Technical FAQs

Continuous innovation has allowed Accusoft to build sustained success over the course of three decades. Much of that innovation comes from talented developers creating novel solutions to everyday problems, many of which go on to become patented technologies that provide the company with an edge over competitors. 

Others, however, are the byproduct of looking at problems from a different perspective or using existing technologies in unique ways. Accusoft supports both approaches by hosting special “hackathon” events each year. These events encourage developers to spend time working on their own unique projects or try out ideas they think may have potential but have never been implemented.

For this year’s hackathon, I took a closer look at how our SmartZone SDK could be implemented as part of an automation solution within a .NET environment without creating an entire application from the ground up. What I discovered was that PowerShell modules offer a quick and easy way to deploy character recognition for limited, unique use cases.

.NET and PowerShell

One of the underestimated abilities of the .NET infrastructure is support loading and executing assemblies out of box from the command line using a shell module. Although there are many shell variants available, PowerShell comes preinstalled on most Windows machines and is the only tool required to make the scripts and keep them running. PowerShell also runs on Linux and macOS, which makes it a true cross-platform task automation solution for inventive developers who crave flexibility in their scripting tools. 

Incorporating the best features of other popular shells, PowerShell consists of a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a configuration management framework. One of the unique features of PowerShell, however, is that unlike most shells which can only accept and return text, it can do the same with .NET objects. This means PowerShell modules can be used to build, test, and deploy solutions as well as manage any technology as part of an extensible automation platform.

Implementing SmartZone Character Recognition

Accusoft’s SmartZone technology allows developers to incorporate advanced zonal character recognition to capture both machine-printed and hand-printed data from document fields. It also supports full page optical character recognition (OCR) and allows developers to set confidence values to determine when manual review of recognition results are necessary. 

Implementing those features into an application through a third-party integration is the best way to incorporate recognition capabilities, but there are some use cases where they might need to be used for general tasks outside of a conventional workflow. A number of Accusoft customers, for instance, had inquired about simple ways to use some of SmartZone’s features in their existing process automation software without having to spend weeks of development time integrating those capabilities on a larger scale.

Thanks to the versatility of PowerShell, there’s no reason to build such an application from scratch. SmartZone’s zonal recognition technology can easily be incorporated into any .NET environment with just a few snippets of code. PowerShell syntax itself is not very difficult to understand and for a quick start it should be enough to use a Windows Notepad application, but we recommend using your favorite integrated development environment (IDE) for a better experience.

Getting Started

First, you need to download SmartZoneV7.0DotNet-AnyCPU.zip from the Accusoft SmartZone download page and unpack it to any suitable directory. This bundle contains all required binaries to run SmartZone.

Create a Simple.ps1 file inside the unpacked directory and start typing your script:

using namespace System.Drawing
using namespace System.Reflection
using namespace Accusoft.SmartZoneOCRSdk

# Load assemblies.
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing
$szPath = Resolve-Path ".\bin\netstandard2.0\Accusoft.SmartZoneOCR.Net.dll"
[Assembly]::LoadFrom($szPath)

# Create a SmartZone instance.
$szObj = [SmartZoneOCR]::new()
$szAssetsPath = Resolve-Path ".\bin\assets"
$szObj.OCRDataPath = $szAssetsPath.Path

# Licensing
# $szObj.Licensing.SetSolutionName("Contact Accusoft for getting the license.")
# $szObj.Licensing.SetSolutionKey(+1, 800, 875, 7009)
# $szObj.Licensing.SetOEMLicenseKey("https://www.accusoft.com/company/legal/licensing/");

# Load test image.
$bitmapPath = Resolve-Path ".\demos\images\OCR\MultiLine.bmp"
[Bitmap] $bitmap = [Image]::FromFile($bitmapPath.Path)

# Recognize the image and print the result.
$result = $szObj.Reader.AnalyzeField([Bitmap] $bitmap);
Write-Host $result.Text

# Free the resources.
$bitmap.Dispose();
$szObj.Dispose();

This simple code snippet allows you to use SmartZone together with PowerShell in task automation processes like recognizing screenshots, email attachments, and images downloaded by the web browser. It can also be deployed in other similar cases where the advantages of PowerShell modules and cmdlets can help to achieve results faster than writing an application from scratch.

