Introduction
In the ERPAG Mobile App, it was possible to print via Google Cloud Print Service. However, in early 2021, Google completely terminated the service. Google Cloud Print was very practical and allowed us to easily enable printing from any device and location. Saving to PDF and printing it later on a desktop computer is not very practical. Printing via AirPrint on iOS is not applicable everywhere because many printers (especially older models) do not support this option.
ERPAG Mobile App also has special integrations with devices that have integrated internal printers. You can find one example of integrations on the following blog:
However, it is just one device and that doesn’t solve the problem for everyone; the solution we came up with is the email-to-print concept.
Note: Printing will be possible regardless of whether you are using a desktop, thermal or label printer.
Email to print
The concept is simple, when the ERPAG Mobile App is “clicked” on the Print button, the App will generate a PDF and send as an attachment to the appropriate email address.
The setting in the ERPAG Mobile App is in the settings of the Mobile Application Itself, for each user separately.
That is, enter the email address on which the PDF will be sent. Only after the email address in Mobile App is filled, Print button will be visible (you must also have the appropriate document designed via Report or Label Designer).
Note: In order to send an email, you must have an email account set up in ERPAG. To set up, go to Administration > Admin > Mail accounts.
Other settings depend on your software/hardware environment.
Cloud ready printers
Most lately produced printers support Cloud Printing in the printer itself, so setup is very easy. Leading manufacturers have their cloud services through which each of the printers can get a unique email address.
For example, EPSON services are called Email Print ( https://www.epsonconnect.com ) while HP calls it ePrint.
Example of setting up EPSON L3150 Series on the EPSON connect portal.
Note: In order to print only PDF documents you must turn off printing other pieces of information like “Senders information”, “Subject” and “email body”.
Setup for a printer that does not have cloud support
Here, too, printer manufacturers themselves offer applications that are installed on desktop computers (for example Windows pc) and in this way simulate “Cloud-ready” printing. The advantage of this solution is that it can work with the older generation of printers, a disadvantage is you need to have a physical computer to which the printer is connected.
Example for EPSON printers: https://epson.com/support/epson-connect-printer-setup-for-windows
There are also commercial (maybe even free solutions) on the market that you can install if the printer manufacturer does not offer such an application.
Setup using automation applications
In recent years, specialized applications for work automation are getting more popular. In addition to allowing repetitive processes to be automated, we can use them to create our own email to the print engine.
The basic flow is to detect email which contains a PDF attachments, save that attachment, and send it to print.
We will show our example in Microsoft Power Automate (more info on: https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-au/desktop/ )
Note: If this is an email address whose application is not exclusively for an email to print, it must be set not to print every PDF that arrives.
This is achieved by inserting a condition in the “Retrieve email messages” option to recognize the email being sent from the ERPAG Mobile App. Perhaps, the best way is to filter Subject, because it is always “ERPAG – Cloud Printing” when activating email to print in the mobile App.
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