct card installed so we use this option and enter the socket URI mapping.




Next we click on the continue button. Now you will need to enter the make which is HP in our case and then continue. You can also use a PPD file if you one.



Enter the model/driver for your printer and continue.
Then click on the button to Add the printer.
Once the printer has been added to your LINUX configuration, you can verify status in the printers section of the tool. Make sure to use the concurrent processing server as the focal point for the printer setup and configuration.

Now we are ready to add our printer to R12 EBS environment!
Stay tuned for part II where we use the Oracle Application Manager (OAM) to install and configure our new printer for Oracle R12 EBS.