The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen offers secured print to its students

Situation analysis

The University is one of the five biggest universities in the Czech Republic. Its information technologies department belongs to the most prestigious research institutes in the country. Therefore it is important for the university to use all available technologies to offer wide array of services to its students.

The reprography services (printing and copying) were available to the students via the university’s local solution which did not provide any overview about the load and use of the printing environment. The implementation of a solution with pre-paid credit cards was necessary in order to make the printing services accessible to students on a larger scale.

The centralization and unification of the printing solution was one of the key priorities due to the large area the university is located on, securing the option for the individual faculties to keep their specific requests.

The university had been pioneer-using the RFID 125 kHz card scanner since 1996. The “Pilsen card”, a Mifare format card, had been used in Pilsen for the public libraries and transportation since 2003. The Pilsen card was not compatible with the university system. It was essential to unite two card scanner for the citywide standard to come.

Solution

SafeQ printing solution was used to consolidate the printing environment. The first phase consisted of interconnecting 14 network printers and copiers in the Center of informatization and IT. The integrated SafeQ credit module was used for the administration of student credit accounts. The university has eight recharging spots, utilizing a win32 application which communicates with the local card scanner allowing recharging of the credit simply by attaching the card to the scanner.

After the initial launch, the printing environment increased in efficiency and more printing devices were purchased and connected to the system.

In the following two years the SafeQ was implemented to the university library and is continuously implemented to the remaining faculties and dedicated work places.
The solution consists of these parts:

• SafeQ Professional printing solution – server edition.
• Seventeen thousand users, both students and employees, are using the printing services via chip cards which are used in other university systems.
• SafeQ Professional terminals are connected at twenty-five multifunction devices (network printers and copiers).
• SafeQ system credit module
• Credit Recharging application, SafeQ cash desk, utilizing the university internal card scanners allow credit recharging to all students and employees from nine spots.
• Four-year services license guarantees that the printing solution is up-to-date, all released SafeQ version can be used during the term of the license.
• Pre-paid service actions via remote terminal services guarantee that the critical errors will be fixed within 1 working day.

Benefits

All administration and operation of the system is carried out by the university. The students and employees have the access to reprography services (prints and copies) via the university chip cards.

Client’s evaluation

„SafeQ is a solution that allows us to offer printing services to a big number of users (about 15000) and save the human resources necessary to run it. The printing solution problem has been reduced to picking up your prints and the usual service of printers and copiers which we have already been outsourcing.”
Ing. Vladimir Rudolf
Director of Center of informatization and IT

The implementation of the SafeQ printing solution:

• Global access to prints and copies for students and employees
• Improvement of the offered services
• Printing solution accessibility thanks to the “follow-me” function
• SafeQ terminals brought about increased convenience
• All printing services access