Setting Usage Quotas

This page walks through the Quotas page (Admin → Quotas), where administrators set up usage limits as described in Rules & Quotas Overview.

The Quotas list#

Open Admin in the sidebar, then choose Quotas.

Personal usage does not appear on this administration page. Each signed-in user instead sees a compact My quota usage card near the bottom of the main Dashboard, with a usage bar, current usage, limit, and amount remaining. Quotas are shown as:

• Within limit: comfortably under the limit
• Near limit: at or over a configured warning threshold, but not yet blocked
• Over limit: at or over the hard limit; new jobs that would add to this usage are blocked

The card is omitted entirely when no quota applies to that user. If a quota has separate role, material, color, or printer-model allowances, the card shows the highest-used allowance rather than adding independent limits together.

The quota table#

A table lists every quota. Search by name or description, and narrow the list by status (enabled/disabled) or scope (a specific site, or global quotas only).

Column	Description
Quota	The quota’s name, what it allows in plain English, and its description.
Applies to	What each tally is kept against, and what the quota is limited to if it’s been narrowed; see below.
Measures	What’s being measured, and the time period the limit covers; see below.
Limit	The hard limit, and the warning threshold if one is set.
Scope	The site this quota applies to, or “Global”.
Status	”Enabled” or “Disabled”.

If you have permission to adjust quotas, a Reconcile counters button recalculates current usage from scratch: useful if numbers ever look out of sync (for example, after bulk job changes).

Creating or editing a quota#

Select New Quota (or Edit on an existing one) to open the quota form.

The top of the form restates the quota as a single sentence, for example, “Each user may use up to 500 g of material per calendar month.”, and updates as you change the fields, so you can read back what you’ve actually built before saving.

Field	Description
Name	A short name (for example, “Monthly filament allowance”).
Description	Internal notes about this quota’s purpose.
Subject	Who the limit applies to; see Subjects below.
Dimension	What is being measured; see Dimensions below.
Window	Over what time period; see Windows below.
Hard limit	The maximum allowed value. Jobs that would exceed this are blocked.
Warning threshold	Optional. A lower value that warns the submitter without blocking. Must be below the hard limit.
Site scope	Apply this quota to one site, or “Global” for all sites.
Priority	Ordering only: higher priority is listed and reported first. Every enabled quota is always evaluated.
Which jobs count	Optional. Restrict this quota to specific users, roles, and/or printer models (see below).
Separate allowances	Optional. Track separate totals per material type, color, or printer model (see below).
Controlled overrides	Optional. Require approval from one of a configured set of roles before an over-limit job may proceed (see below).
Message shown to the user	Shown to the user when this quota blocks or warns about an action.
Enabled	Disabled quotas are ignored entirely.

Entering a limit#

Limits are entered in the unit the dimension is measured in, not in raw storage values:

• Print time: separate hours and minutes fields. Minutes over 59 roll up when you leave the field, so “90 min” becomes “1h 30m”.
• Cost: dollars and cents, with a $ prefix.
• Material used: grams, with the kilogram equivalent shown underneath for larger values.
• Job counts: a whole number of jobs.

Changing the dimension resets the limits, because a number entered in one unit doesn’t carry over to another.

Subjects#

The subject determines whose usage is tracked and limited:

Subject	Meaning
Per user	Each individual user has their own running total.
Per role	Each role has a shared running total across everyone who holds it.
Global	One running total shared by everyone.
Per printer model	One running total per printer model (for example, all P1S printers combined).

Dimensions#

The dimension determines what is being counted:

Dimension	Measures
Material used	Total grams of material used or queued.
Print time	Total estimated/actual print time.
Cost	Total estimated cost of jobs.
Concurrent jobs	Jobs currently queued, being dispatched, printing, or paused. This is the usual choice for limiting how many jobs one person or group may occupy across the whole queue-to-print lifecycle.
Concurrent active jobs	How many jobs are printing or paused right now.
Concurrent queued jobs	How many jobs are queued right now.
Job count	Total number of jobs submitted.

Choosing one of the concurrency dimensions selects the Instant window automatically, concurrency is a live count, so any other period would be measuring something else.

