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Roadmap

What's next for TapQueue, in rough priority order. The README has the short checklist; admin-ui.md has the admin console's own phases.

Before a real deployment

  1. Printer health monitoring. (Done in 0.6.0, see how-it-works.md.) Poll every printer over IPP for its state, what's wrong (jammed, out of paper, door open) and supply levels. Show it in the console and CLI, record problems in the activity log, and don't release to a printer that can't print, so jobs stay held for another printer instead of disappearing into a stopped one.
  2. Admin sign-in and roles. (Done in 0.7.0, see admin-roles.md.) Viewer, operator and admin roles per console area for users and groups, local or from AD, and the console available with auth.mode = "token". Single sign-on is item 15.
  3. Directory sync. (Active Directory done in 0.6.0, see active-directory.md.) Users and groups from AD, by OU, group (nested) and single user, daily. Entra ID is still to do.
  4. TLS everywhere. (Done in 0.8.0, see tls.md.) IPP, the client API and the admin console over HTTPS, so print data and tokens aren't readable on the network.
  5. Per-job identity instead of IP-based ownership. (Done in 0.8.0, see how-it-works.md.) Each PC gets a key and its printers a print key, so the server knows which PC a job came from; the PC's service vouches for which PC user runs each tray app, so the job goes to the person who printed it. Works on shared PCs, terminal servers and behind NAT. Address matching stays for older clients until it's turned off.
  6. Feedback at the station. (A screen: done in 0.17.0, see release-station.md.) A tap with nothing to print, a refused release and an over-limit user all looked the same: nothing happened. Any browser next to the reader can now show what each tap did. Still to do: a USB status light or a sound for stations without a screen; the feedback station setting is reserved for it.

What people expect from print management

  1. Follow-me printing. One queue, release at any station; the job goes to whichever printer you tap at.
  2. Reports. (Done in 0.12.0, see reports.md.) Pages by person, group, printer, queue, day and month over any period, in the console and tapqueue-admin report, with CSV export. Scheduled email is still to do, with notifications (item 12).
  3. Cost accounting. Per-page prices (mono/colour, simplex/duplex), balances or charge-back to departments. (From 0.16.0 each job records whether it was sent in colour and on both sides, and reports add those up; prices are still to do.)
  4. Self-service badge enrollment. Tap an unknown badge, confirm it from the tray app.
  5. Release from a phone or the tray. Pick jobs, delete them, change copies, for the day the badge is at home.

Operations

  1. Notifications. (Email done in 0.15.0, see notifications.md.) Email alerts for printer problems, stations going offline and crash reports, sent through the mail server an admin enters in the console. Webhook alerts are still to do.
  2. Backup and restore. (Done in 0.11.0, see backup.md.) A daily backup of the database, certificate and AD CA, one before each upgrade, tapqueue-admin backups and the console's Server page, and tapqueue-server --restore.
  3. Packaging. Signed Windows builds (no SmartScreen warning), .deb packages, ARM builds for small release stations like a Raspberry Pi.
  4. Single sign-on for the admin console (and maybe the tray): OIDC with Entra ID, Google or Okta, or SAML. Roles already belong to users and groups rather than to a way of signing in, so this adds a sign-in method and changes nothing else.