Technical FAQs

Question

How accurate is PrizmDoc Viewer’s auto-redaction process? Is there any estimate of the percentage of matches that it will fail to redact?

Answer

If you’re performing auto-redaction as described in our documentation, then all matches for the input regular expression will be redacted in the final document. However, it’s difficult to express that confidence in the form of a percentage. PrizmDoc is subjected to a suite of automatic testing to ensure that its services are behaving as intended, including redactions. We never release a new version unless it passes 100% of those tests.

That being said, the primary way that inaccuracy could enter the system is if you’re attempting to redact scanned documents that have been OCRed. In this case, it’s a matter of your OCR software’s accuracy, rather than the accuracy of PrizmDoc’s redaction process. If the searchable text of the document doesn’t accurately reflect the visible text on the page (for example, if a smudged “discovery” is incorrectly recognized as “disccvery”), then the auto-redaction will be unable to recognize it due to the incorrect input it has been given. This isn’t a problem if the documents were not OCRed.

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Question

We are currently using PrizmDoc Cloud licensing. After applying our cloud license, the Prizm services started and show healthy, however, I see “CloudLicenseValidationFailed” errors in the PccErrors.log file. Is this normal, and do I have to worry about Prizm functionality?

Answer

Currently the licensing messages referencing “CloudLicenseValidationFailed” in PccErrors.log are a false positive and should not be taken as an issue with PrizmDoc Cloud licensing.
The more accurate way to check whether the license has been validated successfully would be to use watchdog.log and look for “Cloud License Validation” – “isValid”:true which indicates that the license is valid.

The issue regarding that error in pccerrors.log is in our product backlog to consider addressing in a future release, but it is not yet prioritized on our roadmap.

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TAMPA, Fla. – 2021 marks the 30th anniversary for Accusoft Corporation, the longtime leader in content, processing, conversion, and automation technologies for developers.

Headquartered in Tampa, FL, Accusoft was founded in 1991 as Pegasus Imaging, a provider of technology and solutions to the photo and document imaging markets. In 1998, Pegasus Imaging expanded into medical compression technologies. This technology was adopted by some of the largest medical technology companies in the world, including GE Healthcare, McKesson, Phillips Medical Systems, Siemens Medical Solutions, and Toshiba.

Between 2004-2008 Pegasus Imaging acquired TMSSequoia and Accusoft which moved the company into the forms processing and image cleanup technologies. In 2012, Pegasus Imaging was rebranded to Accusoft Corporation. 

Today, after seeing three decades of change and innovation, Accusoft is proud to bring new technologies to market, driven by the goal of improving the document lifecycle experience for businesses and their employees. 

Most recently Accusoft created and launched OnTask and the Accusoft PDF Viewer. OnTask is a workflow automation tool that makes it easy for small to mid-sized businesses to digitally send and fill forms, get signatures on documents, and automate overall business processes.The Accusoft PDF Viewer is a JavaScript SDK that easily integrates into a developer’s web application to enable PDF viewing and annotation features with no server dependencies.

“Every day I am so amazed by the talent and passion of the team we have built at Accusoft,” said Accusoft CEO Jack Berlin. “30 years in business is a testament to our employees, as well as the innovation and quality of the products we bring to the market.”

For more information about Accusoft, please visit https://www.accusoft.com/.

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 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.

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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.

 

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On March 10, 2021, Accusoft announced the arrival of the free-to-use Accusoft PDF Viewer, the latest addition to its family of PDF solutions. An entirely client-side integration with no complicated server dependencies, this lightweight JavaScript PDF viewer also features a responsive UI for out-of-the-box mobile support.

“We’re excited to offer this free version of the Accusoft PDF Viewer to developers,” says Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “Our team worked hard to build a viewer that’s a step above what you can get from open source offerings. We think it’s going to solve a lot of the problems developers typically encounter with existing PDF libraries.”

Accusoft PDF Viewer integrates into an application quickly and easily with just a few snippets of code. It runs entirely within the browser to deliver an optimized viewing experience across all devices. The intuitive UI controls allow users to zoom, pan, jump to page, navigate thumbnails, and pinch-to-zoom on mobile screens with ease. And thanks to lightning fast full-text search, locating essential information is easier than ever.

