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Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

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Posted on by PjS

We've registered (2) different vendors' Universal Print Ready printers into our tenant: Brother and Epson. We are not using the MS supplied connector, nor do we wish to as the whole purpose of native UP is to eliminate any unneeded host/servers.

Both printers appear, and can be assigned, in BC.

One problem we are seeing is when we try to use the Brother device. When we actually try to print, BC greets us with an error about application/pdf not being a supported format. I assume this means that BC requires the device to accept application/pdf? Printing from any other application other than BC works fine.

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The other problem we are seeing is with the Epson device. When we print in BC, no errors occur (this device accepts 'application/pdf'), but crashes the printer causing it to reboot endlessly until the job is cleared from the queue in the Universal Print portal. Again, printing from any other application other than BC also works fine with this device.

Both devices are up-to-date on Firmware, and I have reached out to both vendors for assistance/support. As other application works fine, I'd suspect the problem may be specific to BC's Universal Print implementation.

Has anyone seen similar? Who may I communicate with to further troubleshoot this issue?

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MahGah 15,529 on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hi

As far as I know Universal Printer is the paid version and cannot be used differently. Basically it requires setup like this www.youtube.com/watch

Can you please let forum know how you set your printers up without using universal printer paid version? Then maybe we can replicate the issue and help?

Thanks

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YUN ZHU 93,151 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hi, Sorry I haven't tested this feature, but hopefully some key information below will help you.

More details: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/ui-specify-printer-selection-reports#supported-printers

PS: Info from Dynamics 365 Business Central Launch Event 2021 Release Wave 1

Thanks.

ZHU

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PjS 5 on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hi ZHU,

Yes, we are familiar with above.

Both printers we are testing are Universal Print Compatible, and therefore do not require the Universal Print Connector as indicated in Step 1 of the slide deck in order to register them in the Universal Print Portal. The Universal Print Connector is required only for non-compatible and/or older printers that do not support Universal Print natively.

For newer printers such as ours, the printer registration process occurs on the devices themselves and show up in the portal afterwards. This process is mentioned in your information above under 'Supported Printers' heading. If you'd like more detail in regards to how that looks and/or how that process occurs, please let me know.

I do believe that the trouble we *may* be specific to the Universal Print Integration extension for BC, but I am not 100% certain yet. I'd suspect the plug-in is using the Universal Print API?

FWIW, I have both BROTHER and EPSON engaged as well, and they are now wanting version details regarding the sending application (in this case BC with Universal Print Integration Extension)

Perhaps we could involve and/or get Jimmy Wu's eyes on this issue from the Universal Print Group:

techcommunity.microsoft.com/.../70523

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Marco Mels on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hello,

I did setup the UP a few times using the connector and BC using a paid license and an Azure subscription and it usually works fine. Perhaps you can raise it to Microsoft so we can take a look together.

Thank you.

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PjS 5 on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hi Marco,

Thanks for the reply and follow-up.

Using the connector seems to be OK, but that is not what we are after (because the connector requires on-prem server/host, which UP is designed, ideally, to displace). How do you suggest I raise this topic to Microsoft as you mention? I'd be more than happy to work with you on this.

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Marco Mels on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hello,

Your partner can raise a question on your behalf to Microsoft via partner center.

Thank you.

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Rani_Abdellatif on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

PjS,

As you may have concluded, the issue you're facing with the Brother printer is because BC is trying to send a PDF through the Universal Print (UP) Graph API to be printed by this printer that only supports the PWG-Raster format. UP performs some format conversions to try to accommodate what the target printer supports. Conversion to PWG-Raster is still not supported by UP. Please add a feature request at https://aka.ms/UPIdeas for adding conversion to PWG-Raster in the UP Graph API. Until that conversion ability is added to UP, the only workaround for printers that only support PWG-Raster is to use the connector, and I know that's not what your after.

As for the issue with the Epson printer, I'm not sure what's going on there. One thing to try is to print a PDF from OneDrive web to UP (techcommunity.microsoft.com/.../2653401)

If that works, then the issue might be in BC or the printer (in the way they communicate with UP). If that fails, then it might be the printer in particular.

Either way, please create a Microsoft Support ticket about this and get in touch with the UP team through http://aka.ms/UPDiscussion.

I hope this helps. Thank you.

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Rani_Abdellatif on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Typo in my post. The correct link is https://aka.ms/UPDiscussion

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Community Member on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hello,

To help with Printing in Business Central, SaaS, consider using this FREE APP: www.dmsiworks.com/.../

This help my customers.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Steve

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PjS 5 on at

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RE: Native Universal Print Printers: Not able to print

Hi Rani,

Firstly, thank you for the kind and reply. I understand fully your comments and will raise a formal support ticket via our partner, but in the interim, it is useful to speak developer to developer, such as we do here. I'll try the OneDrive web to UP and report back here with results.

It may be worthwhile to mention that both devices can handle PDF natively. This is easily demonstrated by sending a native PDF to 9100 or via LPR to each device; both of which print fine.

That being said, I'd suspect the Brother device may simply not be advertising PDF as a valid content type when the (IPP based?) query occurs.

The Epson device, although advertising PDF as a valid content type, to your point, may be an issue in how BC is constructing/calling the UP Graph API. Need to confirm and/or deny that. Regardless, the engineers for Epson and Brother are based in Japan, and it is Golden Week there, so responses from them have been a bit delayed.

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