Technical FAQs

It’s never been a more pressing time to go digital. With over half of the world working remotely, we all need an easier way to complete our daily tasks. For some, this presents a unique challenge. Manual processes that require physical paper are now much more difficult in a work-from-home world. Expense report automation is one such challenge.

Finding a way to digitally automate those processes is now key. Especially when it comes to filing expense reports. Accusoft puts employees’ safety first, which is why we implemented new work-from-home protocols. While this comes with its own unique challenges, we are streamlining our processes by using our own technology to automate manual processes, like expense reports.

Digital Process Automation

Docubee is a business process automation tool, powered by Accusoft technology, that enables businesses to streamline a variety of different processes including document sharing, form creation, data collection, and digital signatures.

While Docubee is used for a variety of different processes, Accusoft is now using the tool to help employees during these unprecedented times. Accusoft was able to rethink the way we work, including the way we process expense reports.

Since most employees with a corporate card were always in the office, the process was more of a face-to-face interaction. Employees with a corporate card would print out their credit card statements at the end of each month, gather all receipts and invoices, print them out, write down a reference number for tracking, get their manager’s wet signature, and deliver the package to the accounting department.

“While this process has always worked for Accusoft, the Coronavirus forced us to take a deeper look at how we operate,” said Anthony Sanchez, Chief Financial Officer at Accusoft. “We have a great tool that can help us automate, and we are taking advantage of this opportunity to make the transition.”

A New Process for All

Using Docubee’s document sharing and workflow routing capabilities, employees were able to collect all of their receipts and invoices digitally, attach them to the new workflow, send them to their manager for a digital signature, and route the collection of paperwork to accounting for final approval. 

“Docubee is crucial in times like these,” says Steve Wilson, President of Docubee. “Our technology is powered by Accusoft’s powerful SDKs and APIs. As a business process automation tool, Docubee can help a variety of businesses take their processes digital.”

Accusoft discovered that using Docubee for filing expense reports is the perfect solution for the current circumstances and beyond. It streamlined the process for everyone involved, enabling employees to share statements more efficiently and managers to approve them with ease.

Do you have a manual process that has become more difficult during these work-from-home circumstances? Learn how you can take these processes digital and make your team more productive. Discover what you can do with Docubee.

December 6, 2022 – Tampa, FL – Accusoft is excited to announce the latest innovative feature update to PrizmDoc, its industry-leading document processing integration. The new PrizmDoc Hybrid Viewing feature offloads the majority of processing work for document viewing from the PrizmDoc server to the client’s device. 

While initial conversion and preparation is handled server-side, all viewing capabilities are implemented through the end user’s browser, which significantly reduces server requirements. Shifting processing to client-side devices has the added benefit of improving viewing performance, allowing users to open, view, and edit documents much faster than preparing them server-side.

“We pride ourselves on listening to our customers when identifying opportunities for product improvements,” says Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “The Hybrid Viewing feature grew out of requests from PrizmDoc customers for a faster viewing solution that’s less resource-intensive and more scalable. This new feature provides customers with greater flexibility and cost savings as they grow their business.”

Ensuring scalability was a key priority for the Hybrid Viewing feature. Rendering and displaying documents using the PrizmDoc server could prove expensive for many customers, especially for large files or when accessing multiple documents at once. By shifting the viewing experience to client-side devices, very few server resources are required, making it easy to scale viewing to multiple concurrent viewers without increasing server costs.

Within this new feature, PrizmDoc also offers a PDF-only viewing package option that allows customers to pre-convert all file types into ready-to-view PDFs, which dramatically reduces server load with minimal storage requirements. This conversion option uses less server resources than standard SVG conversions, further reducing costs while simultaneously improving viewing performance.

To learn more about PrizmDoc or to download a free trial and experience the Hybrid Viewing feature first-hand, 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, 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.

The scalable vector graphic (SVG) format continues to enjoy steady adoption across the web. According to data from W3Techs, SVG now accounts for 25 percent of website images worldwide. But it wasn’t always this way. In 1998, it became apparent that vector-based graphics had a future on the web, and the W3C received six different file format submissions from technology companies that year. Some were mere proposals ready for a complete revamp, while others were proprietary products that W3C wasn’t permitted to modify. Instead of forging a format from one of the submissions, however, W3C’s SVG working group decided to start from the ground up — and SVG was born.

While the file format had lofty ambitions, focusing on common use rather than specific syntax, the original iteration was cumbersome and complex. However, SVG has improved year after year after year. With increased support came more streamlined functionality and usable features. Now, SVG is often the first choice for meeting the evolving demands of scalable, responsive, and accessible web content.