Another Hackathon Success

Identifying a new way to deploy existing Accusoft solutions is one of the reasons why the hackathon event was first created. This script may not reinvent the wheel, but it will help developers save time and money in a lot of situations, which means fewer missed deadlines and faster time to market for software products. Developing unique approaches to existing problems can be difficult with deadlines and coding demands hanging over a developer’s head, so Accusoft’s hackathons are incredibly important for helping the company stay at the forefront of innovation. 

To learn more about how that innovation can help your team implement powerful new features into your applications, talk to one of our solutions experts today!

KnowledgeLake had long utilized an in-house viewing solution that allowed customers to view documents within the platform. Although this legacy viewer had gone through many iterations over the years, it was deployed as part of an on-prem solution. When KnowledgeLake transitioned its on-premise products to a cloud-based solution, they decided to evaluate Accusoft’s PrizmDoc as an alternative to their in-house viewing solution.

Although often considered a bit old fashioned, the insurance industry has made great strides in recent years to adapt to the changing needs of its customers. The latest generation of insurance customers expects faster service, better support, and more options from providers. Given these pressures, it’s no surprise that InsurTech developers have found ample opportunities to deliver solutions that help insurance firms better manage their workflows and create better customer experiences.

Despite the successes of this digital transformation, however, there are still a number of challenges that InsurTech developers face when building new applications. Investing heavily in creating powerful AI and big data tools might help those platforms stand out from the crowd, but they won’t find much success with firms if they don’t also provide the core functionality organizations need to service their customers. 

That’s why many InsurTech developers are turning to versatile SDK and API integrations to expand their feature sets without compromising their development timelines.

4 Major Challenges of InsurTech Applications

1. Security and Privacy

As the insurance industry continues to shift toward digital processes and platforms, it’s become more important than ever for InsurTech applications to keep sensitive data secure. While most organizations do invest in cybersecurity protections, they often don’t realize how their own practices could potentially pose a risk to customer information. This is especially true of insurers that rely on third-party programs for various tasks like document viewing and editing. Take, for instance, the case of Folksam Group, which inadvertently shared client data from as many as one million customers with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Adobe in late 2020. 

2. File Management

Today’s insurers are receiving all kinds of documents, files, and images from their customers, which creates something of a document dilemma. A single auto accident claim, for instance, might have valuable information spread across multiple PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheet files, scanned images of hand-written forms, and image files. In order to process claims quickly and effectively, firms need InsurTech solutions that provide an all-in-one solution that can handle a broad array of file formats. Without these file management tools, insurers will be forced to use multiple programs to meet their needs, which creates inefficient dependencies and increases security risks.

3. Data Collection

Insurance companies gather quite a bit of information from form applications, both in physical and digital formats. Unfortunately, transferring that information from a form document into an InsurTech system is often a laborious manual process. Not only is manual data collection time consuming, it also increases the likelihood of human error. Even when firms do implement an InsurTech solution with forms processing capabilities, however, they often lack the capability to read certain types of form fields, especially those completed by hand. The ability to adapt to new form templates is also critical for organizations that want to invest in automation. 

4. Remote Collaboration

The COVID-19 pandemic may have forced insurance offices to rapidly embrace a remote work strategy, but many firms had already been investing in some form of hybrid work model for years. Nationwide was able to transition 98 percent of its workforce to remote status precisely because the company already had the technology solutions in place to allow insurance agents to work from home. Without some way of facilitating remote collaboration directly through InsurTech applications, organizations end up relying on email, which poses serious security concerns. Furthermore, with multiple copies of a document being distributed and downloaded, it quickly becomes difficult to know which version incorporates the most up-to-date changes.

SDK and API InsurTech Solutions

Building new functionality into an application always involves a tradeoff. When developers choose to code something from scratch, that means pulling team members away from another project or extending the product’s release timeline. In a fast-moving industry where InsurTech developers are racing competitors to be the first to market, it doesn’t make sense to design and build every aspect of an application in-house. 

Rather than pulling valuable development resources away from their innovative InsurTech features, developers can solve common insurance challenges much faster with SDK toolkits and API integrations. 

