How to Define a Printer in SAP

Printer administration is done with transaction ‘SPAD’ in a SAP system. Basis

administrator needs to define printer in SAP as per the requirement given by
client.

Steps to define a printer in SAP.

1) Login to SAP system. Go to transaction ‘SPAD’. You will see following
screen, click on output devices to see defined output devices defined on
SAP instance.

2) In the scr een below you can see output defi ned in SAP sys tem. To
create a new output device click on ‘Create’ (Shift+F1)

3) You need to give an ‘Output Device’ name to printer, and a short

description. In the case given below we have kept it same – ZTST.

4) Tab ‘Device Attributes’

In this, you need to select Device Type for the printer. Device type can be
understood as a printer driver defined in SAP system. To run a printer in
SAP, you must attach an appropriate Device type to it. Here in this case
we have chosen device type as ‘EPESCP9: EPSON ESC/P 9-pin Printer’
the printer used was Epson FX-2190 Dot Matrix Printer.
Spool Server – you need to give a spool server to queue spool request. It
is name of the server. If you select ‘Host Spool Access Method’ in tab
Access Method as X: SAPcomm or F: Printing on Front End Computer then
you don’t have to maint ain Spool Server. Here we have cho sen the
default spool server ‘idesdev_DEV_00’.

To define a printer you must choose Device Class as a ‘Standard

Printer’.

Authorization Class - You can enter the name of an authorization group

instead of an output device in a user authorization. You can keep is as
blank or maintain with ‘DEFAULT’ authorization group.

Printer information – You can store general information for printer

administration like model, location of printer, in example its in ‘SDB - 1,
3rd floor, behind lift’ . Also you can post a message to a user using this
printer. Like what we have mentioned in the example this printer is to ‘To
print Invoice’

5) Tab ‘Access Methods’

In this tab, you need to select Host Spool Access Method.
If the spool work process for this printer is running on the host system
you specified for Computer name, choose from the following:
• C: The spoo l server is running on a Microsoft Windo ws NT
server and requests for this printer are to be transferred to the local
Windows NT Print Manager.
 • E: The printer is connected through an external output
management system (OMS).
• F: Output requests for this printer should be output locally on
the user's PC or workstation.
• I: This device is an archiving device.
• L: The spool server is running on a UNIX system and output
requests for this printer are to be transferred to the local host spooler.
If print formatting is running on another system, choose from the
following:
• U: The formatting process is to transfer the output data to the
remote host system using the Berkeley protocol (BSD).
The formatting process uses this protocol to transfer output data
directly to the host spooler on the remote system.
• S: The formatting process is to transfer the output data to the
remote system (a Microsoft Windows PC) using the SAP protocol.
The formatting process transfers the output data to the SAP output
processor (SAPLPD) running on the remote PC.
• X: The device is a SAPcomm device.

Here in example we have used ‘U: Print Using Berkeley Protocol’ So

the printer will use this protocol to print a job. When you use protocol as
Berkeley, you can maint ain entry of IP address against printer name
(ZTST) in ‘Host’ file of an application server and use printer name directly.
Here printer is attached to a machine with IP address ‘10.76.74.69’. You
must make sure that SAP-LPD is running on the machine where printer is
attached.
Host Printer- Hostname/IP address of a host attached to a printer.
Destination Host – Hostname where SAP-LPD is running.
Query status through polling - The spool work process keeps track of print
requests sent to the host spool system to be able to update the status of
the requests in the R/3 System. To do this, the host spooler must be
queried periodically.
If a host spool system is slow or there are problems querying network or
remote printers, the query may take a long time. This may affect printing
performance as the spool work process cannot process any other print
requests while waiting for a response from the query. In cases like this,
you can deactivate querying using this switch.
General Information:

1) See to Note 8928: A list of available device types with SAP.

2) Transportation of a printer definition: In the target system, you must

adapt the spool servers for each device transported. This is because the
system name is used in the instance names and it differs in the target
system from the name of the current system. Logical instance names are
an exception; they are defined identically in both systems.
3) If you define a printer with F: Print on front End Computer, then you
need not maintain host spool entry. In this case, SAP-LPD will be
automatically evoked when a user fires a printout.