Printing Queue
The printing queue records every document Helm sends to a printer, so you can see whether a label actually printed, who sent it, and retry, cancel or download it without going back through the order. Covers reading the statuses, the six-hour auto-fail, the three-retry limit, filtering and the one-month retention window.
What the Printing Queue Does
When someone prints from Helm, the document does not go straight to the printer and vanish. Helm creates a print job, hands it to the printing app running on that person's machine, and then tracks what the printer reports back. The printing queue is that record.
It answers the questions that come up on a busy despatch bench: did that label actually print, who sent it, how big the job was, and whether it can be sent again without going back through the order.
You will find it in the account menu at the top right of Helm. Under Account Settings, choose Jobs and then Printing Queue.
Jobs Queue sits directly above it in the same menu and is a different list. That one tracks background work such as imports, exports and bulk actions; this one tracks documents sent to a printer. A print that never came out belongs in Printing Queue, which is where people most often look in the wrong place.
What lands in the queue:
Anything sent to a physical printer through Silent Printing: shipping labels, invoices, packing slips, collection sheets, pick lists, movement sheets, item and location barcodes, and batch documents.
Bulk prints, as a single job. Printing invoices for 40 orders in one go creates one job covering that set, not 40 separate rows.
Nothing you downloaded. If you chose to download a document rather than print it, no printer was involved, so there is no job to track.
Example scenario: a packer prints shipping labels for a batch of 30 orders, the label printer runs out of ribbon partway through, and nobody is sure how far it got. Open the printing queue, find the job, and the status tells you whether Helm sent it, whether the printer took it, or whether it failed. If it failed, retry it onto a working printer rather than reprinting from every order.
Before You Start
The printing app must be running. Helm talks to your printers through a desktop app, switched on at Settings > System Defaults > Default Printers using Silent Printing and Run the desktop app. If it is not running, Helm shows Print Tool Not Found and the queue cannot move a job forward.
Every paper size you use needs a default printer. Helm matches a document to a printer by size, and Default Printers holds a slot for each one: 4x4, 6x4, 8x4, 10x4, A4, A5, S19 and Barcode, plus an Other slot. Without a printer set for a size, Helm tells you there is no default printer set for that size and the print never starts.
Do not skip 10x4 if you use Batch Despatch. Batch Despatch prints 10x4 thermal labels, and they come through this queue like every other print, so that size needs a default printer of its own.
Printers need to be online before you print, not after. If Helm cannot see any, it shows Printer Offline.
Each document needs a default print template. Templates are managed at Settings > General Settings > Print Template Settings. If a document has no default template, Helm names the document and asks you to configure one.
Permissions are checked when an action runs, not by hiding buttons. Four permissions cover the queue: print.queue.index to open the page at all, print.queue.download for the download action, print.queue.retry for a retry, and print.queue.change_status for a cancel. Read-only access needs print.queue.index on its own. Someone missing a permission still sees the button on the row and only finds out when they click it and Helm returns an error, so if that happens, ask whoever administers Helm for your business to add the permission to their group rather than assuming the action is broken.
Reading the Queue
The queue is one row per print job, newest first, for everyone in your business rather than just your own prints.
Any column heading can be clicked to sort by it: Name, Print Reference, User, Date, Pages or Status. Click it again to reverse the order. Sorting by Status is the quickest way to pull every failure together, and sorting by Pages finds the largest job in a shift without reading the whole list.
The end of each row holds a single action button under Actions. Which one you get depends on the status, and on whether the printing app is connected: a cancel on one row, a retry or a download on another.
Your own prints update in front of you. Helm pushes status changes live to whoever sent the print, so a job of yours moving from Waiting to Printed changes without a refresh. Prints sent by other people do not update live, so refresh the page when you are watching a colleague's job.
If nothing has ever been printed, or every row has aged out, the page shows No items in the printing queue.
What Each Status Means
A job that sits in Waiting for more than six hours is marked Failed automatically. That is deliberate: it clears jobs the printing app never reported back on, which usually means the machine was shut down or lost its connection mid-shift. The clock runs from the last change to the job, so a retry starts it again, and Helm sweeps for stale jobs every 15 minutes rather than continuously, so the real wait is a little over six hours. Retry the job once the machine is back.
