Antivirus and Printers/Scanners sometimes don't work together well.

We as IT technicians should always focus on delivering good service to the customer and also give customers the convenience in their daily work life.

However, I came across an incident that made me thinking. This happens only recently (yesterday). I was called to service a construction site office.

Another technician was already there fiddling with the printer. He is the printer's techie guy. When I arrived, he kept mumbling that the Wi-Fi connection is up and down. I checked, 1st thing location of the device was in the cupboard shelve. I move it on top of the shelve instead. The signal got better.

The network cable was loose. So, I plug it in tightly. Printer was functioning again. I then continue to do my task while he setup ready pcs there to connect to printer and scan. He then instructed the customer saying "I have disabled the pc's antivirus firewall. Then only it can scan the file in". I was shocked to hear that coming out from the printer technician. I had to intervene. I just say it out "you don't need to disable the antivirus, its placed that in the first place to prevent viruses. You can't just disable just to make the scanning works. Its an inconvenience to the customer". He didn't bother. He just want to make his work simple and complete.

I manage to fix the scanning and with the antivirus still running. No need to disable anything! We're suppose to give convenience to the customers, not inconveniences! And the technician didn't even bother to learn.

Solution:
Most Antivirus have the function and setting to enable Printer and Sharing services. Just need to make sure that the function is enabled and most up to date printer drivers should be able to work well with the antivirus intact and running. If the antivirus still blocks, meaning the drivers or the software is not configured with the latest functions and should only be placed in a pc or mini server with no internet connection. This way, the software will not be prone to get virus attacks that could leak out to other normal working PCs with internet connection. This is to prevent from users, (usually) choosing to click ignore on antivirus pop up scanners because, it interrupts their work or they need to access the file.