A Key Virtual Printer Change
In response to customer feedback, we have implemented a quick fix for Virtual Printing in December 2020, to allow for more reliable printing, when sending high volumes of shipping labels and invoices to a printer. This relates to an error message stating that “Virtual Print Server has not responded.” and items were not marked as printed, even though they were printed.
Who is this for?
If you use Linnworks.net, and you use Open Orders (not Open Orders Beta), and you want to send large amounts of shipping labels or invoices to a printer (local or network) or to PDF using a printer extension such as CutePDF, this is for you. The technical name for the ability to print to a real printer or printer extension is “Virtual Printer”.
If you use Open Orders Beta, this will not affect you.
If you retrieve a PDF from your web browser or from within Linnworks Desktop directly, this will not affect you.
How do I try it?
Please go to the Open Orders screen, click on the Order Book Settings button (the little cog in the top right of the screen). Here you will find the setting “Invoice / Shipping label batch size”.
Before changing the batch size, make a note of what your current setting is, in case you choose to change it back or want to benchmark the change.
This number represents the number of invoices or labels we send to your printer in every request we make; this is typically called print jobs. It doesn’t necessarily represent the amount that will come out of your printer. For example, some printers can handle more print jobs at once as can some shipping providers. If you were to send 100 invoices, and your batch size was set to 20, we would send 5 separate requests for 20 invoices at a time to the printer. 100 would still come out of the printer, it just gives the printer and your shipping provider the opportunity to manage all the requests well.
You can change “Invoice / Shipping label batch size” to your desired batch size (print job size). We recommend putting in 50 as the setting value first to try it out. Please never try to print more than 250 at once, however feel free to experiment with batch sizes up to this amount to see what works best for your printers and shipping providers. Around 100 for most setups will work best but please contact support@linnworks.com if you find it’s vastly different for you.
What should I do if I continue to see the error?
Please change the batch size of your print jobs back to the original value. If you have forgotten your setting, our default is 20.
If you have tried this setting but continue to see the “Virtual Print Server has not responded.” error, please contact support on support@linnworks.com to let us know that this did not work for you so that we can continue to investigate and hopefully resolve this for you.