About Popups

Pharos Popups is an optional part of the Uniprint print management system, which allows users to be asked questions at the time of printing their job. The information gathered by these questions is sent to the Uniprint print system along with the print job. Common questions that are asked with Popups include:

User name of the user printing the job
A password for the job, which must be entered before the job can be released at a Print Station
A name for the job, so that it can be identified more easily at a Print Station
Card ID of a Guest user printing the job
A cost center code for Third Party Charging

Default Username and Password questions are inserted when Pharos is first installed. These are referred to as the system questions, and can be displayed together on the Popup Client interface.

Popups Components

Popup Service

A Popup Service is a server application that generates the questions that are displayed to users. The Popup Service runs on a server PC. When a job is printed, the Popup Service is queried for any relevant questions. The Popup Service may need to communicate with the Pharos Database to generate the questions, depending on the type of questions that apply.

The Popup Service also allows the Popup Client application to send Alert messages, should an error condition in the Popup Client prevent the print job being sent to the Pharos queue.

Pharos Popups requires the Pharos LPD Server (which is installed with the Popup Service on all Print Servers by default). Make sure that your site allows LPD communication (port 515).

Popup Clients

Popup Client software is installed on all PCs that users print jobs from. The Popup Client displays the questions that are sent from the Popup Service, collects the answers and sends them on to the rest of the printing system along with the print job.

Popups System Components

The configurable components of the Popups system are available in Pharos Administrator under the Output Management > Popup Questions context:

Selecting a specific question group displays the questions that have been configured for that group.