“Accusoft PDF Viewer is great for developers because it allows them to maintain complete control over documents without having to set up any cumbersome server infrastructure,” says Mark Hansen, Product Manager. “Having a responsive UI that adapts to mobile displays will also increase their flexibility tremendously.”

The free version of Accusoft PDF Viewer allows developers to quickly add powerful viewing capabilities to their web applications. We’re currently working on additional features (such as annotation and eSignature) that will be included in an upgraded paid version.

To learn more about Accusoft PDF Viewer or download it for a first-hand look, please visit our website.

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 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.

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On July 23, 2021, Accusoft announced the latest update to SmartZone, its versatile data capture SDK for forms processing. The version 6.1 update expands the integration’s already robust language support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) by adding 65 new languages, with a special emphasis on Central European, Cyrillic, Baltic, and Asian language groups.

“We have a strong customer base in North America with SmartZone, but we’ve received multiple customer requests to expand support to a global range of languages,” said Irina Tabac, Product Manager for Forms and Cloud APIs at Accusoft. “This update will help developers serve their international customers better and offer OCR support for new customers around the world.”

Newly supported languages include: 

  • Turkish
  • Malay
  • Russian
  • Polish
  • Greek
  • Chinese
  • Korean
  • Japanese
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
  • And over 50 more…

SmartZone v6.1 also expands the SDK’s OCR capabilities to include full page recognition for forms processing. Now developers can give their forms processing applications the ability to capture data using targeted zonal recognition or by extracting text from the entire page.

Available as an individual SDK or as part of the FormSuite Collection, SmartZone’s data capture technology eliminates the need for manual data entry in forms workflows. To learn more about Accusoft’s SmartZone OCR/ICR SDK or download a trial for a first-hand look, please visit our website.

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 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.

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NEWS PROVIDED BY

Tampa Bay Tech

TAMPA, FL, UNITED STATES, August 19, 2021 — The Tampa Bay Software CEO Council, founded by Tampa Bay Tech, selected Tampa Bay Area non-profit Computer Mentors as the recipient of the group’s annual fundraising efforts. This month, they presented Computer Mentors founder and Executive Director Ralph Smith with a check for more than $10,000.

“Every year we look for a local charity to connect with and the work Computer Mentors is doing to promote tech with area kids completely aligns with our mission,” said Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “The work they’re doing to empower kids to pursue careers in tech is instrumental to the future of Tampa Bay as a growing tech hub.”

Computer Mentors works to build opportunity through expertise for the underserved youth of the community. By establishing and building upon a fundamental skillset covering programming, entrepreneurism, public speaking, and more; Computer Mentors gives its students the tools and talent they need to become savvy, self-starting achievers in a tech-centric world.

The Software CEO Council comprises the area’s premier businesses, executives, and entrepreneurs of Tampa Bay’s technology community. Its mission is to create the largest communal ecosystem for tech startups in the state of Florida and put Tampa Bay on the map as a beacon for innovation and success, to foster talent and fuel growth. Council companies include A-LIGN, Accusoft, AgileThought, Bond-Pro, CrossBorder Solutions, Digital Hands, Geographic Solutions, Haneke Design, MercuryWorks, Sourcetoad, Spirion and SunView Software.

https://www.tampasoftwareceos.com/

“Tampa Bay Tech’s Software CEO Council represents several of our area’s most innovative, growing companies, and we are honored to be the recipient of their generous gift to our kids,” said Smith. “Donations like this help fund much-needed programs to help level the playing field for our kids and develop the next generation of talent right here in Tampa Bay.”

About Tampa Bay Tech:

Tampa Bay Tech is a 501(c) 6 non-profit technology council that has been engaging and uniting the local technology community for 20 years. Through their membership and partnerships their mission is to build a radically connected, flourishing tech hub where opportunity is abundant for all. With over 125 companies representing thousands of tech employees – as well as thousands of students within the area’s colleges and universities – Tampa Bay Tech provides programming and initiatives to connect the community, provide development opportunities, and support Tampa Bay’s growing workforce.

Jill St Thomas
Tampa Bay Tech
jill@tampabay.tech

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 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.

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Question

How can I determine what version of PrizmDoc Viewer my server is running?

