The purpose of this Article is to describe and explain UPD v3 functionnalities that can dramatically improve performances.

Actually XenApp (Presentation Server) 4.0 came with a brand new printing subsystem based on the Universal Printer Driver.

This new driver (only available for Windows 2000 / XP Workstations) allow admins to provide users a "Real" Universal Printer Driver that can be used for almost any Client Side printer . You can even manage Client Printers trays and paper formats, etc… and as EMF is used, Print jobs are really faster.

Well let's stop the marketing things ;) : Even if this new driver is a big step for Citrix in printing management, Third Party products like Thinprint seems to be still a step ahead from Citrix regarding print jobs size.

Seems To ?

When doing lots of testing on a big customer environment with very problematic documents (for example a 500kb PDF File producing a 90 Mb print job …), we found that the most important Thinprint Optimization was its ability to reduce the print job resolution (150dpi is the default Thinprint Setting, which is to low for base graphical documents but dramatically increase performances).

In our Case for example, the Citrix Universal Printer Driver would send about 45Mb on the Network and Thinprint only about 3 Mb when using 150dpi resolution, What a Difference !

Actually, we also found that as the Citrix Universal Printer Driver is Synchronised with the Client Printer Driver, it inherits its default resolution (mainly 600dpi to 1200dpi according to the printer model used).

This behaviour is a real pain in SBC environment because as the print job size is proportionnal to the resolution, sending a print job at a 600dpi or more resolution really kills the network, even with the new Universal Printer Driver.

Assuming this, a question is raising : Why can't we manage this with XenApp / Presentation Server !!!

Actually the first release of the Universal Driver was not designed to do so, but do you remember the customer I was doing tests with ? Actually it's a quite big Citrix Customer Here in France (10 000+ Users) and they did an enhancement request ...

Now You see where I wanted to go ?

Because Yes !!!, Citrix accepted to implement this functionnality in their XenApp / Presentation Server Code (Although it is not much documented).

Starting with XenApp 4.0 (R03 Plus Hotfix 68 minimum required) and XenApp 4.5 (R01 required) You can more deeply manage the Universal Printer Driver and force a lower printing resolution so you can dramatically improve the printing performances !

Important Note : These settings require the Citrix Universal Printer (CUP) to be enabled and will apply only on it.
To enable the CUP, You'll have to set the DefaultPrnFlag value CTXPRN_AUTO_CREATE_GENERIC_UPD_PRINTER which means a value of 20 in Hex.

Note : ICA Client 10.X is required to be able to use all settings specified in this Article.

All settings takes place in the following registry hive : HKLM\Software\Citrix.

My Example is based on Windows 32 Bits, so please note that the registry path is different with Windows x64

You'll have to create a “Print” subkey if it does not exist (this subkey is not present by default, so if you have not defined any DefaultPrnFlags you'll have to create it).

To Manage the UPD Settings, You'll then have to create a new “UPDDevMode” subkey which gives the following registry path

“HKLM\Software\Citrix\Print\UPDDevMode“.

Summary :

Windows 32-bit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Print\UPDDevmode

Windows 64-bit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Print\UPDDevmode
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Print\UPDDevmode

Here you'll find the list of all available settings that can be applied on the Universal Printer Driver v3 :

Important Note: Once you apply these settings, users can still choose for example a high resolution but it won't be taken into account when the document will be printed, so be careful when applying this Tuning !

For example, if I want to restrict the Universal Driver Printers to a 300dpi resolution then I will add the dmPrintQuality value and set it to "2".

This setting is the most important because it's the one which has the most dramatic impact on print jobs size.

If your users do not need color printing and you want to optimize more, you can then create and set the dmColor to "1" to force only Black and White Printing.

Then the dmTTOption setting : Specific Documents, mainly the type of documents that were generated from a PAO application (example : PDF generated from Illustrator …) have their own embedded fonts. Using default print settings, this fonts are converted as bitmaps, which can have a dramatic negative impact on print job.

Using this option, it is possible to force the client to substitute theses specific fonts with local fonts (be careful with that because it can have a lot of side effects …) or to download the fonts to the client at the first print (more heavy at first print job but flawless then).

With tuned Settings, the 90mb (45mb sent) print job is now a 3,4Mb print job (Yes Thinprint still has a little advantage !) but now users can print without big issues.

To help dealing with these settings, we have developped a tool to manage them along with DefaultPrnFlags (see Advanced Concept Guides) more easily.

This tool is called XenApp UPD Tuner and his available from Our Downloads Section.