New Pharos Cloud 3.5 release enhances IT efficiency

Pharos is excited to announce the new release of Pharos Cloud, the cloud-native print management and optimization platform proven to meet the scalability, security, and high-uptime requirements of large, global enterprises. ​Pharos Cloud is designed to support the complexity of large enterprises and migrates print infrastructure to the cloud to drive IT productivity, enhance security, and enable employees with convenient and intuitive printing wherever they work—and the Pharos Cloud 3.5 release is no exception. Key updates with this release include:    

Enable user self-service with a new End User Portal 

The new release introduces an End User Portal to help reduce the burden on IT staff. From the portal, users can easily generate passcodes for Secure Release and manage their Secure Release print jobs (upload, delete, change settings). By empowering users to manage their printing online, IT staff can focus on more critical tasks.  

IPv6 support for Pharos Insights and Direct Print 

Due to the proliferation of connected devices, many large enterprises are running out of IPv4 addresses. This release adds IPv6 support for Direct Print and Pharos Insights, allowing for more unique IP addresses required by global organizations.  

Enhanced usability and setup for Secure Scanning 

The Secure Scanning capability of Pharos Secure Release has been enhanced with the 3.5 release to improve administrative and end user experience. Administrators can now unlock the scan-to-email “TO:” field to allow users scan to an email address associated with an email address other than themselves, such as a fax provider. In addition, Administrators now have the ability to configure Scan-to-Network Folder directly from the Administrator web console.  

Truly “universal” print driver built on IPP Everywhere™ for Secure Release 

Previously available with Pharos Direct Print, Pharos is enabling our truly “universal” print driver built on the IPP Everywhere™ standard for Pharos Secure Release. Traditionally, most “universal” print drivers offer only basic functionality with users often experiencing variations in performance and compatibility issues depending on the manufacturer. Based on the open standard developed by the Printer Working Group, Pharos’ print driver is more capable than traditional “universal” print drivers by providing a consistent experience and behavior across most printer manufacturers and devices available in the market today and allowing users to access and utilize a wider range of printer capabilities that have been defined within the IPP standard (i.e., paper size selection, stapling, N-up, etc.).  

Simplify driver deployment with location-based printing for macOS  

Back in January, Pharos simplified driver deployment and made it easier for employees to print to nearby printers by introducing location-based printing with Windows Print Scouts. This capability enabled administrators to automatically add or remove print queues based on the network location of the workstation. This latest release adds location-based printing capability to macOS—eliminating the need for Mac users to map to printers. 

New release naming convention  

With this 3.5.0 release, Pharos is also introducing a new naming convention for our Pharos Cloud releases to help you track different versions going forward. Previously, releases were simply identified by the month of the release (i.e., July Pharos Cloud release). With our new naming convention:  

• The first digit represents the generation of our cloud platform where:  
  • Generation 1 represents our platform when it was only cloud-based analytics
  • Generation 2 represents our platform with the addition of secure print workflows 
  • Generation 3 represents the current generation of our platform since the introduction of Direct Print last spring (March 2022) 
• The second digit represents the release increment within the generation—this is the 5^th Pharos Cloud release since the introduction of Pharos Direct Print last March    
• The last digit (if needed) provides flexibility to communicate a hot fix or patch 

For a complete list of new features in the Pharos Cloud 3.5 release, please refer to the release notes.