DIY Cloud Print

Ever struggle with how to deliver the ability for guests to print out that all-important boarding pass, hilarious Dilbert cartoon (does anyone print them out anymore) or the occasional business document to be shared at a meeting? How about completing the solution for free? Nothing combines my two loves... the smell of toner and free together like guest printing; and there are a ton of complex and cool solutions out there; but why not build a simple and easy to use solution? Here's what you can make happen:

1. Build yourself a Windows server, the version I used was a VM of Windows 2012 R2.
2. License that server.
3. Patch the server.
4. Get yourself an Internet IP (you probably already have this and can NAT an address to it)
5. Decide on some cool DNS name, like makeitprint.coolcompanyname.com.
6. Create a DNS record (inside and outside of your company if needed) for that DNS address (Note: for guests, you probably need to put this out on the Internet.
7. On your firewall, configure NAT to pass traffic through on port 443, you may also want to restrict the access to your solution to just your corporate Internet IPs.
8. On the Windows server, install the Internet Printing role.
9. Setup your printers on your server.
10. They will now have a URL of https:\\makeitprint.coolcompanyname.com\printers\.
11. You can use the URL for each printer to print to, share that with your guests and they will be good to go 

For printing from Chromebooks, you can also setup Google Chrome on your server and share the printers out to Google users (keep it secure by limiting who can access it via Google's security)

Note: Using Google Chrome in this way allows the approved accounts to print from anywhere, ignoring your firewall security.

This will allow Windows, Linux, and Macs to be able to print to your printer from the office (via https printing) and any system running Google Chrome (such as Chromebooks) to print via Google Chrome.

Suddenly you are saving the company money and providing an easy to use solution to guest printing.