Answer

To check the server version, make a GET request to:

http://localhost:18681/PCCIS/V1/Service/Current/Info

You can make a get request by navigating to the URL in your browser. The JSON response will have a "pccisVersion" property, which is the version number you are looking for. A similar GET to the following URL will determine the PAS version:

http://localhost:3000/info

The JSON response’s "version" property is what you are looking for. Keep in mind that differing version numbers don’t necessarily indicate a mismatch, as long as the major and minor version numbers sync-up. For example, the PCCIS version 13.5.33.5696 and PAS version 13.5.0000.1816 are from the same release (13.5).

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Question

The logging for ImageGear C & C++ Deployment Packaging Wizard (DPW) is showing different output for some components since v19.3, why is this?

In ImageGear C & C++ v19.2 and prior, the DPW had additional logging information for the ARTX component in its deployment.log:

Deploying an application that uses the ARTXGUI library of ImageGear
ARTX Component requires the following merge modules to be installed:

Microsoft_VC90_CRT_x86_x64.msm

Microsoft_VC90_MFC_x86_x64.msm

But since v19.3, the logs are no longer telling me to install these modules. Is this a mistake, or are they no longer necessary?

Answer

This was an intentional change on our end, and the Deployment Packaging Wizard (DPW) is working as intended. We made some updates to the DPW in the latest release; one update is that the CRM requirements for CORE (which is required in every project) now also covers the ARTX component. If the DPW is not saying you need additional components to use the ARTX component, then you’ll be fine.

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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.

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Question

Can PrizmDoc handle password-protected files, such as PDFs or Excel files?
How would a user specify a password for a particular document?

Answer

It is possible to specify the password for a password-protected document when creating a viewing session in PrizmDoc. When sending a request to create a viewing session, you’ll use the password field in the request body to specify the password. For example…

POST http://localhost:3000/ViewingSession
Content-Type: application/json
{
    "source": {
        "type": "url",
        "url": "https://www.usability.gov/sites/default/files/creating-wireframes.pdf"
    },
    "password": "hunter2"
}

(Replace "hunter2" with the actual password)

Please note that even if a file needs a password and is not provided one (or is provided one that’s incorrect), the viewing session should still be created successfully. The easiest method to determine whether the password is needed/correct is to make a call to get the page. You can do this by making a GET request to the GetPage route using the viewingSessionId created earlier, like so…

GET pas_base_url/Page/q/0?DocumentID=u{viewingSessionId}

…be sure to replace pas_base_url with the root of your Prizm Application Services (PAS) instance (usually this is http://localhost:3000) and replace {viewingSessionId} with the actual value for viewingSessionId created in the previous step.

The above call will return 200 OK if the page load is successful. If a password is required/incorrect, you should see a return status code 480. There will be additional response headers called accusoft-status-number and accusoft-status-message, which should be 4001 and "Document requires a password", respectively.

You can see the above in greater detail in the product documentation here.

You can use this information to re-create a viewing session with the correct password.

Currently, there is a feature request planned for a potential future release of PrizmDoc to prompt the user for a password if one is required.

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TAMPA, Fla. – On September 22, 2020, Accusoft announced its latest SDK, ImageGear PDF. This integration enables developers to add a variety of PDF functionalities into an application.

“We are proud to add ImageGear PDF as the latest addition to our product portfolio,” says Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “We recognized a need in the market for a more robust PDF solution that developers could use to enhance their products. Using our proprietary technology, I knew we could bridge that gap.”

ImageGear PDF gives end-users the ability to merge multiple PDFs, split a PDF into multiple PDFs, rearrange pages within a PDF, add pages or remove pages in a PDF, and more. The SDK adds programmatic annotation capabilities as well as compression, signature, comparison, and data capture.

“ImageGear PDF is a great tool for developers looking to enhance their application,” says Mark Hansen, Sr. Product Manager of SDKs. “Accusoft has a variety of different PDF solutions, but we wanted to add a more robust SDK that solves PDF pain points more efficiently.”

ImageGear PDF is available with an optical character recognition (OCR) add-on feature, which programmers can use to search for specific characters within a document, highlight different sections, and markup the output for easier viewing and collaboration. To learn more about ImageGear PDF, please visit our website at accusoft.com/products/imagegear-collection/imagegear-pdf/.

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 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.

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