What is a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) and how does it work?

Today, SVG is the de-facto standard for vector-based browser graphics. But what exactly is this file format, and how does it work?

Based on XML, SVG supports three broad types of objects: 

• Vector graphics including paths and outlines that are both straight and curved
• Bitmap images such as .jpeg, .gif, and .png
• Text

What sets SVG apart from bitmap-based images is the use of lines and curves along the edges of graphical objects. Because bitmap images use a fixed set of pixels, scaling them up creates blurriness where the edges of pixels meet. In the case of vector images, meanwhile, a fixed-shape approach allows the preservation of smooth lines and curves no matter the image size.

SVG also offers the benefit of interoperability. Because it’s a W3C open standard, SVG plays well with both other image format and web markup languages including JavaScript, DOM, CSS, and HTML. This allows the format to easily support responsive design approaches that scale websites and web content based on the user device rather than defining standardized size parameters. Thanks to the curves and lines of SVG, scaling presents no problem for responsive designers looking to ensure consistency across device types.

The Benefits of SVG

While scalability is often cited as the biggest benefit of SVG, this format also offers other advantages, including:

• Responsiveness — Images can be easily scaled up or down and modified as necessary to meet web design and development demands.
• Accessibility — Since SVG is text-based, content can be indexed and searched, allowing both users and developers to quickly find what they’re looking for.
• Performance — Image rendering is quick and doesn’t require substantive resources, allowing sites to load quickly and completely.
• Use in Web Applications — Browser incompatibilities and missing functions often frustrate web design efforts, forcing developers to use multiple tool sets and spend time checking content and images for potential format conflicts. SVG, meanwhile, offers powerful scripting and event support, in turn allowing developers to leverage it as a platform for both graphically rich applications and user interfaces. The result? Better-looking sites that enhance the overall user experience.
• Interoperability — Because SVG is based on W3C standards, the format is entirely interoperable, meaning developers aren’t tied to any specific implementation, vendor, or authoring tool. From building their own framework from the ground up to leveraging third-party SVG applications, web developers can find their format best-fit.

SVG in PrizmDoc Viewer

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer offers multiple ways for developers to make the most of SVG elements at scale, such as:

• File Transformation — Conversion is critical for effective and efficient web design. If development teams need different file transformation tools for every format, the timeline for web projects expands significantly. PrizmDoc Viewer streamlines this process with support for the conversion of more than 100 file types — including PDFs, Microsoft Office files, HTML, EML, rich text, and images — into browser-compliant SVG outputs. In practice, this permits near-native document and image rendering that’s not only fast, but also accessible anytime, anywhere, and from any device.
• HTML5 Functionality — Using SVG in PrizmDoc Viewer is made easier thanks to native HTML5 design. The use of HTML5-native framework not only improves load times with smaller document sizes but means that PrizmDoc Viewer works in all modern web browsers — while also dramatically enhancing document display quality.
• Pre-Conversion — One of the biggest challenges with viewing large documents in a browser is delay. Pages toward the end of the document may take longer to load and frustrate users looking to quickly find a specific image or piece of information. PrizmDoc Viewer solves this problem with a pre-conversion API that returns the first page as an SVG while the rest of the document is being converted, allowing users to interact with documents as conversion takes place and lowering the chance that files will experience format-based delays.

SVG hasn’t always been the go-to web image format. Despite a promising start based on open, interoperable standards, the lack of early support and specific use cases for vector-based file formats saw SVG sitting on the sidelines for decades. 

The advent of on-demand access requirements and mobile-first development realities has changed the conversation. SVG is now continuously gaining ground as companies see the benefit in this scalable, streamlined, and superior-quality file format. Get the big picture and see SVG in action with our online document viewing demo, or start a free PrizmDoc Viewer trial today!

Wait, playing video games for charity? Is that even a thing?

Not only is it a thing, but it’s an exciting fundraising effort Accusoft has embraced through our “Champion a Charity” program. Throughout the year, we encourage employees to sponsor a charity of their choosing and solicit donations from their coworkers. We then match a portion of those donations as part of our effort to give back to our community.

For the fourth straight year, Accusoft employees took part in Extra Life’s annual Game Day fundraiser to contribute funds to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

What Is Extra Life?

Established in 2008, Extra Life is a charity program that works with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals to raise funds for local children’s hospitals by playing games. Gamers sign up to contribute and receive donations as they take part in a gaming marathon with friends and coworkers. Although the Extra Life events can be held year round, each year the organization designates a worldwide Game Day to bring thousands of participants together for an exciting and healing experience.

