Most office copy machines do so much more than just copy. It used to be that a company had a copy machine that solely served the purpose of making copies of documents. In today’s office workplace the business copy machine services as a hub for all document workflow. The trusty copy machine now serves as a network scanner to route documents throughout the workplace and beyond and often serves as the primary or the exclusive network printer serving an entire department or company.
It is more critical than ever that there is nothing that prevents this system from consistently performing all of these critical tasks. What this means is that to serve as a printer and a network scanner the machine needs to be able to effectively communicate with a company’s wireless network, routers, switches, email servers and computers. Most companies rely on an IT company to support these computer related needs when there are network issues, interruptions in wireless service or when new network equipment is installed.
When it comes to maintaining the ability to print and scan your IT Company may rely on the key operator of the copier to have necessary information that IT needs to keep the machine printing and scanning. Listed below are 3 things that your company should always have on file.
The Administrative Password for the copy machine; The very first thing that your IT person will need in order to facilitate any repair or configuration of a scanning or printing related issue is the Administrative Password for the copy machine. This is not something that you will be able to find out without having it written down or contacting your service provider. In many cases even your service provider may have to research your Administrative Password and all this while you may be paying your IT Company to sit and wait for information that could have been ready in anticipation of the visit.
Contact Information for the IT Support Department for the Copier Service Provider; In many cases if you are having new equipment installed by your IT Company such as a new router, modem or server your IT Company may require contact with your Copier Service Provider to ask questions about the proprietary settings of your given copy machine.
In order to eliminate downtime with your IT Company waiting for you to track down the appropriate contact at your copier service provider’s company you’d be best served to make sure that you have this contact information on file and to consider contacting this person in advance of your IT Company’s visit to ensure that someone will be accessible should your IT person have questions.
Names, Passwords, Locations/File Paths of the Email Account and Folders used for scanning; In many cases the company from who you acquired your copy machine will handle the initial setup of your scanning functionality. It is always a good idea to ask the company handling the setup for the following information:
- The email address used as host/send from address of your copy machine
- The password for this email address
- The name, location, file path and passwords of any folders being used for scanning
This public service notice is provided by a long term, copier service provider that routinely interacts with the IT Companies tasked with maintaining a company’s network. Often companies will pay their IT Company to be onsite only to encounter costly delays attempting to locate the information outlined above.
By keeping this information ready at hand you can eliminate un-necessary expenses and minimize the amount of time your company is without the critical scanning or emailing functionality provided by your copy machine.
