What the Printing app is
NOWAITN Printing is a shared service the rest of the NOWAITN platform uses whenever it needs paper. Instead of every app — Queue, Reservations, HCM, CRM — shipping its own printer driver, credentials, and retry queue, each one sends a single API call to Printing. Printing renders the chit or receipt, picks the right printer, hands it off to a transport, and records the whole trip in one job history.
If you’ve ever had a team where the expo printer works in the Queue app but not in Reservations, or where a new hire’s laptop can print labels but the manager’s can’t — that class of problem goes away when all printing lives in one place.
How a print job flows
Every job — whether it’s a host chit from Queue or a label from CRM — follows the same four-stop path:
+ job history
Each column is independently swappable. Change the transport without touching the spoke app’s code. Swap a physical printer for a different class without changing the template. Add a new app — and the whole downstream pipeline already works.
Apps that print today
- Queue — host chits when a guest joins the waitlist, when they’re called to the front, or on-demand from the row action menu. Template:
queue.chiton a Thermal 80mm. - Reservations — confirmation slips and same-day arrival chits. Template:
reservations.chiton a Thermal 80mm, orreservations.confirmationon Letter/A4 for email-equivalent hard copies. - HCM — printed timesheets, shift acknowledgements, and new-hire docs. Typically Letter or A4.
- CRM — profile cards at the host stand so servers know regulars on sight. Template:
crm.profile_cardon a Label 2×1 or Thermal 80mm. - Any future app — a single REST call (
POST /api/platform/v1/{orgId}/print-jobs) and a template name is all it takes.
Transports at a glance
A transport is the delivery mechanism that moves a rendered job from the Hub to a physical printer. You pick one per printer when you register it.
- PrintNode cloud — a paid SaaS relay. A small PrintNode client runs on a computer attached to your printer and pulls jobs over HTTPS. Best for multi-location organizations where you don’t want to run your own infrastructure.
- Relay — a self-hosted lightweight agent on a local machine (think: one on the front-of-house PC per site). Best for organizations that prefer to keep print traffic on-premises.
- Browser / AirPrint — included with the license. The Hub opens a print dialog in the user’s browser and the browser handles the rest via AirPrint, IPP, or whatever the OS supports. Best for ad-hoc desktop printers.
- Simulator — staging-only. Writes a PDF + HTML to disk so developers and QA can exercise the whole pipeline without any hardware.
See Choosing a printer transport for a deeper comparison.
Printer classes
Every registered printer declares its class — a paper-size + layout profile that determines the CSS width, page geometry, and font sizing of rendered jobs.
| Class | Paper | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| thermal_80mm | 80 mm roll | Host chits, expo tickets, short receipts |
| thermal_58mm | 58 mm roll | Handheld/portable receipt printers |
| label_2x1 | 2×1 inch label | CRM profile cards, shelf labels, small tags |
| letter | 8.5×11 inch | HCM timesheets, reservations confirmations |
| a4 | 210×297 mm | International equivalent of Letter |
Pricing
Printing is a flat $25 / month per organization. No per-seat charges, no per-job overages, and no separate fee for the browser-native path. PrintNode and other paid transports bill separately through the transport’s own vendor.
Your first 15 minutes
- Activate the license. Hub > Settings > Licenses → Printing → activate.
- Register a printer. Printing > Printers → Add Printer. See Adding your first printer for the step-by-step.
- Test a print. From the printer row, click Test Print. Confirm the job appears in Printing > Jobs with status sent.
- Trigger from a real app. Add a guest to Queue, or book a Reservation, and confirm the chit comes out.
If a job doesn’t come out the way you expect, open the job in Jobs — every render is stored with its PDF/HTML artifact, full error log, and a one-click reprint. See Troubleshooting print jobs for the common failure modes.