Infrastructure – Hybrid Cloud Print – Publish Printers Powershell

The Issue

I recently had the opportunity to build a Hybrid Cloud Print Solution. If you have never built this before, it isn’t hard but there are a lot of moving parts. Stay close to our official document – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/hybrid-cloud-print/hybrid-cloud-print-deploy

By not deviating from the above document you not only make your own life easier, but the ones who have to learn the tech after you have left/ passed the technology to someone else.

My main issue was not so much with building the solution but the way you publish the cloud printers afterwards.

The Investigation

If you read through the docs article you will see the example Powershell on how to publish, unpublish and query Cloud Printers after the setup. This involves a lot of careful typing and actually knowing each component off by heart(Notepad) and ends up turning Powershell into PowerHell.

You will see you can only publish Printers from a Windows 10 machine with an account that has permissions to do so.

The Fix

Please find the code published in GitHub which will hopefully make your life in publishing Printers to your new Hybrid Cloud Print Solution, just a little easier.

Before running this ensure you have the AzureAD and AzureRM, PublishCloudPrint Modules installed. Also Ensure you have access to the Print Server as you will need to run a command to query the SDDL for the printer.

Step 1 : Get the Powershell script from Github and save it as a .ps1 file so you can run it on a Windows 10 Machine.

https://github.com/WernerRall147/HybridCloudPrint/blob/master/PublishPrinters

Step 2 : Execute the script and enter your Azure Account Name that has access to the HybridCloudPrint Azure AD Applications

Step 3 : The Script will ask you for the Discovery Endpoint application (Mopria or /mcs application) and will list your available applications to choose from.

Step 4 : The Script will ask you for the Enterprise Cloud Print application ( /ecp application) and will list your available applications to choose from.

Step 5 : The Script will ask you for the Native Application and will list your available applications to choose from.

Step 6 : Choose which Administrative task you would like to perform

Step 6.1 : What does it look like when I try and Publish a new Printer?

Step 6.2 : What does it look like when I query a Cloud Printer?

Summary

Powershell is your friend, take some time to get to know how it ties in with Azure as well as your other technologies.

Hybrid Cloud Print is awesome when your machines that are cloud native cannot speak to a Domain Controller

I hope this post was helpful and please feel free to reach out to me or correct me in any of the steps.

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