At Ease 5.x: Restricted Finder And Desktop Printers

Symptom:

In At Ease 4.0 my printers were available on the desktop in Restricted Finder when using the Default Chooser Selection option. The Selected Printers option is not a feasible option in our environment. Now that I have updated to At Ease 5.x they no longer appear. This is a real inconvenience when students print long jobs or accidentally print too many copies of the same job. They can no longer flush the queue themselves but rather have to have an Administrator log in to full Finder to stop the queue or power off the printer. Is there a way in At Ease 5.x to have desktop printers available in Restricted Finder?

Solution:

At Ease 5.x removes all unlocked items from the desktop and places them in a secured folder. There are two ways to allow access to desktop printers.

Option 1

In full Finder make an alias of the desktop printer. Click once on the alias to select it. Choose Get Info from the File menu. In the Info window for the alias select the Locked option. Now when users log in they will see the alias and can open the printer to manipulate the queue.

Option 2

First, you must make sure you are using Desktop Printing 2.0.1 or later. This allows you to move printers from the desktop into other folders. Then follow these steps:

1. Create a folder named Printers at the top level of the hard drive. Place your desktop printers in this folder.
2. Launch At Ease Admin.
3. Pull down the Options menu and select 'Access to Folders'.
4. Click 'Add Folder'. Type the exact name of the folder you created for your printers. Click OK. Click OK again to close the Access to Folders window.
5. Now you must give access to your workgroups that use the printers. Select your workgroup and click 'Edit Workgroup'.
6. In the Edit Workgroup window click the Folders button. Click Add.
7. Select the Folder you have created and make sure users can open documents in this folder.