XSC Overview

The External Spool System Connector (XSC) integrates an external spool system and the printing architecture of Streamline NX. After integration with one or more Delegation Servers, an external spool system can receive, store and manage print jobs, and in some cases can also convert and manipulate the print requirements. The jobs are held in a ‘queue’ for later retrieval by the user. Print jobs are organized in queues, and the external spool system must have at least one queue to integrate with SLNX secure printing. The user can access the queue for a list of their held print jobs, and then either request that the print job is released or deleted.

To differentiate from the local SLNX secure printing function, external spool system queues are referred to as a ‘pull-print’ queues within this document. Note the following important distinctions used throughout this documentation: 

• Push-print mode – SLNX delegates the release of the print jobs to the configured external spool system. In this mode, the external spool system accesses the target device directly. Therefore, the external spool system must be able to reach the target device via the network

• Pull-print mode – SLNX fetches the print jobs from the configured external spool system and sends them to the target device. Print job data is stored in the external spool system until retrieved and released. In terms of workflow, a user sends a print request to a pull-print queue and the print job data is stored on the external spool system queue. When ready to release a job, the user logs onto an output device with the SLNX Embedded print module. To obtain the user's print job data, the Delegation Server that manages the printer communicates with the XSC connector to submit a download request to the external spool system for all known pull-print queues. The job list is merged with the internal SLNX list, and displayed on the output device.

  Note that when printing from mobile devices, SLNX applies push-print mode even if pull-print mode is enabled.

• External print job – Print jobs retrieved from an external spool system are referred to as ‘external’ print jobs.

• Direct printing – When a print job is sent from an external spool system directly to a device, it bypasses any SLNX server and therefore also bypasses SLNX authentication. In this case, additional authentication may be necessary, such as a user and password. The authentication may be embedded in the print job data, such as via a PJL command in the PJL header, either as generated by the Windows printer driver or by some other mechanism.

  Three scenarios are possible:

  • Original user name of the logged-in user
  • Alias name (as known to the external spool system) of the logged-in user
  • No user information