Patent ID: 7689673

Claim:
A method of remotely installing a selected printer in a printers folder on a client workstation that communicates via a network with a control point terminal, the method comprising the steps of: in the control point terminal, executing, by an agent management program, a discovery operation which searches for at least one client workstation on the network having an agent program by communicating with the agent program, wherein the agent program is for receiving a printer driver and remotely installing the printer driver on the client workstation and which searches for printers in the network by communicating with the printers; receiving, by the agent management program, discovery responses from agent programs on client workstations on the network and discovery responses from printers in the network; displaying, by the agent management program, a list of client workstations having agent programs that respond with the discovery responses and a list of printers that respond with the discovery responses; selecting a printer displayed in the list of printers and selecting a client workstation having an agent program, and performing an operation in the agent management program to add the selected printer to the selected client workstation displayed in the list; and generating, in response to the operation to add the selected printer being performed, a message which includes identification information of the printer being added to the client workstation, encrypting the generated message, and transmitting the encrypted message for adding the selected printer to a secure listening port of the agent in the selected client workstation; and in the client workstation, the secure listening port of the agent in the client workstation receiving the encrypted message for adding the selected printer from the control point terminal; controlling a device installer module in response to receiving the encrypted message for adding the selected printer, wherein the agent in the client workstation controls the device installer module under control of a control module of the agent, decrypts and passes the message to the control module of the agent; decoding the message with the control module, and passing the message to the device installer module; extracting the identification information including a device type corresponding to the selected printer from the message with the device installer module, and automatically obtaining printer configuration information and print driver information for the selected printer; determining a printer driver corresponding to the identification information including the device type from a database of printer drivers, and automatically configuring the printer with the device installer module and installing the determined print driver based on the obtained printer configuration information and print driver information; and creating, with the device installer module, a locally managed instance of the printer on the client workstation.