Printer kinds and statuses
Kinds
How the agent reaches a printer.
| Kind | How it works | Use for |
|---|---|---|
| ZPL | Straight over the network to the printer's own address, usually on the standard printing port | Thermal label printers — product, location and courier labels |
| Print queue | Through a queue already set up on the machine running the agent | Anything the computer can already print to |
| IPP | Over the standard internet printing protocol, to the printer's address | Network printers that expose it |
ZPL is what label printers speak. A thermal printer addressed this way takes label data directly, which is why courier labels arrive as ZPL when a site has one.
Where a site has no thermal printer, labels come through as PDF instead — see buy and print courier labels.
Statuses
| Status | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Online | The agent can see it now | None |
| Offline | Seen before, not now — powered down, unplugged, off the network | Check the printer if you expected it |
| Discovered | Newly found, not yet in use | Set it as a default or route to it |
An offline printer keeps its settings, its defaults and its routing rules. It returns as itself.
One printer found twice
A single physical printer can be visible both as a queue on the machine and as a network address.
Yessort recognises they are the same and keeps one entry, preferring the machine's own queue.
So a printer appearing once when you expected two entries is correct. There is no second one to find.
Label stock
A printer records the stock loaded in it — the physical labels and their size.
Yessort flags when the loaded stock does not match what a job needs, so a 4×6 courier label is not sent to a printer holding small product labels. The flag does not change which printer was chosen; it tells you that one is loaded with the wrong thing.
Printers belong to a site
Not to an organisation. Everyone with access to the site sees them, including every organisation in a shared warehouse — see the print agent and devices.