Hello --
I am currently tasked with migrating our printing environment in 300+ locations. Currently we have a machine in each location (we call it a STAGE) that shares out the printer. We use group policy preferences to map the printer based on the Location ID. Each machine has a computer variable to identify its location ID.
Example of current setup:
- Environmental Variable set on each machine for each location is %LOCID% = We are using "NY1" as out example
- NY1STAGE is the hostname of the machine that has the shared printer (and other folders it uses).
- User logs into the machine, GPP maps "%LOCID%STAGE\Printer1" (NY1STAGE\Printer1) as a local printer.
We are eliminating the STAGE machines and would like to map user to the printer using just the IP. Each printer in each location follows the same IP schema. I need to have the map use x.x.x.111. It needs to pull the first 3 items from the IP of the machine itself. I have no idea how we can handle this via Group Policy.
This is the only way I can think of making this work, our AD structure doesn't have a OU for each Location, since users do float from location to location.
Any ideas?