Secure File Viewing

The easiest way for InsurTech solutions to keep documents secure is to integrate HTML5 viewing capabilities directly into the application. Rather than being forced to download or open a file for viewing in a third-party application, employees can view multiple document formats natively. This is critical because it means no data will be shared with third-party programs.  Since the files remain safely within the secure InsurTech environment, firms can also control the level of access to any document, which prevents unauthorized individuals from downloading or viewing the contents. Thanks to API-based integrations like Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer, InsurTech developers can help their applications safely view more than 100 unique file types without any third-party dependencies.

Data Capture

By integrating forms processing capabilities into their applications, InsurTech developers can provide their clients with powerful tools that allow them to gather essential data quickly and accurately. As the essential connective tissue between customers and insurance databases, form field recognition integrations use OCR technology to intelligently identify form data and extract it for processing. They can also be set up to identify a wide range of insurance forms to quickly identify and scan documents to streamline processing workflows. Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms even goes a step further by incorporating powerful image cleanup functionality to ensure that data will be extracted as accurately as possible.

File Conversion

In order to meet the file management challenges of today’s insurance providers, InsurTech developers need document and image processing integrations that can read and write multiple file formats. Information spread across multiple documents, emails, or even texts can be processed using OCR technology, and then consolidated and converted into a variety of formats for easy reference and collaboration. Rather than juggling several files with different dependencies, an SDK integration like Accusoft’s ImageGear can easily output processed files in PDF, RTF, XML, or DOCX format for viewing and editing within a single application.

Editing and Annotation

Providing secure document viewing capabilities solves only one half of the insurance collaboration challenge. InsurTech applications also need to provide both internal and external stakeholders with the ability to edit and markup documents throughout the application and claims process. Content processing integrations can allow authorized users to make changes to documents completely within their InsurTech solution and review markups and comments from other collaborators. 

Since all editing occurs within the application itself, there’s no need to worry about anyone downloading a document to make changes locally and creating confusion over which version is the most up-to-date. Redactions may also be necessary to hide private or confidential information from unauthorized viewers. As an added benefit, PrizmDoc Viewer’s editing features allow users to make a variety of markups and redactions while preserving the integrity of the original file.

Accelerate Your InsurTech Application Development with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of powerful SDK toolkits and API integrations provide innovative InsurTech developers with the resources they need to solve core insurance industry challenges. By implementing proven functionality into their applications, project managers can streamline the development process and dedicate more resources to the innovative features that will set their platform apart from the competition.

Whether you’re looking to incorporate versatile document viewing and editing or need a more accurate forms processing solution, Accusoft’s family of InsurTech SDKs and APIs can help your development team get to market faster. Learn more about what our products can do for your application in our InsurTech fact sheet.

On July 12, 2022, Accusoft announced the latest update to PrizmDoc, its industry-leading document processing integration. The PrizmDoc 13.21 update improves existing features and adds key functionality related to format support, redaction capabilities, content conversion, and more, allowing developers to offer enhanced functionality within their applications. 

One of the main improvements in this release is to PrizmDoc’s Content Conversion Service (CCS). PrizmDoc now provides the ability to convert PDF documents to MS Word (DOCX) documents, making shared collaboration easier than ever before.

Other features and updates in this release include: 

• High-Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF, HEIC) support for viewing, redaction, and conversion to JPG/JPEG, PDF, PNG, SVG and TIFF. 
• PrizmDoc Viewer Markup Burner API now provides the ability to burn in redaction reason text for transparent (draft mode) redactions and provides the ability to remove PDF AcroForm fields. 
• Improved performance of the PAS GET MarkupLayers API when using AWS S3 storage, which significantly reduces network traffic between PAS and S3.

PrizmDoc provides customizable document processing to help developers deliver in-browser document creation, editing, and collaboration functionality, to enhance their software applications.

For more information about PrizmDoc or to download a free trial, please visit our website.

About Accusoft: 

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in document processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve their most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including OnTask, PrizmDoc™ Viewer, and ImageGear, are designed to improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter. The Accusoft team is dedicated to continuous innovation through customer-centric product development, new version release, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com.

