Articles on: Managing your printers

Printer reservations: hold printers for a class, a team or yourself

Printer reservations let a teacher, a team lead or an administrator hold printers for a time: one printer, several, a printer group or every printer. While a reservation runs, only the prints of the people it is for can start on those printers. A class gets its printers for Tuesday's lesson, the robotics team gets the big printer for the weekend, and nobody has to put a note on the door.

Reserving is optional. A printer nobody has reserved works exactly as it always has: anyone who is allowed to print can print on it.

Printer reservations are part of the School and Enterprise plans. On accounts created after the launch they are switched on, and a short setup opens the first time an administrator visits Reservations. On existing accounts they stay off until an administrator switches them on.

How reservations work
Setting up reservations
Setting up from School setup
Reserving printers
The calendar and the list
Approving reservation requests
What students and other members see
Reservation settings
Permissions

How reservations work

A reservation holds printers for a time window, for:

yourself
one or more people
a base role or a workgroup
a school class
everyone

On accounts with Projects, a reservation can also be for a Project's prints.

While it runs, only the prints of the people it is for can start on the reserved printers. Everyone else sees that the printer is reserved, for whom and until when. The only exception is people with the Print on reserved printers permission. "Everyone" means anyone may print on those printers during that time, and nobody else can reserve them.

Everything else in SimplyPrint respects reservations: starting a print, the print queue, scheduled prints and AutoPrint. Maintenance comes first: you cannot reserve over a maintenance window that blocks printing, and when maintenance is planned over a reservation, the person planning it confirms the conflict and whoever made the reservation is told.

You see conflicts before you save. The reserve dialog lists anything in the way, such as another reservation, a maintenance window, someone's scheduled print or a printer that is offline.

Setting up reservations

The first time an administrator (anyone who can manage reservations) opens Reservations in the sidebar, a short setup guide opens over the page. Until it is finished, only people who manage reservations see the page.

The guide has four steps:

Introduction: what reservations are. Let me see it first hides the guide so you can look around; it comes back on your next visit, with a "Finish setting up reservations" banner in the meantime.
Who reserves: pick how your school or team works (see below), and fine-tune what each base role gets. Changing the base roles needs the Role management permission; without it, the guide leaves them as they are.
Rules: an optional longest reservation and how many days ahead people can reserve, plus approval when members reserve for themselves.
Done: reservations are switched on.

You can always change every answer later in the reservation settings and on each base role.

The three ways of working

Teachers reserve for their classes (recommended for schools): students keep sending their prints to the print queue as they do now. A teacher reserves the printers for a lesson, a class or a club, and their prints start then. Students do not see the Reservations page.
Students reserve too: students can also reserve a printer for themselves, for a project or an exam piece. Their reservations can wait for a teacher's approval.
Only administrators reserve: administrators plan the printers; teachers see the calendar.

Each option shows its pros and cons before you choose. If you decide you do not need reservations, We don't need reservations switches them off, and the guide does not ask again.

Under the options, What each base role gets sets each base role to one of these levels:

Level	What it allows
Does not see reservations	No Reservations page. Reserved printers still say who they are reserved for.
Sees reservations	Opens the calendar.
Reserves for themselves	Reserves printers for their own prints.
Reserves for others, approves requests (on school accounts: for classes and others)	Reserves for people, classes and workgroups, and approves their requests.
Manages reservations and their settings	Changes or cancels any reservation, and changes the settings.

Setting up from School setup

School accounts can answer the same question in Settings > School setup, in the Reserving printers section: teachers reserve for their classes, students reserve too, only administrators reserve, or no reservations. If students reserve, a second row asks whether their reservations need approval. The review step lists every permission the answer changes before anything is saved.

Choosing who reserves there counts as setting up reservations, so the setup guide on the Reservations page does not open again.

Reserving printers

Open Reservations in the sidebar and click Reserve printers, or click or drag across empty time in the calendar.