The action follows the status. Cancel is offered while a job is still Waiting or Printing; a Printed row offers a download instead, and Failed or Cancelled rows offer a retry. Failed can be recorded at any point, because a printer can fail at any point.
How to Retry a Failed Print
Retrying re-sends the same document from the same job rather than creating a new one, so the queue keeps one row instead of filling up with duplicates. Helm counts the attempts on the job itself; the count is not shown as a column in the list.
Open the account menu, choose Jobs, then Printing Queue.
Find the job. Open Filters in the page header and narrow by Status, or paste the Print Reference into the search box.
Fix the cause before you retry: paper, ribbon, a printer that is switched off, or the printing app that is not running. A retry onto the same broken printer fails again and uses up an attempt.
Choose the retry action on the row. The Retry Print dialog opens with the job name in its title.
Pick the printer under Select Printer. The default printer for that document's size is already selected and marked as the default, so you can point the job at a different printer if the usual one is out of action.
Choose Print. The job returns to Waiting and works through the statuses again.
A job can be retried three times. After that Helm refuses and tells you jobs can retry a maximum of three times. If you have used all three attempts, print the document again from the order, delivery or purchase order it belongs to.
The retry action only appears while the printing app is connected. If it is not running, Helm offers a download on that row instead, so an operator can still get the document out. Start the printing app if you want to retry to a network printer rather than download.
Cancelling a Print
Cancel a job when it should not go out at all: wrong printer, wrong template, or a run you have already decided to redo.
Find the job while it is still Waiting or Printing. Those are the only rows that offer a cancel; once a job reaches Printed the row offers a download instead.
Choose the cancel action on the row.
The job moves to Cancelled. It stays in the list and can be retried later if you change your mind.
Cancelling tells Helm to stop treating the job as in flight. It does not pull back pages the printer has already accepted. If sheets or labels are still feeding, stop the job at the printer, or in the operating system's print queue on the machine running the printing app, as well.
Downloading a Document From the Queue
A finished job can be pulled out of the queue as a file, which is how you email a copy or get a label out on another machine while the thermal printer is down. Which rows offer it depends on the status and on the printing app, because every row carries only one action:
Printed rows always offer a download.
Failed and Cancelled rows offer a download only while the printing app is not connected on the machine you are using. With the app connected, those rows offer a retry instead, on the reasoning that re-sending to a working printer is the better answer.
Waiting and Printing rows offer a cancel and no download. Nothing has finished yet.
Find the job in the list.
Choose the download action in the Actions column. If the row shows a retry instead, the printing app is connected and there is no download on that row.
The file downloads to your computer, named after the job.
If you need the file from a Failed or Cancelled job while the printing app is connected, either retry it onto a working printer or print it again from the record it belongs to.
One limit is worth knowing before you rely on this: queue rows are kept for one month and then removed. After that, print again from the record the document belongs to.
Filtering & Searching the Queue
On a warehouse printing several hundred documents a day, the queue gets long quickly. Choose Filters in the page header to open the filter panel. Five filters narrow the list:
Name: match part of the document name.
User: narrow to one operator's prints, which is how you check a particular bench.
Date: a date range, for a shift or a day.
Pages: a page count range, useful for finding the large batch that jammed a printer.
Status: most often Failed, when you are working out what still needs sending.
Saved Filters sits at the top of the same panel. Once you have a combination you use often, Save as New keeps it under a name and it reopens from that list afterwards. Clear All Filters in the footer of the panel drops everything you have applied, and appears once at least one filter is active.
The search box matches the job name, the print reference and the user's name, so a Print Reference pasted from a support conversation takes you straight to the job.
When a filter or a search is applied and nothing matches it, Helm shows No matching results found. with a Clear Filters or Clear Search button so you can undo it without hunting through the panel. That is a different message from No items in the printing queue, which only appears when the queue is genuinely empty and nothing is filtered or searched.