Introduction

A large government agency with millions of employees needed to manage personnel records and payment information while also making documents and images easily accessible for all users. Each document trail spanned the duration of the employee’s time with the agency, resulting in a repository containing hundreds of millions of documents. The existing system used a combination of custom-developed, Windows-based image viewers that were cumbersome, difficult to maintain, and presented security risks. 

Overview

As the system struggled to keep up with demand, employees became increasingly frustrated with the system. Rather than viewing documents within the system, they began using workarounds like printing out files or saving them to another device, both of which presented serious security risks since the records contained personally identifiable information. The agency needed a solution that could manage hundreds of millions of documents while still providing users with simple, secure, and quick access to personnel records and payment information. 

Although the document repository’s legacy viewing solution was no longer able to meet the agency’s needs, developing a new document viewer was prohibitively expensive and required expertise its IT team did not possess. Rather than building a solution from scratch, it made more sense to evaluate viewing integrations available on the market. The agency set out to find a viewer that could support multiple document types, including TIFF and PDF/A, for both viewing and archival purposes. Whatever solution the IT team chose to adopt would have to integrate smoothly into the existing legacy system to avoid a costly and time-consuming overhaul. 

Challenges

After evaluating several options, the agency turned to Accusoft’s PrizmDoc^® for Java, formerly VirtualViewer^®. As a Java-based viewer that uses HTML5 to render files for viewing, PrizmDoc^® for Java would allow the document repository to access files quickly and easily. PrizmDoc^® for Java’s extensive file format support allowed the agency to render PDF, Word, Excel, AFP, DWG, TIFF, and more in one universal viewer. The integration’s built-in library eliminated the need for a third-party application or additional license, further simplifying the agency’s document management processes. 

Another key priority was giving employees the ability to access documents from multiple devices. In the past, the system’s legacy viewer only allowed them to open and view documents on a desktop with the right software installed. To streamline the employee experience, the agency required a viewer that could be accessed from any device that supports a web browser, including tablets and smartphones. PrizmDoc^® for Java’s true cross-platform support and complete mobility provided the flexibility the agency needed to access documents from anywhere, at any time. The integration’s HTML5 technology and Java-based viewing allowed users to view and manipulate files within the browser, eliminating the need for an external application. 

PrizmDoc^® for Java’s quick installation and integration process made it the ideal solution for the agency. Installing PrizmDoc^® for Java’s document viewer took less than 10 minutes for proof of concept (POC) testing on any desktop, laptop, or virtual machine. The integration also provided APIs and developer tools to make integrating and leveraging the technology simple and easy, including RESTful content handlers that allowed for a more flexible development and deployment process.

Results

PrizmDoc^® for Java’s high-speed viewing for large files allowed document rendering and processing to be split between the server and browser, delivering an extremely high-speed response. The integration’s advanced features, including annotation, redaction, splitting, merging, and more, provided far more functionality than was possible under the legacy viewer. PrizmDoc^® for Java’s robust thumbnail panels also simplified working on large documents using full-panel thumbnail displays, as well as the option to adjust thumbnail size. 

By implementing PrizmDoc^® for Java, the government agency was able to provide more streamlined access to personnel and payroll records, saving employees and HR personnel time and money while eliminating security and management issues associated with the previous viewing solution. Millions of users are now able to view critical information related to their records via any device that has access to a web browser. PrizmDoc^® for Java’s robust document support and easy-to-use interface made it an essential tool for the agency’s document management and collaboration processes. The agency was able to continue using their existing repository system while also gaining the benefits of a modern, user-friendly document viewer.

About Accusoft

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve their most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including Docubee, PrizmDoc Viewer, and ImageGear, are designed to improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter. The Accusoft team is dedicated to continuous innovation through customer-centric product development, new version release, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com.  

Spreadsheets remain a standard tool for many organizations, and despite increasing adoption across cell-based competitors such as Google Sheets, Excel still owns the market. As noted by research firm Robert Half, while the use of XLSX formats is on a slow decline, almost 70 percent of finance firms say Excel remains their spreadsheet software of choice.

Fundamentally, this comes down to familiarity; 62 percent of users surveyed find this common format easy to use, making it their go-to option when entering financial data or performing quick calculations. The only problem with this is that this spreadsheet tool introduces significant security issues. According to recent Cisco data, 38 percent of the most prevalent, malicious file extensions use Microsoft Office file formats — including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel — to compromise corporate networks.

