Technical FAQs

One of the new additions to our recent PrizmDoc v11.0 release was a developer preview of our document pre-conversion feature. This is an exciting new addition, given many of our clients work with thousands—even millions—of large documents and can’t afford to waste even seconds waiting for files to process.

Pre-conversion will allow the conversion of documents and images prior to being requested for viewing. For example, you can determine certain files to be converted and rendered. The rendered viewing packages will be stored in cache. When documents are requested for viewing, PrizmDoc will check to see if the document has been already converted and if so, call the viewing package for that document from cache to the viewer. This will dramatically increase performance, since the documents and images are already converted and ready for viewing before they are requested.

Although the feature is still in late-stage development and is slated to be production-ready in an upcoming release, you can download and use the current developer preview to test and evaluate the functionality. First we’ll give a quick PrizmDoc overview, and then cover how to get started with pre-conversion.

Understanding PrizmDoc

PrizmDoc is a powerful, scalable suite of APIs and Javascript that use HTML5 standard technologies to convert, view, search, annotate, and redact documents in dozens of formats in a zero footprint viewing client. At its core, the basic concept of PrizmDoc is fairly straightforward: your web application passes a document to an http service that converts it into SVG and returns it to the browser. So long as the browser supports SVG (which all modern browsers now do), the document is viewable without needing to install any software on the browsing device. This model works well across PCs, tablets, and even smartphones. Every device can view all standard document types without downloading or installing any extra software.

The above diagram provides an overview of the core components of the PrizmDoc Client and Server

PrizmDoc Application Services

PrizmDoc Application Services (PAS) is installed “ready to run” via any of our four web tier samples (C#, MVC, Java, PHP).

Pre-converting documents in Application Services

When viewing large documents, a user can experience a delay viewing later pages in the document. The pre-conversion API allows the user to avoid any delay in viewing a fully converted document prior to the creation of a viewing session. Users may choose to pre-convert all documents over a certain file size or documents that are frequently viewed, allowing for a more tailored viewing experience.

How to Create a viewing Package by Pre-converting Documents

Pre-conversion is available by using the Pre-conversion API. (For detailed information, refer to PrizmDoc Application Services RESTful Viewing Package Creators API.) Documents are pre-converted using the following steps:

Step 1

Issue a POST request with the body of the request containing JSON formatted ‘source’ object. The source.type property can be a “document”, “url” or “upload”. In this example, “document” is used as a source.type property.

POST http://localhost:3000/v2/viewingPackageCreators

viewingPackageCreator POST Body

Content-Type: application/json
{
    "input": {
        "source": {
            "type": "document",
            "fileName": "sample.doc",
            "documentId": "unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8",
            . . .
        },
        "viewingPackageLifetime": 2592000
    }
}

A successful response to the above POST provides ‘processId’ in the response body.

200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
    "input": {
        "source": {
            "type": "document",
            "fileName": "sample.doc",
            "documentId": "unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8",
            . . .
        },
        "viewingPackageLifetime": 2592000
    },
    "expirationDateTime": "2015-12-09T06:22:18.624Z",
    "processId": "khjyrfKLj2g6gv8fdqg710",
    "state": "processing",
    "percentComplete": 0
}

Step 2

Using the ‘processId’ obtained in step 1, query the pre-conversion process for the status.
GET http://localhost:3000/v2/viewingPackageCreators/khjyrfKLj2g6gv8fdqg710

A successful response body contains the JSON formatted properties ‘state’ and ‘percentComplete’. The state value indicates whether it is ‘complete’ or ‘processing’ and the property ‘percentComplete’ indicates percentage amount complete.

Start polling the status by issuing a GET command using the above URL. It is recommended to use shorter intervals initially between the requests for the first few times. If it is still not complete, then the document may be large, requiring more processing time. In scenarios like this, an increase in the time interval between requests would be necessary to prevent a large number of status requests that could potentially cause network congestion. On 100% completion, the response body will among other information contain an output object with ‘packageExpirationDateTime’ property.

200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
    "input": {
       "source": {
            "type": "document",
            "fileName": "sample.doc",
            "documentId": "unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8",
            . . .
       },
       "viewingPackageLifetime": 2592000
    },
    "output": {
        "packageExpirationDateTime": "2016-1-09T06:22:18.624Z"
    },
    "expirationDateTime": "2015-12-09T06:22:18.624Z",
    "processId": "khjyrfKLj2g6gv8fdqg710",
    "state": "complete",
    "percentComplete": 100
}

How to obtain information about the converted viewing Package

(For detailed information about the converted viewing Package, refer to PrizmDoc Application Services RESTful Viewing Package Creators API.)

When the status is 100% complete, details can be obtained about the converted package by issuing the following request:

GET http://localhost:3000/v2/viewingPackages/unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8

Response Body

200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
{
    "input": {
        "source": {
            "type": "document",
            "fileName": "sample.doc",
            "documentId": "unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8",
            . . .
        },
        "viewingPackageLifetime": 2592000
    },
    "state": "complete",
    "packageExperationDateTime": "2016-1-09T06:22:18.624Z"
}

How to Delete a Previously Converted Package

(For detailed information about deleting converted viewing Package, refer to PrizmDoc Application Services RESTful Viewing Package Creators API.)

A previously converted package can be deleted by issuing a DELETE request.

