Agents
The principle of data collection has been modified most of all. In the previous versions of the program data collection was based on notifications received from the print spooler and also on the SPL files of images it creates. This mechanism has a considerable advantage: there is no need to configure anything. It is enough just to install the program, select a printer and data will be collected. At least, that's the way it is supposed to be. However, life is known for making its corrections. The same happened to Printer Activity Monitor. In real life, the program started to experience problems getting valid data from the print spooler. The print spooler supplied invalid information. As a result, reports could seriously differ from actual data: copies did not coincide, zero or enormously large number of printed pages could appear, the names of printed documents were not what they actually were and, finally, document images were not visible. Of course, all that occurred far from all the time, but as soon as the problems emerged, it was impossible to solve them because very often it was the printer driver developers' fault – they just ignored the driver specifications.
All that made us revise our approach to data collection and implement mechanisms that make it possible to get 100% precise information about print jobs.
We came down to two methods: collecting data directly on the user computer and virtual printers.