Since its inception, Extra Life has raised over $70 million to support sick and injured children receiving care throughout Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. The network consists of 170 member hospitals that provide 32 million treatments across the US and Canada. These hospitals treat every child who comes through their doors, regardless of the family’s ability to pay, so they rely on charitable donations to continue to deliver the best care possible.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing that they help people not have to worry about how they’re going to pay to keep their children in the kind of treatment that they need,” said Accusoft marketing manager Ariana Tsouris. “No one should have to worry about their kid being sick or worried about not being able to take care of their kid because they can’t pay for their treatment.” 

Extra Life game events encompass all sorts of games, from the simplest card and board games to the very latest video game releases. Many participants stream their games on Twitch or hold large events at their workplace to raise awareness and encourage matching contributions.

The Accusoft Extra Life Team

Accusoft has participated in Extra Life Game Day since 2017, raising over $14,000 in the process. For 2020, we assembled a team of 13 eager gamers with the hope of pushing our total over $18,000. As part of Accusoft’s commitment to giving back to the community, we match team member donations and make additional donations on behalf of the top scorers in each game.

“It’s fun, but also it’s a really good way to give to the community and people who are in need,” software engineer Colby Butler said. “Sometimes it’s hard to do that, but this is kind of a no-brainer, easy way to have some fun and do some good in the community.”

Some team members were taking part in Extra Life for the first time. UI/UX strategist Rob Barry donated last year, but this time he decided to insert a coin to participate himself: “I have close friends who have gone through some difficult medical struggles with their children, so I try to budget throughout the year to give to causes like Extra Life. Becoming a father for the first time gave me a whole new perspective on how the program can help, though, so this year I decided to sign up to help the team exceed its goals.”

There were some familiar faces on this year’s team as well. “This was my sixth year participating in Extra Life’s Game Day,” said product manager Mark Hansen. “For me, it was a great opportunity to take something I love, video gaming, and put it together with a great charity.” But Extra Life is about more than just fun and games for Mark. “The cause is really important to me because my niece has unfortunately spent a great deal of time in All Children’s Hospital, more than any child should have to. This is a great opportunity to give back to those hospitals.”

Extra Life 2020: Remote Edition

In the past, we’ve held our Game Day event at the Accusoft offices, but that wasn’t possible this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. Luckily, as a software development company, we had a few cheat codes handy to get around that particular obstacle.

Our resident Extra Life organizer, senior software engineer Michael Irigoyen, set out to solve the problem by creating the Accusoft Game Center, a virtual arcade that the entire team could access remotely.

“It was a big undertaking,” Michael said. “We not only had to get the games running and be able to support multiple players, but also integrate a community scoreboard so everybody could see who was in the lead for each game. The whole idea was to keep people interested and bring attention to the charity so they would want to donate.”

Fortunately, Michael had some assistance along the way. “Jamison Prianos helped to reverse engineer the arcade games and Kyla Kolb did a lot of bug hunting to make sure everything looked and ran great for the big day.”

Final Results

When it was all said and done, the Accusoft Extra Life team didn’t just set a new high score. We shattered our previous donation record! The team raised a total of $14,550, an astounding 70% increase from 2019’s total. Even more impressive, 62 Accusoft employees made donations, a 17% increase from last year. 

“Each year I’m blown away by the generosity of my teammates,” said Ariana, a three-year participant on the Accusoft Extra Life team. “Even with all the uncertainty in 2020, we raised an incredible amount of money for an equally incredible cause and it’s fantastic.”

Michael couldn’t be happier with the results: “We were absolutely floored by the support and generosity of our team. Just knowing that we can make that kind of impact is really empowering because these kids don’t deserve to be facing the things that they are.”

Looking Ahead

This year’s successful Game Day event has pushed Accusoft’s overall Extra Life donation total to nearly $30,000 since 2017. While the team is looking forward to next year’s fundraiser, there are still plenty of opportunities to continue raising funds before then.

“The Accusoft Game Center isn’t going anywhere,” Michael said. “Some of us may continue to fundraise throughout the rest of the year, so our total contributions might still go up!”

It’s a sentiment that truly embodies the spirit of Accusoft’s Champion a Charity program. Community outreach remains a key element of our mission to make the world in which we live and work a better place. 

Looking to work for an innovative company that’s dedicated to making a real difference? Check out our careers page to learn more about our values and culture.