Windows#

The window determines over what period usage accumulates:

Window	Meaning
Instant (concurrent)	A live count right now (used for “concurrent active/queued jobs”).
Rolling 24h / 7d / 30d	A rolling window: usage from the last 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days, recalculated continuously.
Calendar day / week / month	Resets at the start of each calendar day, week, or month.

Which jobs count#

By default a quota covers every job it could cover. The Which jobs count section narrows that with three independent conditions, each of which you switch on as needed:

Condition	Restricts the quota to
Only these users	Jobs submitted by the listed people.
Only these roles	Jobs from users holding one of the listed roles, matched against their effective (including inherited) roles.
Only these printer models	Jobs on the listed models, chosen from the printer catalog.

Every condition you switch on has to hold for a job to count. Switching on both roles and printer models means “jobs from Students, on a P1S”: not either one.

This is separate from the Subject, which decides what each tally is kept against. The two combine, and that’s what makes the common cases expressible:

• Subject Per user + role condition Students → each student gets their own allowance, and nobody else is limited.
• Subject Per role + role condition Students → all students share one allowance.

Roles on a Per role quota do double duty: as well as narrowing which jobs count, they choose which roles get their own counter. The form notes this where it applies.

Separate allowances#

Separate allowances (group by) splits a single quota definition into multiple independent counters: one per combination of the values you choose:

• Material type: separate totals per PLA, PETG, ABS, resin, etc.
• Color: separate totals per color used.
• Printer model: separate totals per printer model.

For example, a “Material used” quota grouped by Material type, with subject “Per user” and window “Calendar month”, gives each user a separate monthly allowance for PLA, for PETG, for ABS, and so on: rather than one combined total.

Controlled overrides#

A hard limit normally blocks a job until usage falls, the window resets, or an administrator changes the quota. For exceptions that require human judgment, switch on Allow approval-based overrides and choose one or more approver roles.

When the job would exceed that quota, Pluraprint adds a named Quota override item to the job’s normal preparation requirements. The job remains Awaiting approval until a user holding any configured effective role records approval. Role inheritance is honored, so a role that inherits a configured role also qualifies.

Keep Require a different user to approve enabled unless your operating policy explicitly allows self-approval. With it enabled, the job owner cannot approve their own exception even if they hold an eligible role.

Quota overrides are deliberately narrow:

• Approval applies only to the specific quota named in the requirement. A general job approval does not bypass it.
• Every over-limit quota must have its own approval. Non-overrideable quotas remain hard blocks.
• Pluraprint checks current usage, current role membership, and self-approval constraints again immediately before queueing.
• The approval is recorded in the same append-only requirement and approval history as other job approvals.

For example, a Concurrent jobs quota limited to two jobs can allow an exception with approval from Staff. A member submitting a third queued-or-printing job sees Quota override: Concurrent jobs in the checklist; an eligible staff member must approve that item before the job can enter the queue.

Example: a monthly filament allowance#

To limit each user to 1,000g of PLA per month, with a warning at 800g:

Field	Value
Name	Monthly PLA allowance
Subject	Per user
Dimension	Material used
Window	Calendar month
Hard limit	1000 grams
Warning threshold	800 grams
Separate allowances	Material type
Message	”You’ve used most or all of your monthly PLA allowance. Contact staff if you need more.”

The form’s summary confirms it: “Each user may use up to 1000 g of material per calendar month. Counted separately per material type. A warning appears once usage passes 800 g.”

How quotas appear to users#

When a quota would block a job, Pluraprint explains which quota was hit and by how much, naming the quota, whose allowance it is, the limit and its period, how much of it is left, and what the job was asking for. For example:

Over the “Monthly PLA allowance” quota. This job needs 120 g, but this user has only 45 g left of a monthly allowance of 1000 g.

The submitter sees this alongside their job, similar to how rule requirements appear on the checklist (see Tracking Your Jobs). Station operators see the same explanation in the Prepare Print Job dialog when they try to approve a job that is over quota. A quota with a controlled override becomes an explicit approval requirement; without one, the job stays blocked until the quota has headroom or an administrator changes the limit.

If you set a User-facing message on the quota, it leads that explanation rather than replacing it, so your own guidance (“Contact staff if you need more”) is always followed by the specific numbers. Leaving the message empty is fine: the explanation stands on its own.

Soft-limit warnings are informational and don’t prevent submission.