DELETE http://localhost:3000/v2/viewingPackages/unT67Fxekm8lk1p0kPnyg8

This request marks the package for asynchronous deletion. A successful response is as follows:

204 (No Content)

Viewing Packages

PrizmDoc Application Services 11.0 introduces the Viewing Packages feature. A Viewing Package is a cached version of a document that the PrizmDoc Viewer will use when displaying a document. Viewing a document from a Viewing Package will significantly reduce the load on PrizmDoc Server and will allow you to serve many more users per minute than you would otherwise be able to.

A Viewing Package can be created through Pre-Conversion or by using On-Demand Caching.
This topic provides information about the following:

• Storage
• Configuration
• Pre-Conversion
• On-Demand Caching

Storage

Viewing Packages are stored in both the filesystem and configured database. If using multiple instances of PAS, you must use a shared database and NAS (Network Attached Storage). The Running PrizmDoc Application Services on Multiple Servers topic can provide more information for configuring PAS in Multi-Server Mode.

By default, storage is configured in the following way:

Configuration

Viewing Packages are opt-in and require special configuration to work properly. At a minimum, your configuration should include the following:

# Feature toggles
feature.packages: "enabled"

# Database configuration
 
database.adapter: "sqlserver"
database.host: "localhost"
database.port: 1433
database.user: "pasuser"
database.password: "password"
database.database: "PAS"

# Default timeout for the duration of a viewing session
defaults.viewingSessionTimeout: "20m"

viewingPackagesData.storage: "database"
viewingPackagesProcesses.storage: "database"
viewingSessionsData.storage: "database"
viewingSessionsProcessesMetadata.storage: "database"

viewingPackagesArtifactsMetadata.storage: "database"
viewingPackagesArtifacts.storage: "filesystem"
viewingPackagesArtifacts.path: "/usr/share/prizm/Samples/viewingPackages"

Pre-Conversion

Creating a Viewing Package through Pre-Conversion provides a way to generate packages whenever it makes the most sense for your application to do so. It allows you to make use of down-time for Pre-Conversion to reduce load in high traffic periods. Pre-Conversion does all the work of creating a Viewing Package whenever it is requested. It starts a process that will begin downloading content and allow you to poll for progress.

It is recommended that you maintain a queue of Pre-Conversions so you don’t overload the server and have faster turnaround time. We recommend a maximum of five Pre-Conversion processes at a time per PrizmDoc Application Services and PrizmDoc Server instance. This will allow packages to be created quickly while maintaining a sustainable load.

On-Demand Caching

Creating a Viewing Package through On-Demand Caching is a seamless process through the Viewing Session API. On-Demand Caching allows you to trigger a Viewing Package creation process in the background and use the resulting Viewing Package when it is ready. This feature is designed to allow immediate viewing using PrizmDoc Server while caching a package for subsequent views of the same document.

As an example, consider this request for a Viewing Session:

POST /ViewingSession
{
   "source": {
       "documentId": "PdfDemoSample-a1b0x19n2",
       "type": "document",
       "fileName": "PdfDemoSample.pdf"
   }
}

This request will always return a viewingSessionId regardless of the status of the matching Viewing Package. If a Viewing Package does not currently exist with the given documentId, PrizmDoc Server will handle document viewing while a background process creates a Viewing Package. Once the background process is complete, PrizmDoc Application Services will handle all further viewing sessions until the Viewing Package expires (24 hours by default).

Conclusion

Given the increasing digital nature of document management, the pre-conversion services in PrizmDoc are an exciting addition to our already-robust suite of features. Pre-converting, rendering, and storing documents in cache will provide a more seamless experience, allowing users to immediately call and view documents and images. We believe it’s a game-changer that will allow many of our clients to significantly streamline their processes.

Few organizations will view the final weeks of 2020 as a bittersweet moment. In addition to the staggering human toll inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, entire industries saw longstanding business models upended, forcing companies to completely rethink their relationships with employees, vendors, and customers. The financial services industry was no exception, and 2020 saw FinTech becoming more important than ever as firms rushed to embrace digital transformation in response to the ongoing crisis. Many of these trends appear poised to continue well into 2021 and beyond. 

FinTech Defined

FinTech is short for “financial technology,” but the term itself is applied quite broadly throughout the financial services industry. It can be used to refer to a new generation of non-traditional startup companies focused on building digital tools that allow people to manage their finances in new ways that disrupt established industry practices. The term is also sometimes used to describe the technology itself, however, especially since established financial organizations are investing heavily in innovative applications and services of their own.

FinTech Trends for 2021

Although 2020 is sure to be remembered as a year of unprecedented disruption, 2021 might well come to be known as a year of remarkable adaptation and transformation. Now that organizations have developed innovative digital strategies to navigate a more volatile economic landscape, they must now take up the challenge of putting those plans into practice.

FinTech developers need to keep an eye on these trends as they build new applications and services in order to provide the functionality and performance demanded by the financial industry. Many established firms will be taking a long look at their infrastructure and technology solutions to assess whether or not their current systems are up to the challenge of digital transformation. If their existing platforms fall short, they will need to either seek out new FinTech products with more robust feature sets or explore options for integrating new capabilities into their legacy software.

Top 5 FinTech Trends to Watch in 2021

1. Customer-Centric Applications

The proliferation of FinTech solutions has brought customers to the forefront of every financial organization’s thoughts. Where the financial industry once designed processes and applications to suit their own needs, today they must focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience if they want to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. The process often begins with reducing friction wherever possible to help end-users get the products and services they need faster. With customers increasingly interacting with the financial industry across multiple channels, FinTech developers must build solutions that strengthen those connections and expand their potential.

