Beginner
Lesson 2 of 5 · ~7 min

Tour of the Printix Administrator

Where printers, computers, users, and history live in the Printix Administrator console, and the seven menu items a frontline technician should recognise on sight.

The customer’s Printix Home is at customer-name.printix.net. Sign in with your Microsoft, Google, Okta, OneLogin, or OIDC account, and you land on the Administrator. Knowing where things live is the cheapest possible triage skill.

The seven menu items

flowchart TB
    M[Menu]
    M --> D[Dashboard<br/>print activity, secure print %,<br/>system status, suggestions]
    M --> S[Sites<br/>folders + sites + networks,<br/>site manager groups]
    M --> N[Networks<br/>gateways, BYOD, zero trust]
    M --> P[Printers<br/>printers, print queues,<br/>Printix Go, drivers]
    M --> C[Computers<br/>per-user-machine state,<br/>diagnostics, history]
    M --> U[Users + Groups<br/>roles, group sync,<br/>site managers]
    M --> A[Authentication +<br/>Settings + Subscription]

The five rows you’ll touch on the helpdesk:

  • Dashboard. Period-windowed counters: print activity, Printed in black, Printed 2-sided, Save-O-Meter (uncollected pages), Secure print percentage. The window options are Last 7 days, Last 14 days, or Last 4 weeks. First place to look when a customer asks “is Printix even being used?”
  • Printers. Every registered printer with its three-letter ID (the ASD, BNM, CVB identifiers Printix auto-assigns), its queues, Printix Go status, and the network it lives on. Printer properties is where you replace, rename, or retire a device.

The Printers page is the single most-used surface during triage:

Printix Administrator Printers page showing a list of printers with three-letter IDs, names, status icons, network, and Printix Go state
The three-letter ID is the canonical name. Status, Network, and Printix Go columns are the three you scan during triage.
  • Computers. Each user’s workstation with the Printix Client on it. Per-machine Diagnostics tab shows queue counts, printer errors, and proxy status. Per-machine History tab shows recent jobs and tasks. This is where you confirm the agent is actually online before chasing user error.
  • Users. Every signed-in user with their role (System manager, Site manager, User, Guest, Kiosk user) and sign-in method. User properties is where roles get changed.
  • Authentication. Which sign-in methods are enabled (Microsoft Entra ID, Google, Okta, OneLogin, OIDC, Active Directory, Sign in with email). Touch only with explicit change-control authority; flipping these affects everyone in the tenant.

The two you’ll mostly read but rarely change:

  • Sites and Networks. How the customer’s offices and IP ranges map to print routing. Beginner-course scope: just know how to find the right Site for a user’s ticket. Design lives in the Intermediate course’s first lesson.
  • Settings. Tenant-wide knobs: secure print defaults, print rules, Printix Go configurations, capture workflows, mobile print, home office, SNMP, webhooks. Beginner-course scope: don’t change without authorisation.
The header is the canonical check

The Printix Home name (acme.printix.net) appears top-left. When MSP staff jump between customer tenants, that header is the only reliable “am I in the right tenant?” check before any change. Make checking it a reflex.

A worked ticket: Able Moose Accounting

Sarah at Able Moose Accounting opens a ticket: “My laptop says it’s printing to Reception ASD but nothing comes out. Did the printer break?”

(Reception ASD is the canonical Printix order: name then three-letter ID. The Printix App’s history view sometimes lists the ID first; both refer to the same printer.)

  1. Confirm tenant in the header

    Sign in to ablemoose.printix.net. Confirm the header reads “Able Moose Accounting” before doing anything.

  2. Check the printer

    Menu, then Printers. Find Reception ASD in the list. Status column tells you Online or has an error. If it’s offline, the issue is on the LAN, not in Printix.

  3. Check Sarah's computer

    Menu, then Computers. Search for Sarah’s hostname. Status, the Printix Client version, and the Type (Laptop / Desktop) tell you whether the agent is alive. Open the Diagnostics tab to see if jobs are flowing.

  4. Check the printer's recent History

    Back on the printer’s page, the History tab is the audit trail of who printed what and whether it succeeded. If Sarah’s job appears there with a successful state, the print server (well, Printix) did its part. The job is at the printer.

The point of this ticket isn’t the answer (it usually turns out to be a paper jam or an out-of-toner state nobody told the user about). It’s the muscle memory: header first, then Printers, then Computers, then History.

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What this is NOT

  • The Administrator is not the user-facing app. End users do not sign in here. Their app is the Printix App at customer-name.printix.net (web) or the mobile apps for Android and iOS. Treat the Administrator as MSP-only.
  • Printix Home and Printix Partner Portal are different consoles. Partner Portal lives at partner.printix.net and lists tenants. Don’t confuse “I can see the customer” in Partner Portal with “I’m administering the customer” in their Printix Home.
Sources

Dashboard, Sites, Authentication, Computer Diagnostics tab, Roles.

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