Automatic configuration of network devices in remote managed print service applications utilizing groups of historical device data

A device management application (DMA) contacts printing devices connected to a computer network to obtain the device type, configuration parameters, and configuration settings from the printing devices. The device type, the configuration parameters, and the configuration settings are stored for each of the printing devices in a nested hash table. The configuration settings are grouped for each of the printing devices by device type in a working file, such as an XML tree that has leaf nodes for each configuration parameter of each different device type group. These methods identify the most common configuration settings for each of the configuration parameters in the leaf nodes, and map the most common configuration settings for the configuration parameters to configuration setup files for each the device type group. The configuration setup files are then deployed to the printing devices.