Accusoft is now offering a more secure, web-based solution for spreadsheet needs. PrizmDoc Cells offers a web-based spreadsheet viewing and editing alternative that makes it possible for independent software vendors (ISVs) to easily incorporate XLSX functions into corporate applications without increasing security risk. Here’s how the newest part of the PrizmDoc Suite can help companies streamline processes while maintaining security.

Web-Based Spreadsheet Security

Common spreadsheet practices come with significant risk. As noted by ZDNet, for example, a new malware group is using the Excel file format that creates malicious spreadsheets that bypass security scanners and — thanks in large part to their format familiarity — are opened by end-users. This creates a self-sustaining problem. With single-source spreadsheets still the norm for many financial firms, attackers just need to spoof corporate email addresses and attach familiar XLSX files to compromise corporate networks.

For ISVs, this presents an opportunity. The market needs a secure way to view and edit spreadsheets in-browser and they need to be able to control the way the formulas are viewed and manipulated. By delivering browser-based spreadsheet viewers and editors within their own applications, ISVs can streamline their clients’ processes while maintaining security and controlling data sharing. PrizmDoc Cells integrates with ISV’s applications to enable easy spreadsheet viewing and editing functions. This integration allows administrators to lock down spreadsheet access by making them read-only or disallowing downloads, while also permitting protected sharing so that users can perform calculations without compromising the original source.

Value-Added Version Control

Collaboration is critical for effective spreadsheet use, especially among highly regulated industries like finance. From sharing key data around lending, credit, or investment applications to completing profit and loss calculations, spreadsheets remain a staple of efficient and effective financial transactions.

As with any industry, version control is a challenge for any third-party file collaboration. As noted by Beta News, the still-popular process of downloading spreadsheets to end-user devices comes with multiple versioning issues, including:

• Loss of Visibility — When files are downloaded onto end-user devices, information security teams naturally lose sight of how information is used, changed, or shared. Not only does this make it impossible to deliver consistent version control, but it puts organizations at risk of regulatory non-compliance.
• Data Discrepancies — Once data is downloaded, it is instantly out-of-date. Replicated across multiple users, this scenario creates substantial subsets of data that are all slightly different and require significant analytical effort to create some semblance of reliable version control.

When an ISV integrates PrizmDoc Cells within their application, the functionality reduces version control challenges by allowing spreadsheet owners to remove visibility into underlying logic, such as proprietary business formulas or calculations, as required. It also eliminates the need for client-side installs or downloads, which adds another level of security for comprehensive version control.

Reducing Human Error in Spreadsheets

Errors remain a common spreadsheet concern. As noted by Computer Weekly, “Several research studies have found that up to 70% of spreadsheets contain errors which would result in serious miscalculations.” This creates both productivity and security risks. If calculations create inaccurate outputs, organizations may find themselves struggling to find the source of equation issues or computation concerns. If the problem persists, staff may share the affected spreadsheet in hopes of quickly finding a resolution, in turn potentially exposing documents to increased risk.

PrizmDoc Cells solves this problem with browser-based spreadsheet viewing and editing functionalities. Files display as they would in native applications but can be embedded across any website, CMS, intranet, or portal, allowing staff to securely view and manipulate spreadsheets based on permissions. While it’s impossible to eliminate the potential for formula or format issues, it’s imperative to keep data safe in a secure environment, and sharing these spreadsheets securely makes finding and solving any error more efficient.

A Secure Browser-Based Spreadsheet & XLSX Integration

Excel-based spreadsheets cannot stand up to the security and data sharing needs that companies need to scale. When it comes to sharing sensitive data and manipulating formulas, there is both complexity and corporate risk. Without the right permissions and controls in place, data could easily be misrepresented, costing the company revenue.

With PrizmDoc Cells, ISVs can provide the capabilities end-users need for secure spreadsheet viewing and editing. With the ability to independently import, edit, and export XLSX files, securely embed spreadsheet data anywhere, reduce error rates with secure collaboration, and streamline version control, it’s worth opening the door to new spreadsheets capabilities. Discover the next generation of spreadsheet solutions. Try PrizmDoc Cells today.

