It has never been easier to print from SAP with Microsoft Universal Print

[Martin-Pankraz]

👉🏿back to Microsoft Learn or jump to GitHub repos🧑🏽‍💻

Dear community,

Printing from SAP is rarely discussed with all the SAP S/4HANA cloud migration chatter, AI bliss, and sustainability efforts to avoid printing at all (don’t print this blog post😈). For some of you it is similarly mission critical, nevertheless.

For instance, consider a manufacturer that needs to print and attach labels to their products before they leave the factory. In case of disruption delivery is halted! It can be equally bad as an ERP outage.

Printer management and driver software maintenance for the different vendors are among the causes of headaches. Anyone emotionally attached to print servers💖? I hope not…

Those days are gone now – you will see the future with cloud printing and Microsoft Universal Print today! No more print servers!

Crowd🎉: Yes, and no more laser cartridge changes or replenishing paper stacks!

Don’t be ridiculous! Of course, you will still change cartridges and replenish paper! Till the robots come at least.

However, the drivers, print servers, and complicated setups are gone 😊And yes, it works with RISE, GROW, Azure, other hyperscalers, on-premises, and even down in your dark cellar where the poor “Raspberry Pies” are ticking away legacy integrat📱 if they have Internet uplink.

Enabling your SAP Business Users (Frontend Printing)

SAP front-end printing sends an output to a printer available for the user on their front-end device. In other words, a printer accessible by the operating system. The same client computer runs SAP GUI, or a browser (Fiori, BTP apps, WebGUI, you name it). To use Universal Print, you need to have access to such printers.

• Client OS with support for Universal Print
• Add Universal Print printer to your Windows client
• Able to print on Universal Print printer from OS

See the Universal Print documentation for details on these prerequisites.

Find more details on the overall setup for SAP on the dedicated Microsoft Learn page.

Enabling unattended SAP processes (Backend Printing)

SAP offers the standard OData service as “Print Queue Item - Read (A2X)” to enable 3rd party integration with SAP Print Queues. You will see the term: Output Management Systems (OMS) being referenced on other SAP sources and docs entries.

In collaboration with SAP SE the capabilities of the communication scenario SAP_COM_0466 “Printing - Pull Integration” were made available to SAP NetWeaver SAP_BASIS releases 757 and upwards. Have a look at the SAP docs to which ERP releases the components apply 😊At the time of publishing this blog that would be S/4HANA 2022 and upwards.

See the SAP note “3420465 – Print queues in on-premise systems” to learn more about how to enable on your own SAP system.

Given the above preparations you are ready to integrate the SAP print queues with the Microsoft Graph API that powers Microsoft Universal Print. To get you started we shipped an open-source project on GitHub. For ease of use, and CI/CD best practices, the app is terraform enabled. But of course, you could also deploy manually if needed.

fig.1 Architecture Overview

• Kick-off your SAP backend print process however you prefer with SAP standard means (print function on SAPGUI screens, Spool requests etc.). The simplest means for an integration test would be printing the ALV screen from transaction SP02. Find the print button and choose your new print queue as Output Device.

fig.2 Screenshot of test print from SAP transaction SP02

Note on the side: The new output device of type “Q: print via print queue” can be maintained from transaction SPAD. Find the setting under “Access Method -> Host Spool Access Method”.

On SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud tenants that ship Fiori apps or don’t offer SAPGUI access anymore use the app “Maintain Print Queues” and trigger “Create Test Page

 fig.3 Screenshot of Fiori app "Print Queue" to trigger test page print

• Our function app on Azure takes care of pulling the SAP print queue items, mapping the queues to your targeted Microsoft Universal Print cloud printer, securely managing the required credentials + identities, and handling robust upload of the print queue items to the cloud.
• Once your output device reports back to Universal Print, the app notifies the SAP print queue on NetWeaver about a successful print via OData again. This way the integration and status tracking work end-to-end.

As a result, you will be greeted with a physical hard copy of a test page like this:

fig.4 Screenshot of printed test page

Depending on your needs, the Azure services can be injected into isolated private virtual networks next to the SAP system for instance. Use Azure ARC to deploy on-premises or to other hyperscalers.

Not too bad, huh? 😎

Find the latest deployment instructions, SAP specific FAQ, and community discussion on our GitHub repos. Your contributions are more than welcome!

For general FAQ on Universal Print see Microsoft Learn. In case you are looking to integrate special label printers have a look here.

Thoughts on production readiness

Most print device manufacturers already support Microsoft Universal Print. If they don’t yet, check Microsoft’s Universal Print connector to make them compatible.

Looking for front end printing for SAP on MacOS? Here you go.

Availability from SAP NetWeaver SAP_BASIS releases 757 and upwards ensures decent coverage for more recent SAP ECC and S/4HANA installations 😊

Universal Print relies on the Microsoft Graph API and the components involved in the integration use Azure PaaS services that power various mission critical workloads like O365 and M365 worldwide.

See the latest info on SLA here.

You are all set for prime time with cloud printing with SAP🚀

Partner solutions

SAP and Microsoft partners offer packaged solutions or even managed service offerings for SAP printing. See below initial list to get started.

• DOM-Zone from BLUE-ZONE
• RISE ONE from All for One Group
• Universal Print integration with SAP using SAP Cloud Integration from Kangoolutions

By no means is the list complete. Anyone else looking to be listed or referenced, please leave a comment, or contact me directly.

Final Words

That’s a wrap 🌯you saw today how you can simplify your printing from SAP, reduce the device management overhead, and get rid of the need for print drivers.

Cloud printing for SAP with Microsoft Universal print is applicable to your SAP Business Users (called frontend printing) from their own devices and browsers just as they are used to.

For your SAP backend jobs and SAP’s standard OData API a community-driven open-source integration component is offered on GitHub. Check the Azure marketplace, SAP store, and partner repositories for updates on partner offerings. Above list of partner solutions could get you started.

Let us know what you think and feel encouraged to participate in the community effort🙌.

Partners are welcome to reach out to build a marketplace or managed offering.

Last but not least: thank you to @timo_straub1 and amazing team for the great collaboration🙏

Cheers

Devansh and Martin