How to check print history

With Native AD Auditing
With ADAudit Plus

To configure a print server for auditing in ADAudit Plus, an IT administrator needs to:

Log on to the web console of ADAudit Plus
Navigate to Server Audit -> Configured Server(s) -> Print Server. The product UI will now show the list of configured print servers for auditing in ADAudit Plus.
Click on "Add Print Servers" to add a new print server for auditing
Choose the member (print) servers in the 'Select Servers' page
Choose the required printers for auditing in the 'Select Printers' page

The selected printers are now ready to be audited.

To view printer auditing reports, an IT administrator needs to:

Navigate to Server Audit -> Printer Auditing
Here the IT administrator will have access to four different reports:
1. Recent jobs
2. User based reports
3. Printer usage
4. Printer based reports
The time period for the report can be customized to see the print history in any of these reports.

For example, the 'Recent Jobs' report will give the below information:

The print history has been highlighted in the above report.

An IT administrator needs to monitor the print jobs that happen in the organization, and hence track the print history. Monitoring this serves three main purposes:
Keeping track of what pages are printed, when they are printed, and who is printing them prevents malicious data exfiltration attempts on sensitive data.
It enables organizations to understand their printing costs and take corrective action.
It enables organizations to understand what printers and print servers are being used the most, and make better use of their resources.
Before the print history can be obtained, the administrator has to first enable logging of print jobs. To do this:
Open 'Server Manager' in your Windows Server
Navigate to Tools -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> PrintService
Right click on 'Operational' and check off 'Enable logging' to ensure that print logs get logged in Event Viewer.

There are two ways to track and keep a check on the print history:

Using native tools such as Event Viewer, and

Using a comprehensive Active Directory and server auditing software, such as ADAudit Plus. In this article, we will compare how IT administrators can check print history using both these methods.

Using native tools (Event Viewer)

To view the print history with Event Viewer, an IT administrator needs to:

Open 'Server Manager' in your Windows Server
Navigate to Tools -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> PrintService -> Operational
Filter current log for event ID 307.

This will give them the complete history of all the print jobs on the server.

However, using Event Viewer can get quite tedious as the administrator has to sift through various logs manually, make notes, and spend substantial effort to zero-in on the history.

It's always better to use a comprehensive AD and server auditing solution such as ADAudit Plus for this task.

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With Native AD Auditing

With ADAudit Plus

An IT administrator needs to monitor the print jobs that happen in the organization, and hence track the print history. Monitoring this serves three main purposes:

Before the print history can be obtained, the administrator has to first enable logging of print jobs. To do this:

Using native tools (Event Viewer)

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