Processing and archiving massive volumes of paper mail was historically a major challenge for ARAG. When ARAG updated their records system to a newer version, they reevaluated their processing and archiving software and decided to migrate their C/C++ document conversion solution, the VB indexing application, and client application to Java. This move would enable them to support infrastructure growth independent of hardware and operating system requirements. With more than 200 users and 20,000 pages scanned daily, ARAG sought a reliable Java SDK and Library to facilitate the process.

The top InsurTech news for 2020? In a post-pandemic world, insurance technology offers “the prescription for safety.” In a world now dominated by worry around what’s currently happening, what will probably happen, and what could suddenly happen under the right (or wrong) circumstances, the agile and adaptable potential of InsurTech offerings paves the way for proactive service delivery that both boosts consumer piece of mind and reduces insurer risk.

For insurance companies to capitalize on evolving market conditions and outpace the competition, data-driven decision making is key. Even more critical is the need to convert critical information from standardized ACORD formats into actionable, accessible data. Here’s how Accusoft’s FormSuite for Structured Forms can help.

The InsurTech Innovation

As noted by research firm PWC, “What used to be a sign of success may not be anymore.” Now, clients want next-day decisions about insurance applications and claims along with detailed descriptions of cost assessments and timelines for action. What does this mean in practice? 

That it’s no longer enough to rely on legacy solutions and applications to get the job done. Instead, companies need applications augmented by next-generation forms processing technology capable of integrating with internal assets while simultaneously delivering the data-driven decision-making inherently tied to quick, accurate, and complete insurance information capture.

Now more than ever, the fundamental value proposition for insurance companies is the ability to disrupt existing functional frameworks with new policies and practices that streamline document processing, improve decision timelines, and secure client data. 

The ACORD Form Challenge

If building better applications was the only challenge facing InsurTech product managers and development teams, companies would have their hands full. There’s also a common form type that can be challenging for automation.

Since 1972, ACORD has been the source of standardized forms for the insurance industry. While these forms are standard, there is nothing standard about their format. Every year, ACORD changes the format of its forms, leaving insurance organizations  with a challenge for automation. 

Despite generalized standardization which sees consistency in the type of data recorded by specific forms — including client information, claim details, and policy requirements — how this data is structured and displayed within the form itself can vary from provider to provider and even agent to agent. Forms used for identical purposes are often close in format, but not quite the same when it comes to placement of critical data. This compels insurance agencies to manually process common forms, in turn increasing both the risk of human error and the time required for completion.

For insurance application developers looking to create applications that can process ACORD forms more efficiently and deliver on customer expectations around speed and accuracy, FormSuite for Structured Forms provides the capability to create a standard form library for easy form recognition and data capture.

The FormSuite Solution: Document Delivery Done Right

FormSuite for Structured Forms can help insurance companies get the best of both worlds. With an Agile framework, this SDK is capable of streamlining the standardization of ACORD-compliant forms with a little help from developers.

Key benefits of this solution include:

• Complete Forms Recognition — Manual data entry and capture both reduces forms processing speed and can introduce the potential for significant errors. Form recognition toolkits allow developers to create form libraries for their users to scan and recognize forms for data capture. In practice, this means developers only need to update the library when a new ACORD form is released to ensure reliable and robust recognition. 
• Accurate Data Capture — With forms continually arriving from multiple sources, document standardization is often lacking. But no matter how forms are scanned into the system — upside down, sideways, or at differing resolutions — FormSuite uses its image cleanup functionality to deliver accurate forms processing.
• Form Field Detection — FormSuite uses the application’s form library to identify form fields on standard forms and capture the data within each form field.
• Optical Character Recognition — From optical character recognition (OCR) to intelligent character recognition (ICR) and optical mark recognition (OMR), FormSuite offers it all. Advanced OCR ensures your application can easily capture everything from legible hand printed names to check boxes and dollar amounts.
• Confidence and Accuracy Reporting — Data confidence matters for insurance documents. If uncertainty about data translates to errors in evaluation or decision-making, the results could be disastrous for ongoing ROI. That’s why FormSuite for Structured Forms generates customized confidence and accuracy values for all data captured. Firms then send all document OCR capture for confidence evaluation; if results meet or exceed confidence thresholds, document processing can continue automatically. If confidence levels are too low, meanwhile, your app can trigger employee review to ensure data entered matches captured results.

