QuickShip/Fedex ZPL label printing to a laser printer - can this happen?

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We’re new to Quickship, but we’ve found that the label delivery from FedEx/UPS is only in ZPL/EPL format. We don’t own label printers for this and have printed to a laser printer since we’ve been using the old Agile product.

I’ve been searching the old posts, and we’ve not used Bartender yet so my knowledge is limited but I’m thinking BT might be a workable solution.

Wondering if any of our QuickShip or Bartender folks can think of a way to send the ZPL file to a ‘printer’ that will convert to PDF or PCL and then forward on to a laser printer?

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You could use Labelary ZPL Web Service

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You can also go down the rabbit hole.

Your search term would be “ZPL Emulator”

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Here is an SDK.

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HE can go down the rabbit hole or YOU can? :laughing:

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There is enough that will go on with the the Print Monitor service that I would not introduce a variable like this. I just bought three ZPL replacement printers with ethernet for $560 each. They are workhorses that last.

In the old days FedEx and UPS would give us these to use and the labels, but now I have to buy them. :frowning:

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Mike you can change the Label Type in the workstation within QuickShip

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I’m SURE he meant me - he’s got enough on his plate for now.

@klincecum Thanks for the links - I found the Labelary link a few minutes ago so I haven’t looked at it completely. I also found www.foldermill.com.

The solution has to be completely headless. There’s nowhere for me to inject code because the ZPL is downloaded by the Quickship app and passed to a server printer queue (or to a direct attached printer) without any space in between for me to work. So my thoughts are that I need to do some sort of creative printer pooler/emulator interrupt with the file conversion, like create a “printer” that is actually a file conversion program running as a windows service…

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@josecgomez Yeah - I tried that. From my installation tech, the process is that the label (ZPL or EPL) format are the only two formats that Fedex/UPS will return from their web service. We tried asking for PDF and it failed. We you guys able to make that work? Maybe I missed something…

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No we have actual Zebra Label Printer… that’s dumb that it doesn’t work.

Poking about the system some more.

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That is my exact comment to the tech who did my install… I appreciate anything you find out.

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I most certainly did mean you :rofl:

That being said, if I had time I’d throw you a bone.
You’re a valuable friend to be had :wink:

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@MikeGross is getting a label printer an option at all? At Insights this year these printers came up as a good competator to Zebra printers at reasonable prices. Don’t have personal experience with them but several attendees in the room also knew of these guys.

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@Randy - sure, getting a printer is an option but if I don’t HAVE to, it would be nice :slight_smile: But I am pricing them too!

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Thanks! I checked this one and am going to reach out to them this week since it sounded like it might work well.

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Any progress?

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Actually looks like Bartender will do the trick. It’s my first time in there, and it looks like it has some great workflow capabilities that will allow for ‘action for each file in folder’ type stuff, including Powershell/CMD shell execution - so I should be able to come up with something that will use those two conversions somehow.

I’m thinking a BT workflow that watches a directly for a file, a powershell script to call the URL to convert the ZPL to pdf, and push that PDF to a printer. Going to take a few minutes to learn this stuff…

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