One way to start is by accessing the information about each printer's location. Did anyone create that info within the printer in a place that you or Solarwinds can leverage it for reports or displays?
One intuitive method is to name the printer with some indicator of its location. I've named network nodes (for management and reporting purposes) in the past using a format like N-MN-MKT-BLD1-RM231-PRNT01. It breaks down as:
N: North Region
MN: Minnesota
MKT: Mankato (city name)
BLD1: Building #1 (you could use the specific unique building name to make the printer intuitive)
RM231: The room in which the printer is installed
PRNT01: Useful to differentiate between multiple printers in one room
You might also enter similar site location information within the printer's Comments or Notes field, or within a Location field, depending on what capabilities it has for this.
These kinds of info fields will allow you to easily display printers by location and build reports. But you might also leverage info already present in your I.S. Department's technical documentation if your Printer Technicians' Group has already built a spreadsheet showing where each printer is, and what its name is. If they'd share that with you, you could associate the data with network nodes your Solarwinds NPM has discovered, and build a display page or a report to show the info you want.
Or, your Printer Techs may be using an outside third-party solution to track printer resources like toner or colored ink, and the printers might already be reporting that information to that outside vendor. That outside vendor may already have the exact information you need, and might even already be tracking & reporting on it, or at least have the info ready to send as reports, with a simple request.
This should get you started. My last employer's Printer Group managed about 4000 network printers, and relied on snmp to tell them which printers needed which specific ink parts or paper supply refreshment. The printer techs eventually outsourced everything to a company that leveraged the Location or Printer Name (associated with a site and room number) to automatically order toner when it was low, and build a request for the right ink or toner cartridges that the folks responsible for those printers could turn into a Purchase Order.
Give it a little research, see what your printers might already have set up, or what their capabilities are. You can import a lot of data into NPM if you have it in the correct CSV format, and the Software Developers' Kit (SDK) has loads of importing and data massaging power if you're familiar with SQL or the Solarwinds variant called SWQL.
Good luck, and have Swift Packets!
Rick Schroeder
I don't have any custom pollers to test with currently but in theory you could:
Thank you for the reply Rick and sorry for the delay. We have a system in place to identify like you said location, floor number and room.So that part is taken care of. What i whold like todo now is to create a view that shows me the total number of pages printed for each location. So i need some kind of way to add the numbers for each printer into one totalt pr location. if that makes sense?
Thanks alot. It works now i only have to do some work with presenting the data in a nice way