Eliminating manual processes, cutting down on external software dependencies, and automating routine tasks will continue to be a major point of emphasis for FinTech applications. Customers no longer have the patience to repeatedly fill out lengthy forms or go through the frustrating process of downloading, printing, signing, and scanning documents. By building document viewing, file conversion, and data capture capabilities into their applications, FinTech developers can provide firms with a unified digital solution that addresses multiple needs and streamlines their customer experience.

2. Digital-First Collaboration

According to an IDG study on the enduring business impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, about 40% of employees are expected to be working remotely on a semi-permanent basis as of January 2021. That means financial organizations will continue to need digital tools in place to provide secure access to files and facilitate collaboration. Physical documents must first be converted into a variety of digital formats with high levels of accuracy and then made available to remote users without compromising data integrity or creating confusion over version history. 

Without a dedicated solution on hand for viewing, editing, and managing documents, users are forced to resort to a variety of ad hoc workarounds and third party software solutions that can quickly compromise data security and increase the likelihood of errors. By integrating those features into their FinTech applications, developers can help firms keep all of their documents and files safely within a secure infrastructure while still making them available through easy-to-use web-based API tools.

3. Big Data Management

Financial organizations continue to collect huge amounts of data in the course of their business. Some of this data is unstructured and must be processed using powerful analytics tools to identify important trends and potential risks that can help firms make better strategic decisions. But they also gather a great deal of structured data as well, typically from structured forms like loan applications, tax documents, and bank statements. Managing all of this information more efficiently will be an important goal for 2021 because having good data insights is essential for identifying opportunities, optimizing products and services, and automating essential services.

FinTech developers can help improve data processing by building applications capable of extracting information quickly and accurately. Financial data algorithms are quite good at identifying different types of data and sorting it into the proper place for analysis, but they’re often slowed down by documents that are damaged or difficult to read. Thanks to software integrations that provide robust image cleanup, document alignment, and form recognition tools, FinTech applications can ensure that firms are starting with the cleanest possible source data when extracting information for processing.

4. Pandemic Proofing

Although there are several promising COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, challenges with supply and distribution will keep most companies operating under the same social distancing and remote workplace guidelines they put in place in 2020 for much of the year. Even if restrictions are lifted earlier than expected, the risk-averse financial industry will continue to think about how to avoid similar disruptions by implementing paperless processes and electronic data capture options. Just as retailers and manufacturers are rethinking their supply chain infrastructure, financial services companies must reassess their FinTech applications in light of recent challenges.

Developers can help the financial industry better “pandemic proof” their processes by integrating better document viewing, file conversion, and data capture tools into their software solutions. Not only can they automate traditionally time-consuming (and error-prone) manual data entry tasks, but they can also build in additional functionality to auto-generate data for new contracts and allow people to sign documents digitally to eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings. 

5. Banking Partnerships

Banks and other traditional financial institutions are increasingly partnering with FinTech startups to reach new customers and engage with existing clients over new channels. As Deloitte noted in a recent study, the pandemic has removed many of the obstacles to digital transformation in the financial industry and forced many established firms to pour tremendous resources into their tools and infrastructure. But as banks engage with innovative startups, they will need to find ways to integrate operations and data quickly to remain competitive and roll out new services successfully.

That integration process will be easier if they have flexible software solutions in place that can navigate multiple file types, perform cleanup and conversion, and extract essential data quickly and accurately. Whether they’re building that functionality into entirely new applications or integrating features into existing legacy systems, FinTech developers will play a key role in helping financial organizations accelerate their merger and partnership timetables so they can begin reaping the benefits more quickly. 

Solving Your FinTech Challenges with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of RESTful APIs and SDKs provide FinTech developers with the tools they need to build comprehensive content processing, conversion, and automation solutions into software applications. Whether you’re using PrizmDoc Suite to view, edit, and convert documents directly inside their financial applications, capturing valuable financial data from various form types with FormSuite for Structured Forms, or embedding powerful image cleanup, OCR, and annotation tools into your application with ImageGear, our family of software integrations allow you to add the functionality your FinTech solutions need to meet the challenges of 2021 and beyond.

To learn more about how our software tools can enhance your FinTech applications, talk to one of our integration experts today.

For many years, the legal industry proved resistant to the changes that were pushing other organizations toward digital transformation. Although the serious shocks of the 2008 financial crisis were not enough to spark a revolution in LegalTech automation, they did at least get many firms to start thinking differently about how they deployed technology. 

After enduring the disruption of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, firms are finally implementing the software applications that will help them to deliver legal services far more effectively. In order to understand what’s driving today’s LegalTech trends, it’s important to first recognize why changes that didn’t take place in 2008 are happening now.

Why 2020 Differs From 2008

The legal industry was not spared the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis. Rather than reassessing their fundamental business model, most firms reacted to the recession by laying off personnel. According to the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), nine percent of US associates lost their jobs over a nine month period between 2009 and 2010. 

While this strategy managed to protect profits in the short term, it had a negative impact on their talent pipelines in the long run. More importantly, firms also had little immediate incentive to rethink their business processes. Reducing personnel and increasing rates allowed them to meet their immediate revenue goals, and the basic structure of delivering legal services remained mostly unchanged. And, to be fair, many LegalTech automation platforms were not yet mature enough at that time to deliver clear value, especially when compared to the costs of implementation. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has presented firms with a very different set of conditions. Almost every sector was impacted and it was not immediately clear how long the disruption would last. Social distancing requirements made it all but impossible for attorneys to meet with clients in person. After the initial wave of salary cuts and furloughs, firms were forced to think about how they could continue to deliver services in the midst of a pandemic.

