A diagnostic apparatus includes a first acquiring unit that acquires sound information, a second acquiring unit that acquires operation information indicating a component in operation among a plurality of components of an analysis target apparatus, and a display unit that, when the acquired sound information is reproduced, displays operating states of the plurality of components at the time point when the reproduced sound is acquired, using the operation information.

An information processing terminal capable of communicating with a server, the information processing terminal including: a request unit configured to request a server to acquire first information that have been displayed on a display screen of a printer capable of communicating with the server; an acquisition unit configured to acquire the first information from the server based on a request from the request unit; and a display control unit configured to control a display unit to display the first information acquired by the acquisition unit.

Methods and apparatus for predicting colorant usage by printing devices are provided. A prediction server can receive a request to predict colorant usage for a first printing device. The prediction server can determine first plurality of functions to predict colorant usage for the first printing device. The first plurality of functions can include at least one linear function and at least one non-linear function. The first plurality of functions can be based on colorant-usage rates indicating historical rates of change in colorant used by the first printing device. The prediction server can determine a prediction of colorant usage for the first printing device using the first plurality of functions. The prediction server can provide an output involving the prediction of colorant usage for the first printing device, where the prediction of colorant usage can include a confidence interval related to the prediction.

A setting is made such that an operation screen based on screen information transmitted to an external apparatus is not displayed on a display during a connection with the external apparatus for remote control.

A monitoring apparatus determines a monitoring mode of a network device which is not registered in a central management apparatus based on capability information of the relevant network device and registers the relevant network device in the central management apparatus. When monitoring information is not yet transmitted from a network device of which a monitoring function is enabled to the central management apparatus or invalid, the central management apparatus is requested to start communication with the relevant network device. Based on a result of the communication, a registration state, communication information, and device information of the relevant network device managed by the monitoring apparatus are updated.

According to one embodiment, a maintenance system includes an image pickup unit and a control unit. The image pickup unit picks up images of respective regions of a target apparatus defined beforehand. The control unit acquires image data picked up by the image pickup unit and calculates parameters of the target apparatus on the basis of the image data.

A system and method for monitoring of document processing devices for scheduling of service includes a processor, associated memory and a network interface. The network interface is in data communication with a plurality of identifiable multifunction peripherals. Contact data maps each multifunction peripheral to at least one designated contact is stored in the memory. The network interface receives status data from each of the plurality of multifunction peripherals which is stored in the memory. A statistical engine, including the processor and memory calculates trend data from stored status data and generates alerts corresponding to identified multifunction peripherals in accordance with an analysis of the trend data. The network interface communicates the alerts to at least one designated contact in accordance with each identified multifunction peripheral and the contact data.

An example image forming apparatus includes an image forming apparatus, a processor, and a memory storing instructions executable by the processor. The processor of the image forming apparatus executes the instructions to render a print job, obtain information regarding a pattern for determining print quality from a rendered image of the print job, scan, through the image forming job unit, a document on which the rendered image is printed, and determine the print quality based on a scanned image of the document and the obtained information regarding the pattern.

A document processing system with automatic after-sales service comprises a mobile device of a user, a remote server provided by a vendor connected to the mobile device though a network and a document processing device used to provide code information. The code information has link information and device status information of the document processing device. The user holds the mobile device to retrieve the code information, and obtains the link information and the device status information based on the code information, and sends the device status information and user contact information to the remote server. Thus, the user can quickly connect the vendor with named user contact information through network transmission technology, and the purpose of improving the convenience and efficiency of using the document processing system can be achieved.

Provided is a management apparatus includes: an acquisition unit acquiring remaining-quantity information indicating a remaining quantity of a consumable included in the image forming apparatus; a database storing the remaining-quantity information and image forming apparatus identification information in association with each other, and storing user identification information and a usage history of the image forming apparatus by the user in association with each other; a calculation unit reading the usage history from the database based on externally-designated user identification information, calculating a predicted usage quantity of the consumable in an image forming apparatus having externally-designated apparatus identification information based on the read usage history, reading the remaining-quantity information from the database based on the externally-designated apparatus identification information, generating required information on the consumable based on the read remaining-quantity information and the calculated predicted usage quantity; and a notification unit notifying the required information generated by the calculation unit.