Any updates on continuing the plugin?

Unfortunately, we don’t have any updates to provide at this time. We know many users in the community are wanting updates, but as you can imagine switching the entire infrastructure from Google Cloud Print to a new solution has taken time to evaluate options and development. Some partners we evaluated are not able to support the needs of the product. Especially given our objective to maintain a cloud based solution to fulfill the requirement of a printer distributed around a building.

To confirm. Yes, our goal is to maintain a new version of the plugin. This current version developed around GCP will be deprecated with the end of Google Cloud Print and a new version of the plugin will be available with a new cloud print solution. Until we are further along in our development efforts and testing cycles of the new version, we won’t be able to share any details or timelines for availability as things could still change during our development efforts. We hope to have the new solution deployed prior to the shutdown of GCP, but we can’t official confirm that until we make more development progress.

If this is business critical for you, we’d recommend evaluating other options now as a back-up plan to be safe, if our new solution is not ready and available prior to the shutdown on December 31st. Given the uncertainty as you mention, we want to be transparent and make this recommendation.

Again, our intention is to share details once we have more solid product release details, but right now in the middle of development we are cautious to share too much details and timelines. We are a small development company and working hard to have a solution, but as you can understand this is a large undertaking to replace and provide the same quality print solution and functionality enjoyed now by using the plugin.

If this is business critical for you, we’d recommend evaluating other options now as a back-up plan to be safe,

Do you have any recommendations for alternative print solutions for your POS or are you advocating customers look for alternative POS solutions?

What about a simpler print solution not involving cloud print but just standard local (USB) or network attached (ethernet/wifi) printers? As I said in another post, in many (if not most) situations cloud print is not required. We simply need to be able to print to local printers. This should be a long-term solution, as well as Cloud Print if there’s still a need for it. Essentially that means people needing to print to other locations than the site they’re at.

That would also remove a potential source of failure. While the POS can still process orders if the internet is down, using GCP for all prints means receipts can only be printed when online. And then there’s the delay routing all receipts through GCP causes.

It’s probably telling that Google is shutting down their cloud print service, maybe because it’s not really a thing people need/use.

I’ve been speaking with POS hardware vendor and they have said GCP causes issues for standard POS operation. They believe it’s not possible to usual thermal receipt printers attached to cash draws when GCP is in the equation.

Good question about the POS and printing impact with GCP shutdown.

For the print functionality on the POS, we are not linking the new solution for Cloud Print to the POS. We are working to provide a print solution, regardless of new Cloud Based print solution for this plugin. Meaning, the POS will have a print function after December 2020.

On the POS, we are working to provide a local based printing solution, in addition the POS will also support the replacement to the Cloud based Printing solution released for this plugin.