Customer expectations have also changed dramatically since 2008. Legal clients expect faster, more efficient services delivered at a competitive price point. In order to grow revenue beyond 2020, firms will need to reorient themselves to do more with less, adopting the technology infrastructure that allows them to build more efficient processes and automate low value tasks so partners and associates can focus on other areas.

Post-2020 LegalTech Trends

Historically, the business model of most legal firms focused on immediate priorities and a reactive demand model that proved resistant to automation and efficiency. Since firms tend to look to metrics like PEP (Profit per Partner) to judge the health of the business, investing in process-oriented technology that would enable support staff to work more efficiently was rarely appealing. That’s because such investments would eat into short-term profits without offering a clear benefit in the future. 

But those benefits had very real potential, especially for firms and legal departments willing to look at different, less partner-driven business models that put more emphasis on customer-centric services. The firms that made the difficult decision to invest in LegalTech automation early now find themselves in a better position to thrive in a post-2020 landscape than competitors who were slower to adopt.

While premier “big law” firms will likely continue to offer high-value legal work to clients that require more specialized, strategic services, other firms and departments will be in an ideal position to capitalize on the type of work that benefits more from LegalTech automation. Specifically, they can leverage technology to meet known demand, or the day-to-day low to mid-level legal services that many customers expect and budget for. This is the type of work where efficient processes and automation make it possible for firms to take on more work and quickly scale their operations. It’s also a more customer-centric approach that acknowledges the ability to deliver legal services swiftly and cost-effectively will be a tremendous competitive advantage in the years ahead.

A Second Chance at Digital Transformation

Moments of crisis and disruption typically provide organizations with the opportunity to innovate and rethink their approach to how they do business. The legal industry, however, largely failed to adapt significantly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Firms were often unwilling to change their processes or invest in new technology solutions, which makes it even more vital for them to adapt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In some respects, the industry is getting a second chance to undergo true digital transformation. Due to the unique circumstances of the 2020 downturn, there is every reason to expect that the demand for legal services will grow substantially in 2021 and beyond. From cases and contracts that could not be resolved during the pandemic to a broad range of lawsuits related to COVID-19, legal organizations will need to put the right digital tools in place to handle caseloads efficiently. 

Stay Ahead of LegalTech Trends with Accusoft Integrations

In order to keep pace with rapidly developing LegalTech trends, developers need to be able to build versatile and reliable software that they can bring to market quickly. Building innovative tools to facilitate contract negotiation and eDiscovery is challenging enough without also creating the content processing and conversion capabilities that facilitate them. That’s why LegalTech development teams under resource and time constraints frequently turn to specialized integrations that allow them to add essential features without pulling their attention away from their core area of focus. This helps them get their products to market faster to keep their customers ahead of the latest LegalTech trends.

Accusoft’s collection of powerful SDK and API integrations allows developers to build the features they need on their own terms. For instance, PrizmDoc Editor’s document assembly capabilities allow firms to automate the contract creation and editing process to minimize human error and boost efficiency. PrizmDoc Viewer’s conversion, annotation, and redaction features make it an ideal fit for eDiscovery workflows that require high levels of flexibility and security. And when it comes to managing different types of documents and files throughout the legal process, having an image processing SDK like ImageGear that can convert, compress, and OCR a broad range of file types can transform a LegalTech application into a content management powerhouse.

To learn more about how Accusoft’s collection of processing solutions can help your team meet today’s LegalTech automation challenges, talk to one of our industry specialists.

In a previous blog post we discussed misconceptions that information professionals typically have about cloud computing. We went through some of the most common myths one by one, explaining why they’re inaccurate and why, unfortunately, they persist even now among executives across various industries.

At Accusoft, we believe in the power of the cloud, and are committed to extending its functionality and flexibility to our customers. Let’s break down some of the benefits that cloud computing can provide for you and your applications, and how Accusoft and other established companies have maximized its potential.

Benefit No. 1: Lower operating costs

Hard to get past this one, right? Any new initiative that helps rein in everyday expenses will likely motivate executives to try it, and cloud usage has indeed proven itself to be a cost-effective method for handling a company’s data needs.

The most obvious area of savings is in hardware. Businesses can save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by using the servers of a cloud provider rather than investing in their own equipment. This outsourcing also removes the need for on-site administrators, reducing payroll overhead and freeing up physical workspace. And it’s eco-friendly, reducing energy consumption and helping to lessen the company’s carbon footprint.

Prominent organizations are realizing all of these cost benefits. The Yamaha Corporation of America, Yamaha’s division specializing in manufacturing musical instruments and audio/visual tools, decided to migrate most of its data operations to Amazon Web Services (AWS), an established provider that services Accusoft as well, in 2014. The company was pleased with the process and even happier about the end result: a projected savings of $500,000 per year due to its move to the cloud.

Here is where our customers really take notice when we suggest using PrizmDoc Cloud. We estimate that a Windows client executing between 120,000 and 240,000 monthly transactions while running PrizmDoc on its own servers will spend more than more $16,000 per month when capital expenditures (hardware) and operating expenditures (payroll, maintenance, etc.) are considered. The cloud version, conversely, costs less than $2,000 monthly with the same usage load, because of the advantages we mentioned.

Benefit No. 2: Enhanced data security

Though recent scares have made some wonder about the safety of corporate data which is handled externally, statistics show that cloud networks themselves have been consistently secure. In fact, many businesses have begun to see security as a major motivation for moving to the cloud in the first place, reasoning that safeguarding their sensitive data is better left to professionals.

