Intended Audience: School Ops who print using school printers
Last Updated: October 2023
Context: When using the Print Tool, school printers may take too long to load and process the PDFs. The Print Tool application was updated in October 2023 to version 0.4.2 (see photo below) to include a new "chunking" option. Chunking allows the Print Tool to send a certain number of packets at a time to your printer, essentially sending mini print jobs to the printer instead of one large one.
The following are instructions for users who already have the print tool application installed.
If you are a first time user, please see this article instead.
DELETE THE OLD PRINT TOOL APP
1. Locate the print tool shortcut on your desktop
2. Right click over the print tool shortcut and choose Delete
RE-DOWNLOAD THE UPDATED PRINT TOOL APP
1. While logged into your school computer and on your org-wide network, open File Explorer and enter this location to open the zip folder: \\usi.uncommonschools.org\Ponder
2. Download the app
3. Once downloaded, you might see this message appear, click Run:
- If you see this pop up appear, click the little arrow next to Discard, select Keep.
- Install the downloaded file. You might be prompted with the following security popup, Select More Info, and Run Anyway.
- Note: If you see the following error message, please ensure you are on the Uncommon wifi and have access to the Uncommon network folders. If yes, then please restart your computer and repeat these steps again:
4. Important: Next, save the file as a shortcut:
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- While still in the folder, right click, choose create shortcut:
5. Then select yes as is shown in the popup below:
- Important Note: Please ensure your shortcut came from the network folder (not from copying the file to your desktop).
FYI: the print tool will remember what printers were already saved to your account. If a printer is missing, follow instructions in this article on how to add a new printer using the IP address.
HOW TO PRINT USING "CHUNKING" OPTION
1. On the Download Page, copy the link of the PDF that was taking too long to print.
2. Select the printer you've previously added. To add a new printer, go to the top of this article.
3. Paste the link by right-clicking on the print app [note: do not use the Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut, use your mouse or trackpad only]
4. Next, use the Chunk option to print:
Use the "Chunk" option if you want your printer to print a certain number of packets at a time. This option is helpful if the PDF is too large (e.g. an IA) to print in 1 print job. This will instead send multiple mini print jobs to the printer all at once.
5. Next, decide how many packets you would like to send to the printer at a time. The example below is 7 packets:
6. After you've confirmed that the first chunked job completed, type in "Y" to send the rest of the jobs to your printer.
If it did not work:
If the first chunk did not work (your printer was loading but the job did not start after 5 minutes), first, cancel the job on your printer. Then, repeat the steps above to chunk again but use a smaller packet size, e.g. instead of sending 30 packets, size down to 22 packets. Repeat until the packets are successfully printing.
How to cancel from the printer: select the job and choose Delete
If it did work:
In the example below, there were 14 jobs in total. The first job completed successfully so, the rest of the 13 jobs can then be sent to the printer by typing in "Y" and Enter:
7. Your print tool will then show all the jobs you sent to the printer:
8. Your printer will show all the multiple jobs received:
Please reach out to Ponder Support if any issues arise.
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