Print Archive Pro, Compliance Printing for Insurance and Finance
The Compliance Problem
Insurance companies, banks, and healthcare organizations operate under document retention rules that have real legal teeth. In Israel, the Insurance Commissioner requires insurers to retain policy documents and correspondence for seven years. Bank Leumi, Harel, and Menora Mivtachim all run AS/400 systems that generate tens of thousands of printouts per year - policy summaries, claims decisions, rate tables, audit confirmations. Those printouts are legal records.
The traditional answer to this problem is a separate archival system: scan paper output, index it, file it somewhere. That process involves physical printers, paper, scanner operators, and yet another platform for the IT team to maintain. When an auditor asks for a specific claim decision from 14 months ago, someone has to dig through filing cabinets or a separate document management system.
IMTerm's Print Archive removes the intermediate steps. Every printout captured by IMTerm is automatically converted to PDF and indexed before anyone touches a paper tray. The archive is searchable within seconds, accessible to authorized users from the same browser they use for their terminal sessions, and retained for exactly as long as compliance requires.
How Print Archive Works
The capture pipeline is automatic and requires no user action after initial configuration:
1. Capture. When an AS/400 SCS printer device (or z/OS mainframe spool output) sends data to IMTerm, the print engine intercepts the raw SCS byte stream before routing it to CUPS or LPR. The same capture applies to screen prints initiated from the terminal.
2. Convert. The SCS or screen data is decoded using the configured EBCDIC code page (typically CP424 for Hebrew or CP037 for English) and rendered to a clean PDF using IMTerm's built-in PDF engine. No external tool or ghostscript dependency is required.
3. Index. The PDF is stored in data/printarchive/YYYY/MM/DD/{jobid}.pdf and a metadata record is written to the archive index. The record includes timestamp, user, session ID, host, protocol, job title, page count, file size, code page, and source type (SCS, screen, or HPT).
4. Make searchable. The archive is immediately queryable. Users with the User role can search and retrieve their own jobs. Admins can search across all users and all hosts.
The pipeline adds less than 100 milliseconds of latency to a typical print job. For large SCS batches (hundreds of pages), the PDF conversion runs in a background goroutine and does not block the terminal session.
Setup
Enable the Archive
Print Archive is enabled by default when a Pro or Enterprise license is active. To verify or configure, open config.yaml on the IMTerm server:
printarchive:
enabled: true
retention_days: 2555 # 7 years; set to 0 to keep forever
max_size_gb: 100 # maximum total archive size; oldest jobs deleted first
base_dir: data/printarchive/
Restart IMTerm after changing config.yaml. The base_dir directory is created automatically on first use.
Set Retention Period
The default retention is 2,555 days, which covers the 7-year requirement with a small buffer. To comply with a 10-year requirement (some banking regulations), set retention_days: 3650. To keep documents indefinitely, set retention_days: 0.
Cleanup runs automatically during the server's nightly maintenance window (02:00 server time). Each deleted document is logged in the audit trail with its job ID, timestamp, and reason (retention_expired or quota_exceeded).
Set Storage Quota
The max_size_gb setting acts as a safety valve. When the archive exceeds this size, the oldest documents are deleted first until the total is back within the quota. The default of 100 GB accommodates most mid-size organizations. See the storage requirements section below for sizing guidance.
License Activation
If the Print Archive section of the Print panel shows:
Print Archive requires a Pro license - contact sales@infomanta.com
your current license is a Standard tier. To upgrade, contact sales@infomanta.com. Once you receive a Pro license key, activate it under Help > License Key - paste the key, click Activate, and the archive becomes available immediately without a server restart.
Daily Workflow
The workflow for a typical insurance back-office team:
Morning batch. At 07:00, a CL program on the AS/400 prints overnight batch output - policy renewals, claims decisions, premium notices - to the IMTerm network printer device. IMTerm captures each job as it arrives. By 07:15, several hundred pages are in the archive and indexed.
User retrieval. An underwriter needs a specific renewal document from three weeks ago. She opens the Print panel, clicks ARCHIVE, types the client name in the Search box, and the document appears in the results. She clicks it, views the PDF inline, and emails it to the broker. Total time: 45 seconds.
Compliance audit. The Insurance Commissioner requests a sample of 20 claims decisions from Q3 2025. The compliance officer opens the archive, sets the date range to July 1 - September 30 2025, filters by host AS400PROD, and searches for CLAIMS. She downloads the 20 PDFs as a ZIP and delivers them to the auditor within the hour.
End-of-year tagging. Finance tags archived financial reports with annual-report-2025 so they can be retrieved as a group for the annual filing. The tag search returns all tagged documents instantly.
Searching and Retrieving Documents
Open the Print panel from the toolbar and click the ARCHIVE tab.
The search grid shows the most recent jobs first, with columns for timestamp, user, host, job title, pages, size, and tags. The grid is paginated at 50 rows per page.
Free-text search. The Search box filters by title, host, and user simultaneously. Typing POLICY returns all jobs whose title, host name, or associated username contains that string. The filter applies as you type - no need to press Enter.
Host filter. Type a full or partial host name to restrict results to a specific AS/400 or mainframe. This is useful in multi-host environments where several production systems share the same IMTerm instance.