An emerging approach is to combine the security features of a cloud services provider (such as highly-refined encrypting techniques) with a company’s own security protocols to ensure the integrity of its data. One expert provides some pointers for implementing such a strategy in this helpful overview, which explains the basics of both encryption and cloud security.

Time Inc. is a firm believer in cloud security and AWS, closing down its own data centers and completely entrusting AWS with its massive database of customer information in 2015. The move was an enormous leap of faith for the media giant – which maintains personal data including 45 million credit cards used to purchase its print and digital products – but one made after extensive research about cloud services and their various providers. Just like Accusoft, Time made the decision to team up with Amazon and has seen that relationship prosper.

Accusoft’s commitment to data integrity led to PrizmDoc Cloud earning a SOC 2 Type 1 certification for cloud computing services in June 2018. The designation, awarded by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), was the result of PrizmDoc Cloud meeting key performance criteria in areas such as security, privacy and confidentiality. We’re proud of this certification and consider it proof that our partnership with Amazon Web Services is benefitting everyone involved, most importantly customers of PrizmDoc Cloud.

Benefit No. 3: Ease of setup

And because cloud usage has become commonplace in recent years, competition has spurred these providers to expedite setting up client companies, such as Accusoft, on their networks. The competitors in this space range from the world famous (such as the industry’s ‘big three’ of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud) to smaller firms such as several profiled here several profiled here that can offer customized solutions based on a firm’s particular needs.

General Electric has also made the most of Amazon’s responsiveness, using AWS to host more than 2,000 applications by the end of 2017. The seamless transition has enabled the company to focus on its own evolution rather than the burden of operating infrastructure to support its products.

“Adopting a cloud-first strategy with AWS is helping our IT teams get out of the business of building and running data centers and refocus our resources on innovation,” said Chris Drumgoole, GE’s CTO and corporate vice president.

Accusoft’s alliance with AWS means that our customers don’t have to worry about the specifics of getting PrizmDoc Cloud deployed; they know that we and AWS have already done the work for them. And our PrizmDoc Cloud customer portal tells them all they need to know about their account once they’re up and running, such as usage rates and educational material on our various subscription options.

Benefit No. 4: Flexible pricing programs

One great benefit of cloud access is that the connection is virtually always on, and can be used as much or as little as your usage dictates. Thus, companies who host applications in the cloud typically offer subscription options tailored to their customers’ specific needs.

For instance, a governmental entity that processes millions of transactions is better off with a time-based subscription (monthly, yearly, etc.) featuring unlimited usage, whereas a smaller company would likely prefer to pay only for transactions as it needs them. In each case, the customer should have the autonomy to choose the best solution for its own usage.

The wealth of options can be confusing, of course, but generally the most important consideration is understanding your own needs. Channel Futures, a digital services industry authority, published this checklist for companies to review as they consider their cloud subscription options.

We created various PrizmDoc Cloud subscription types with this in mind. No two customers are the same, and thus no two will use the product in exactly the same fashion. So we offer pricing programs based on either time period or transaction volume, depending on which is more relevant for a particular user.

No matter where your organization falls in this spectrum, we have a plan that can suit your specific needs. Use this overview of our pricing programs, complete with a sliding scale to accommodate your anticipated transaction usage, to find the plan that’s best for you (and look over the FAQ section at the bottom). Bear in mind that you can change plans as your needs evolve.

Benefit No. 5: Professional technical support

We mentioned how competition among the top SaaS providers (AWS, Microsoft, Google, etc.) has helped refine the cloud industry in terms of improved data security and quicker startup times for clients. Another example of this competitive effect is in customer support, a crucial area where providers are seeking separation from one another. AWS, for instance, has developed a multi-tiered approach to support, wherein customers can select a plan based on budget and level of usage.

And just as in the case of data security, synergy is often the key in providing complete technical support for cloud users. Companies who host applications in the cloud typically offer their own support team, and lean on their providers’ technical specialists whenever server problems arise.

Thanks to this leveraging of support expertise, developers know they’ll get the assistance they need to keep their apps working smoothly, with the process staying virtually invisible to their end users.

We pride ourselves on providing the best possible customer support experience whenever help is needed. Our technical support professionals have a comprehensive knowledge of PrizmDoc Cloud, routinely answering questions and offering tips to make sure our customers (and their applications) get the most out of the product.

This commitment is evidenced by the Accusoft support group’s high Net Promoter score, a tech industry standard for measuring customer satisfaction. Our team earned a cumulative score of 44 (versus an industry average of 32) in early 2018, up from 43 the previous quarter, and we’ve consistently been above industry averages since 2016. We’re always educating our support staff on PrizmDoc and our other development tools, proving that an investment in any of our products is just the beginning of your relationship with Accusoft

PrizmDoc Cloud: A viewing toolkit for the future

The benefits detailed above are all a part of PrizmDoc Cloud, the SaaS-based version of our document and image viewing API toolkit, and help it create a dynamic, intuitive user experience in applications.

You may already know at least a bit about PrizmDoc itself. Its versatility and ease of integration into apps make it a leader among document viewing options for developers. We’ve always given our customers the option to self-host PrizmDoc on their own servers, but we’re excited to help them learn about the possibilities of deploying PrizmDoc Cloud, which combines this powerful toolkit with all the advantages of using the cloud.

We recommend PrizmDoc Cloud over self-hosting because no matter what your company does, or what functionality your applications provide to end users, using the cloud can save you time, money and headaches for years to come. Its surge in popularity among organizations of all types proves the cloud has already become an indispensable part of any long-term IT strategy.