Embracing the InsurTech Advantage

Just as other industries have faced significant disruption this year, insurance companies now find themselves at an operational crossroads. While augmenting familiar forms and functions with application overlays offers the potential to improve on existing processes, firms must also build out apps and services capable of delivering accessible, actionable, and accurate ACORD forms data to staff. When they commit to doing this, insurance companies can deliver on the proactive promise of digital-first insurance with policies and processes capable of keeping pace with evolving client expectations.

Ready to improve insurance processes? Discover FormSuite for Structured Forms and deliver on document potential.

The ability to view PDF files has become an essential feature for web-based applications. While dedicated desktop readers are still common, the average user justifiably expects to be able to view documents without switching between applications. Thanks to browser-based PDF libraries like PDF.js, developers can both integrate the viewing features they need and build the next generation of PDF viewing integrations.

What Is PDF.js?

An open-source JavaScript PDF library, PDF.js was originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation in 2011 to serve as the built-in PDF viewer for the Firefox web browser. At the time, web browsers depended upon separate reader applications or browser plug-ins to view PDFs.

Unfortunately, this created several security risks. External plug-ins can contain malicious code or gather data that could endanger privacy. Downloading PDFs for local viewing is also potentially hazardous because it means the file must be removed from a secure application environment.

PDF.js uses Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) to render PDFs as an HTML5 <canvas> element directly within a web application. Since it uses JavaScript for rendering, PDF.js is compatible with all modern browsers and doesn’t require any additional plug-ins.

In addition to being integrated into Firefox, the software was also made available as open-source code. This made it possible for independent developers to expand upon the core capabilities of PDF.js in the years since its release.

Should You Build or Buy a PDF.js Viewer?

The open-source availability of the PDF.js library makes it an attractive solution for software teams looking to add native viewing functionality to their applications. As with many open-source frameworks, however, developers may quickly run up against a few complications when building out a viewing solution from scratch.

Out-of-the-box, PDF.js consists of three basic layers:

• Core Layer: The heart of the JavaScript PDF library, this layer parses and interprets binary instructions from the file itself.
• Display Layer: This interface handles the actual rendering of the PDF into a <canvas> element.
• Viewer Layer: The primary viewing interface that allows users to view and interact with the document.
  

While the core and display layers can handle most documents, PDF.js doesn’t support the full PDF specification and sometimes struggles with rendering lengthy, complex, or image-heavy files. Overall performance is often on the slow side, and the way text is rendered makes text search somewhat unreliable.

More importantly, PDF.js lacks out-of-the-box mobile support. The included viewer doesn’t provide essential mobile UI features like pinch-to-zoom. It also doesn’t respond dynamically to mobile screens to ensure that menus and tools remain usable on all devices.

Any developer looking to add PDF viewing and editing capabilities to their web applications using PDF.js will need to solve these core issues. While features like responsive, mobile-friendly viewing may have been less important when PDF.js first released in 2011, they are considered essential by most users today. Unfortunately, building out these capabilities takes time and resources, which is something that few development teams have in abundance.

Integrating a ready-made viewer that combines the solid foundation of PDF.js with the innovative features users expect allows developers to quickly meet their project needs without pulling attention away from key aspects of their application.

Integrate PDF Solutions with Accusoft

While PDF.js has long served as an adequate open-source PDF viewing solution for web applications, today’s average user simply requires more functionality than PDF.js can provide on its own. For developers who lack the time, resources, or expertise necessary to build those additional features, Accusoft can help.

For over 30 years, Accusoft has helped organizations add essential features like viewing, file conversion, document assembly, and image compression to their applications through an innovative line of SDKs and APIs. 

Our document lifecycle technologies are backed by multiple patents and have been incorporated successfully into a wide range of applications. Accusoft’s dedicated engineers provide ongoing support and work closely with customers to implement their specific use cases, ensuring that their software platform is delivering the best possible experience.

To learn more about PDF viewing and editing solutions from Accusoft, talk to one of our technology experts today.