Date range. Enter a From date and a To date (YYYY-MM-DD format) to limit the search to a specific period. You can set only a From date to see everything since a given date, or only a To date to see everything before a given date.
Viewing a document. Click any row to open the PDF in an inline preview overlay within the browser. The preview is rendered by the browser's built-in PDF viewer - no plugin required. Click outside the overlay or press Escape to close it.
Downloading. Click Download on any row to save the PDF to your local machine. The filename includes the job date and ID so downloaded files are self-describing.
Reprinting. Click Reprint to resend the original document to the printer configured in config.yaml. This is useful when a printout was lost or a user needs a second physical copy. Reprints are logged in the audit trail as distinct events separate from the original print job.
Tags and Notes for Audit Trail
Tags
Tags are short labels attached to archived documents. They serve two purposes: workflow state tracking and compliance grouping.
Common tag patterns:
| Tag | Purpose |
|---|---|
reviewed |
Document has been reviewed by a supervisor |
approved |
Document has been formally approved |
audit-2026 |
Included in the 2026 regulatory audit package |
escalated |
Requires further action |
filed |
Sent to external records system |
To add a tag: click Tag on any archive row, type the tag name, and press Enter. Multiple tags can be added to a single document. Tags are visible in the search grid and are searchable using the free-text search box.
Tags are additive - adding a tag never removes existing tags. To remove a tag, click the tag label in the tag editor to deselect it.
Notes
Notes are free-text annotations stored alongside the archived document. A compliance officer might add a note such as:
Reviewed by A. Cohen on 2026-01-14. Policy matches the proposal submitted 2025-11-03. No discrepancies.
To add a note: click Notes on any row, type the annotation in the text area, and click Save Note. Notes are appended, not overwritten - each save creates a timestamped entry so there is a complete history of who annotated the document and when.
Tags and notes are stored in the archive index database, not in the PDF itself. The original PDF is never modified after capture.
Retention Cleanup
IMTerm handles retention automatically. You do not need a scheduled task or a separate cleanup script.
The cleanup process:
- Each night at 02:00 (server local time), IMTerm scans the archive index for documents whose age exceeds
retention_days. - Expired documents are deleted from disk and removed from the index.
- Each deletion is written to the audit log:
IMTE8010I Archive cleanup: deleted {jobid} (expired {date}). - If the total archive size exceeds
max_size_gbafter the age-based cleanup, additional documents are deleted oldest-first until the quota is satisfied. These deletions are logged asIMTE8011I Archive cleanup: deleted {jobid} (quota).
The audit log entries for cleanup are retained for 30 days by default (configurable with audit.keep_days in config.yaml), providing a verifiable record that expired documents were destroyed in accordance with the retention policy.
Storage Requirements
Estimate: approximately 1 GB per 5,000 print jobs (assuming an average of 3 pages per job and standard PDF compression).
A more precise estimate based on your environment:
daily_jobs = number of print jobs per day
avg_pages = average pages per job
gb_per_year = (daily_jobs × avg_pages × 40 KB/page × 365) / (1024^3)
total_7_years = gb_per_year × 7
Example for a mid-size insurance company printing 500 jobs/day at 4 pages/job:
gb_per_year = (500 × 4 × 40KB × 365) / 1GB = ~29 GB/year
total_7_years = ~200 GB
Set max_size_gb: 250 to allow comfortable headroom. The base_dir can be a network path (NFS, CIFS) if local disk is insufficient - IMTerm does not require the storage to be on the same machine as the binary.
License
Print Archive is included in the Pro and Enterprise license tiers.
| Tier | Print Archive | Retention | Max Archive Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | No | -- | -- |
| Pro | Yes | Configurable | Configurable |
| Enterprise | Yes | Configurable | Unlimited |
Enterprise licenses additionally include the full REST API for integrating the archive with external document management systems (SharePoint, OpenText, Documentum), role-based access policies for archive administrators, and priority support SLA.
Contact sales@infomanta.com for pricing. Licenses are per concurrent session (not per named user), which means a 10-seat Pro license covers up to 10 users connected at the same time, with no limit on total registered users.
Comparison with Traditional Output Management
Dedicated output management systems for mainframe environments capture z/OS spool output (JES2/JES3), index it, and make it retrievable through a web interface. They are mature, proven products - and they cost accordingly: typically $50,000-$200,000 per year for a mid-size mainframe shop, plus a separate implementation engagement.
IMTerm's Print Archive covers the same core use case - capture every printout, index it, make it searchable, retain it for compliance - but from a different angle. Rather than hooking into the mainframe spool directly, IMTerm captures output at the network printer device level. This means it works across all three protocols (AS/400, z/OS, VT220), not only z/OS, and it requires no mainframe-side configuration.
Think of it as dedicated output archiving built into the emulator - no separate product needed.
The tradeoff: IMTerm captures what is sent to the network printer. Reports that are only ever printed locally on a 3287 attachment, or output routed through an internal spool that never reaches a network device, are not captured. In practice, most organizations that have adopted IMTerm have already moved their network printing to TN5250E or TN3270E printer sessions, which means IMTerm sees everything.
For organizations that need both - mainframe spool capture at the JES level and terminal-level capture for AS/400 and VT220 - both systems can be run in parallel. They do not conflict.
IMTerm Print Archive Pro - Infomanta Terminal Emulator v2.0
For licensing: sales@infomanta.com