Be cloud – and proud

PrizmDoc Cloud combines the power of a complete suite of API-based web services with the many benefits of working in the cloud that we expanded upon here. Contact us with your questions or comments about this unique toolkit, or learn more about the versatility of the PrizmDoc product itself by trying out our demos here.

The last twelve months have seen an unprecedented shift in the way organizations and customers are utilizing digital services. According to data gathered by McKinsey in 2020, digital adoption made roughly five years worth of progress in a span of eight weeks at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this massive shift impacted almost every industry, the government sector in particular faced tremendous disruption as its legacy systems struggled to keep pace with demand.

Many of the changes in the way people access government services are likely to remain in place even after the threat of the pandemic recedes, which creates a huge opportunity for software developers specializing in GovTech applications. A closer look at GovTech trends for 2021 provides some insight into those opportunities.

5 Key GovTech Trends to Watch in 2021

1. Remote Functionality 

Government agencies had to fundamentally rethink the workplace in response to the pandemic. Non-essential personnel transitioned to working remotely whenever possible, but this move created a number of challenges in terms of collaboration and security. Employees still need to be able to view, edit, and share files without compromising privacy or creating version confusion. All too often, remote workers resort to ad hoc solutions involving third party programs and conventional email, all of which make it incredibly difficult for an organization to maintain control over its essential files. GovTech developers can address these challenges directly by building software that facilitates remote collaboration entirely within a secure application.

2. Doing More with Less

One of the downstream consequences of social distancing restrictions and stay at home orders has been the erosion of sales tax revenue at the state and local level. While the impacts have not been as catastrophic as originally feared, many states are still facing significant budget shortfalls despite making deep spending cuts. The pressure will be on to find GovTech solutions that are easy to implement, use, and maintain. Efficiency and flexibility will continue to be important considerations as state and municipal governments seek out platforms that can address multiple needs and allow them to eliminate costly redundancies.

3. Shift to Digital

When government offices were forced to shut their doors in the early days of the pandemic, they had to scramble to find ways to deliver services digitally. This was especially difficult for agencies relying on legacy infrastructure and outdated software, but the transition to digital is unlikely to slow down anytime soon now that it’s underway. According to a recent study, 61 percent of government officials surveyed believe that the pandemic has accelerated their digital transformation goals, while 75 percent claim that their agency is pushing to offer even more services digitally. That will mean plenty of opportunity for innovative GovTech developers that can provide the automation and data management tools governments need to bring their services into the 21st century.

4. Fight for Privacy

Government agencies sit upon massive amounts of private data that must be kept secure at all costs. From personally identifiable information like Social Security Numbers to contracts and applications that contain confidential business data and vital trade secrets, governments have a responsibility to protect sensitive data at all times. They need systems and software that not only keeps files safely within the secure confines of an application, but also provides the redaction capabilities that allow agencies to comply with information requests. By designing platforms that promote transparency while also protecting privacy, GovTech developers can play an important role in building trust between government and citizens. 

5. Citizen-Centric Experience

The combination of evolving public expectations and demographic change was rapidly reshaping the delivery of government services even before the pandemic. In a global survey conducted in late 2019, Accenture found that 50 percent of respondents believed that requests to an agency could be resolved faster with the use of AI assistants or chatbots and that a transition to 24/7 access to government services would be greatly beneficial. Respondents also wanted easier access to their personal information (74 percent), faster response times (73 percent), and greater visibility into the status of their queries and applications (64 percent). Younger citizens accustomed to customer-centric experiences are further shifting expectations of what services the government should be able to offer digitally. It will fall to GovTech developers to design applications that connect citizens to their government and streamline processes that have long relied upon inefficient manual practices and direct physical interactions.

Enhance Your GovTech Application with Accusoft Solutions

Working with the government sector presents a number of challenges to even seasoned developers. From meeting complex compliance and privacy requirements to managing a dizzying range of document types, building and implementing an effective solution takes a great deal of time and development resources.

One of the easiest ways to speed up that process is by incorporating proven functionality into an application with SDKs or APIs. Accusoft’s collection of software integrations helps GovTech developers get to market faster by providing reliable and government-ready content processing features.

• PrizmDoc Viewer: A powerful HTML5 viewer with annotation and redaction capabilities, PrizmDoc Viewer makes it easy to view, edit, and manage public records, contracts, and even more sensitive documents all within a secure GovTech application.
• ImageGear: With ImageGear’s extensive image processing, conversion, and compression features behind them, GovTech applications can easily improve document workflows, consolidate information, and meet government archiving standards (thanks to PDF/A support).
• FormSuite: Processing government forms can quickly overwhelm an application if it doesn’t have the capabilities to handle multiple form types or clean up document images. FormSuite for Structured Forms is a collection of forms processing SDKs that helps GovTech applications quickly sort and extract data from structured forms for superior speed and accuracy.

As GovTech trends continue to accelerate in 2021, developers need partners they can trust to provide secure, reliable functionality to their applications so they can focus their efforts on building software that meets the exacting needs of the government sector. Learn more about how Accusoft can fulfill that role and elevate the potential of GovTech applications.

Gerry Hernandez, Accusoft Senior Software Engineer

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a buzzword to some, yet a way of life to others. Some say Behavior-Driven Development, or BDD, is TDD done right. Cucumber made BDD popular, promising wonderful features such as:

• Writing specifications in Gherkin, an English-like grammar, rather than code
• Allowing anyone, even non-developers, to read and write tests since they’re English-like
• Reusing code by reusing Gherkin statements
• Driving tests with data

Everyone is happy. Developers don’t waste so much time, plus other non-technical stakeholders get to participate. All of this sounds fantastic, right? So we tested quite a wide gamut of BDD frameworks, all based on the original Cucumber reference implementation: Robot, Behave, CucumberJS, and Yadda.