In the dialog:

Printers or groups: pick printers or printer groups. A reservation of a printer group follows the group: a printer added to it later is reserved too. People who manage reservations can also pick every printer, and any group; others can pick a group when they can use every printer in it.
For whom: Me, People or groups (people, base roles, workgroups and classes), or Everyone.
When: a start and an end, in 15-minute steps, or All day.
Title and Notes (both optional). Left empty, the title names who the reservation is for.

Below the fields, the dialog says whether the printers are free, or lists what is in the way. Some conflicts are warnings you can confirm; others, like another reservation on the same printer, stop the reservation.

Prints that run past a reservation

A print can never run into somebody else's reservation. When a print would run past the end of your own reservation, the reservation settings decide what happens: by default a person is warned and can start it anyway, while AutoPrint leaves the printer for a print that fits.

The calendar and the list

The Calendar tab shows reservations, maintenance windows and scheduled prints:

Month, Week and Day views.
In Week and Day, Per printer shows one row per printer, under its printer group. Turn it off for one shared grid.
The printer picker narrows the calendar to some printers or groups.
Drag or stretch a reservation to move it, after a confirmation. Click it for its details; right-click for its actions.

Times are shown in your own timezone.

The List tab shows every reservation you may see, filtered by time, status, who it is for and printer. Select several to cancel them together; the reason you give can be sent to whoever made each one.

Reserved printers also show on the printers page and on the print queue's timeline, so nobody is surprised at the printer.

Approving reservation requests

When Reservations need approval is on, a reservation made by someone who cannot reserve for others waits as a request. It holds nothing until it is approved, and a request nobody decides on is cancelled when its time has passed.

Requests show up for the people who can approve them:

the Requests tab on the Reservations page, with the number waiting
the calendar, outlined and dashed, as "Waiting for approval"
the Approvals to-do card on the dashboard, next to queue approvals
the approvals in the account alerts at the top of the panel

Approve or reject a request from its row, or select several and decide them together. When you reject, you can give a reason; it is sent to whoever asked, together with the decision.

Someone who can approve requests decides those for the people, classes and workgroups they can reserve for. People who manage reservations decide every request.

What students and other members see

Someone who cannot see reservations is never sent to a page they cannot open. When a printer is reserved for someone else, they see it on the printer card, when they start a print and in the printer's control panel: who it is reserved for and until when. They print as usual on every printer nobody has reserved for someone else.

By default, other people's names are hidden: members see the class, workgroup or project a reservation is for, and another person shows as "Someone". People who can reserve for others always see names.

Reservation settings

Go to Settings > Reservations:

Enable printer reservations: switches the feature on or off for the account.
What people see on other reservations: hide or show other people's names.
Prints that run past a reservation: what happens when a person, or AutoPrint, starts a print that would run past the reservation it starts in.
Limits: the longest reservation, how many days ahead, upcoming reservations per person, and printer-hours per person per week. They apply to everyone except people who manage reservations. Empty means no limit.
Minutes free between reservations: time to clear the bed. This one applies to everyone.
Reservations must fit inside working hours: uses the working hours under General.
Approval and no-shows: Reservations need approval, and Free unused printers after (minutes): when nothing has started on a reservation's printers that long after it begins, the printers are freed for others.

Base roles and workgroups can have limits of their own, for example shorter reservations for students. A base role's limits replace the account's; a workgroup can only make them more generous. A reservation also has to fall within the open hours of the people it is for, set on their base role. See Quotas & limits.

Permissions

Set these on each base role, under Printer reservations. Workgroups can grant all of them except Manage all reservations.

Permission	What it allows
View reservations	Open the reservations calendar and see who has reserved which printers.
Reserve printers for themselves	Reserve a printer for their own use, and cancel their own reservations.
Reserve printers for others	Reserve for people, workgroups, classes, projects or everyone. On accounts with classes, limited to the workgroups and classes they belong to, and the people in them.
Approve reservation requests	Approve or reject requests for the people, classes and workgroups they can reserve for.
Manage all reservations	Edit, approve or cancel anyone's reservation, and change the reservation settings.
Print on reserved printers	Start a print on a printer someone else has reserved.

The setup guide sets the first five for you. User groups and permissions explains base roles in general.

Updated on: 03/11/2026

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