Printing Multiple Documents Easily?

So this is the scenario:

At work I am pretty much in charge of finding ways to make us more efficient and our jobs easier. Part of that was creating multiple documents and check lists that we use every day.

Its a hotel so we have 3 shifts, each shift has to come in and then dig deep into our network drives to find there documents to print, and also a few online documents.

Whats happening is with revisions, and the non techy people have trouble finding the right ones and print the wrong stuff also it takes them a while to get it all done.

So I want to create a means to easily access all of the files or better yet auto print the files from the desktop.

My two ideas are this:

With my html knowledge I can easily make a html document that links to each of the files, so you can click the link and bam its open and you can print it.

Thats good and all but I want to kick it up a notch and make it so that clicking the link maybe prints the document and eliminates the opening step, or opens/prints all the documents.

Right Click --> Print target does not seem to work.

Most of these files are spread sheets (excel) or word documents (MS Word/Office Word)

If I go the html route I can also easily link the the web sites they need to log onto to get the online reports.

So anybody know how to fill in those missing steps to make a link in html print a document? Also may try opening all documents at once not sure if that will be better or worse.


The second idea, one I have no experience with would be like an executable. A batch file or something that when run will do it all for you. I honestly dont know where to start on this one but I am sure it can be done. So if you have some guidance on that let me know.

 

just take all three documents and make them into one. If you only need certain pages, just print certain pages.

 

What would probably be best is to automatically manage where the files are, so you can update the files and the non-techies can just go to the same place every time and print the files that are there. Under Windows, you can generally multi-select files and right-click and go to Print, and it should print all of them.

I'd personally do something like a daily (or hourly, or whatever) batch file that just copies the files around to where you need them, and put that as a scheduled task.

 

That may work, at least to some extent.

 

In Windows Explorer go to Control Panel -> Printers and Faxes; Right Click the desired printer and select 'Create Shortcut'; Drag a document onto that shortcut and it'll open the app, print the doc and close the app. Just keep a shortcut on the desktop to the documents and it doesn't get any easier.