Accusoft’s Services team, which is responsible for a large and growing collection of microservices, determined that none of these BDD frameworks work for us. The added magic of Gherkin and Cucumber impedes the natural progression of real-world systems built with modern, microservice architecture. Naturally, we made our own BDD-like methodology, affectionately known as SURGE: Simulate User Requirements Good-Enough. We went from barely being able to maintain 50 tests, to over 700 automated functional tests with continuous, rapid growth in coverage.

We specifically chose a silly name to philosophically align with our goals for this new methodology:

• Be practical
• Be productive
• Keep it stupid simple
• Keep it minimal – “you ain’t gonna need it”

This blog post begins a series of articles that will recap our journey toward effective test automation with our microservice architecture. For part one, we will share our experiences and lessons learned from prototyping traditional BDD into our development lifecycle. Part two will focus on the methodology and philosophies associated with SURGE. Finally, part three will provide an overview of our implementation. The series will mainly focus on conceptual patterns and practices that are universal to all programming languages and runtime environments, although we chose Node for our particular implementation of SURGE.

BDD: A Great Solution for the Wrong Problem

There’s no denying that BDD and Cucumber have positively influenced the software development industry and culture. Test-Driven Development is a sound idea, and BDD was the first widely established way of doing it right. For most, at least.We found the methodology crumbled as soon as we applied it to non-monolithic software with a wide set of features.

Accusoft Services is composed of an extensive and ever-growing list of independently deployable services, all of which work together to provide user-facing features. For instance, just logging into the Accusoft Services portal makes a trip through six services. Suppose we wanted to define a behavior and write tests for logging into an account. With that said, the big question is “where do we put our Gherkin?”

Yogi Berra nailed it; the ideal solutions that traditional, Gherkin-driven BDD afford sound reasonable, but don’t work in the real world. Here’s what we discovered.

Global Scoping is Evil

One of the primary goals of Cucumber-like frameworks is to make all step functions available globally to all feature files. The intent is to promote code reuse. Sounds great, but it simply does not scale in any sensible way.

Initially, when we wrote just a few Gherkin features, this was working fairly well. All the magic abstraction that Gherkin provides was happening, and it was glorious. Then we added a fourth test and ran into ambiguous step definitions. This was quickly solved by rewriting Gherkin statements to be more specific so that they wouldn’t collide. Then a fifth feature was introduced and we ran into the same problem. And again with the sixth.

Eventually, it was just unmaintainable and we couldn’t work with it. Let’s face it, there’s only so many ways we could say “click the search button” without sounding completely unnatural, which is the entire point of Gherkin.

Here’s where things get interesting, and where much of the community will disagree with us. BDD best practices state that no two step definitions should ever collide, that if they do, our behavior is likely ill-defined. But we challenge that with the following two example feature specifications (this is fictional, for brevity):

       Feature: Able to Use a Search Engine
                 Scenario: Searching on Google 
                            Given I visit google.com
                            When I type "PrizmDoc" into the search box
                            And I click the search button 
                            Then I see some search results

        Feature: Able to Search on a Company Website   
                 Scenario: Searching on Accusoft.com
                            Given I visit accusoft.com 
                            When I click the search link
                            And I type "PrizmDoc" into the search box
                            And I click the search button
                            Then I see some search results

We feel that if a human were to read each scenario, the human would understand what to do. However, Cucumber-like BDD implementations will actually map the last three steps in each of the above scenarios to the same functions. So there are two ways of dealing with this: use unique statements or make the functions that they map to smart enough to deal with both comprehensions of a search button.

Using truly unique statements to avoid all collisions is intractable and effectively turns English into a programming language. English is already a confusing language when code isn’t involved, so why would you ever want to use it as an abstraction layer? Most developers have a hard enough time balancing curly brackets; we have zero interest in compounding those problems with literary devices, sentence structures, and debates on the merits of the Oxford comma. I can hardly even write this blog post!

For a brief moment, we experimented with the latter approach: making the step functions smart enough to deal with both search buttons. Then we introduced a third test that needs to click a search button. Then a fourth. That step function now did four different things, depended on twelve stateful variables, and had a cyclomatic complexity higher than most functions in our application code. Any more and it would be too expensive to maintain.

Independent Test Suites – Not Practical

At first, this may sound like a plan. Each microservice provides a small, finite set of functionality that is well defined, so why not focus on testing that?

The most obvious showstopper is the fragmentation; it doesn’t make sense to couple a test suite with just a fraction of the code it’s actually testing. Reversing the same logic, if the other five services involved in logging into your Accusoft Services account don’t have a test suite associated with the code, it simply won’t be organized, won’t be maintained properly, and likely won’t even be executed. Not to mention, this completely breaks code-reuse among functional tests since they’re quite literally separate.

Besides, if we were to limit the scope of the behaviors only to what one specific microservice is responsible for, the answer is simple: that’s what unit tests are for. Why overthink it? Be practical.

To Be Continued…

There has to be a better way. And that’s why we came up with SURGE.

The team really loves our new Test-Driven Development practices. We had an informal discussion as a team and unanimously agreed that our approach makes sense and is producing positive results. We were never this productive with the traditional BDD methodology, and it seems like our philosophies are contagious, as other teams are beginning to collaborate on our tooling. We can’t wait to share our unique spin on BDD, the SURGE methodology, in our next SURGE-series blog post.