Example: A Batch of Labels That Did Not Come Out
A packer prints shipping labels for a batch of 30 orders. Helm creates one print job and the row appears with a status of Waiting.
The label printer takes the job and the status moves to Printing.
The ribbon runs out, nothing more prints, and the operator moves to another bench.
A supervisor opens the printing queue, chooses Filters, sets Status to Failed, and finds the job by its name and its Pages count.
The ribbon is replaced and the printer is brought back online.
The supervisor chooses the retry action, picks the repaired printer under Select Printer in the Retry Print dialog, and chooses Print.
The job returns to Waiting, then Printing, then Printed. The supervisor refreshes the page to follow it, because the live update goes to the packer who sent the print rather than to whoever retried it.
Because the job reached Printed, the labels are recorded against those orders, and the queue still holds one row rather than 30 fresh prints.
Best Practices & Notes
Check the Queue Before Reprinting From the Order
Reaching Printed is what records a print against the order. That is where events such as Shipping Label Printed, Invoice Printed and Packing Slip Printed come from, and it drives the warning Helm shows you when a document has been printed before. Reprinting from the order when the first attempt actually succeeded records it twice and muddies that warning for everyone else. Check the status first.
Fix the Machine, Then Retry
Almost every failure has a cause on the device rather than in Helm. The three common ones are the printing app not running, the printer being offline, and no default printer set for that document's size. Each has its own message when you print, so read it before retrying.
Keep a Default Printer Set for Every Size
Because Helm matches documents to printers by size, deleting a printer from Default Printers leaves that size with nowhere to go and stops printing at that size until you configure a replacement. If your labels stop printing but your paperwork is fine, this is the first thing to check.
Watch for the Same Bench Failing Repeatedly
A single failed job is a jam. The same machine burning through its three retries every day is a printer or network problem worth fixing properly. The User filter is the fastest way to see the pattern, and sorting on Status groups the failures while you look.
The Queue Is Not a Long-Term Archive
Rows are removed after one month, so treat the queue as an operational tool for the current shift and the recent past. If you need a lasting record of what was printed for an order, the order's own timeline holds it for as long as the order does.
FAQ
Why is my job stuck on Waiting?
The printing app has not reported anything back. Check that it is running on the machine that sent the print and that the printer is online. If nothing is reported for more than six hours, Helm marks the job Failed so you can retry it.
Is the printing queue the same as the Jobs Queue?
No. Jobs Queue sits above it under Account Settings and Jobs, and tracks background work such as imports, exports and bulk actions. Printing Queue only tracks documents sent to a printer.
Can I retry a job that printed successfully?
No. Retry is offered only on Failed and Cancelled jobs. Download the document from the queue instead, or print it again from the record it belongs to.
Why does a failed job only offer a download?
The printing app is not connected on the machine you are using. Helm falls back to a download so you are not stuck. Start the app if you would rather retry the print.
Why can I not download a failed job at all?
The printing app is connected on your machine, so that row carries a retry instead of a download. Retry it onto a working printer, or print the document again from the record it belongs to.
How many times can one job be retried?
Three. After the third attempt Helm refuses further retries on that job, and you should print again from the source record.
Does cancelling a print stop the printer?
It marks the job Cancelled in Helm. Pages already accepted by the printer need stopping at the device itself.
Why did a colleague's job not update on my screen?
Live status updates go to the person who sent the print. Refresh the page to see the current status of someone else's job.
Why has a job disappeared from the queue?
Queue rows are kept for one month and then removed. Nothing has gone wrong, and for order documents the print is still recorded on the order's own timeline.
Why do my downloaded documents never appear here?
The queue tracks documents sent to a printer. A download does not involve a printer, so there is nothing to track.
A button gives me an error instead of working. Why?
The queue does not hide actions you lack permission for, so the button is there whether or not your group allows it. Ask whoever administers Helm for your business to check print.queue.retry for a retry, print.queue.change_status for a cancel, or print.queue.download for a download.
If the same job keeps failing after you have checked the printing app, the printer and your default printers, note its Print Reference and contact support with it.
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