Until then, if this stuff is exciting to you, or even if you think we’re completely wrong and know you can kick it to the next level, we’d love to hear from you.

Happy coding! 🙂

Gerry Hernandez began his career as a researcher in various fields of digital image processing and computer vision, working on projects with NIST, NASA JPL, NSF, and Moffitt Cancer Center. He grew to love enterprise software engineering at JP Morgan, leading to his current technical interests in continuous integration and deployment, software quality automation, large scale refactoring, and tooling. He has oddball hobbies, such as his fully autonomous home theater system, and even Christmas lights powered by microservices.

When President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act relief package into law on March 11, 2021, millions of Americans looked forward to receiving a much-needed $1400 stimulus check from the government. Although many people would receive paper checks directly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), anyone who had previously filed their taxes electronically and had returns delivered to their bank accounts were eligible to receive their stimulus relief via direct deposit. The IRS set the date of March 17 for the delivery of stimulus funds, which would give sufficient time for payments to make their way through the complex Automated Clearing House (ACH) system used to transfer payments electronically.

FinTech Lenders to the Rescue

But on March 12, just one day after the landmark bill was signed into law, many FinTech banking customers received notifications that funds had already been delivered to their accounts. The digital banking startup Current bragged on Twitter that afternoon that it had already distributed $600 million to 250,000 customers. On March 15, the FinTech lender Chime announced that it had paid about $3.5 billion to more than one million customers over the weekend. Chime had previously made headlines the previous spring when it advanced stimulus funds from the CARES Act to customers before the government actually made the money available.

Unsurprisingly, the announcements caused quite an uproar from customers at traditional banks that did not start releasing funds until the previously announced March 17 date. Despite many of the accusations leveled at these lenders, however, the discrepancy had nothing to do with banks deliberately withholding funds and everything to do with the unique business model of leading FinTech lenders.

In the case of Chime, for instance, the company frequently makes payment funds available to customers as soon as the transfer is initiated, rather than waiting for it to clear through the ACH. “I guess you could argue we’re taking a risk,” said Chime co-founder and CEO Chris Britt. “But we’ve been told by the Federal Reserve that the money is coming so we don’t think it’s that much of a risk.” 

Traditional banks were quick to respond by saying that they could not make funds available before March 17 because that was the date set by the government for the money to actually be transferred. For FinTech companies with higher risk tolerance, the delay provided a unique opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of digital lending applications. During the first wave of stimulus checks in April of 2020, mobile banking app registrations increased by 200% over the previous month as Americans rushed to embrace various forms of digital banking.

The Flexible Features of FinTech Applications

Part of the reason why FinTech lenders are willing to offer more generous services to customers is that they often assess risk differently than traditional banks. Armed with sophisticated algorithms and data capture tools, FinTech applications are able to gather more information about customers and lending sources to create a more accurate risk profile.

Over the last two decades, FinTech developers have worked hard to build the digital platforms that innovative firms are using to offer these services. These software solutions need to be flexible enough to process information quickly and provide essential functionality that helps both FinTech firms and their customers to view and share information quickly and easily.

Forms Processing

Structured forms are an essential tool of the financial services industry, whether it’s a loan application or an IRS tax form. The faster those forms can be processed, the more quickly firms can deliver money into the hands of their customers. That’s why FinTech developers need to make sure they’re incorporating the forms processing tools that make it easy to automate data capture. Given that the latest round of COVID stimulus funds are based upon tax return information, many customers will be scrambling to update their records as quickly as possible. By integrating the tools to process that data with haste, FinTech developers can help firms keep pace with the needs of their clients.

Easy Viewing

While FinTech developers are primarily building applications for lenders, they should always keep in mind that a solution that doesn’t provide a positive customer experience will have trouble catching on in a crowded marketplace. Today’s banking customers expect transparent and intuitive applications that allow them to quickly view their financial records and check the status of applications or loans. By building HTML5 viewing capabilities into their FinTech solutions, developers can help customers track the status and history of their finances, which is certainly a major concern as they monitor the status of their stimulus payments.

Interactive Tools

With all of the nuances surrounding COVID stimulus payments in the latest round of legislation, many customers will be turning to their FinTech lender to understand how much money they can expect to receive based on their eligibility. A well-designed spreadsheet may be able to provide this or similar information much more quickly than building a dedicated tool within an application, but downloading XLSX files can be a hassle for many people, especially for customers who primarily interact with their FinTech bank using a mobile device. By giving firms the ability to securely embed spreadsheets into their applications, developers can help them to quickly share tools and resources with customers, regardless of what kind of device they’re using.

Empowering the FinTech Future with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of SDK and API integrations allow FinTech developers to build a broad range of features into their applications to streamline processing and accelerate vital financial services. 

Our FormSuite forms SDK collection can automate form identification and OCR data capture to help FinTech applications maintain their speed advantage when it comes to processing applications and loans. For financial platforms that need comprehensive viewing functionality, PrizmDoc Viewer’s HTML5 viewing, annotation, and redaction capabilities can turn any platform into a powerful document viewer that helps users handle most of their financial business purely through their FinTech application. 

And when it comes to embedding interactive spreadsheets to provide quick reference and calculations for various services, PrizmDoc Cells allows developers to bypass the difficult work of building that functionality from the ground up. To learn more about how Accusoft integrations are powering the next generation of FinTech applications, visit our financial services page and download our FinTech integrations fact sheet.