Technical FAQs for "Barcode Xpress"

Today’s customers expect more of software applications than ever before. Piecemeal solutions that provide only a few noteworthy features are quickly being overtaken by more comprehensive platforms that deliver an end-to-end experience for users. This has prompted developers to incorporate more capabilities, while also building innovative features that set their solutions apart from the competition. Thanks to third-party software integrations, they’re able to meet both demands.

What is Third-Party Software Integration?

Third-party software integrations typically come in the form of SDKs or APIs that provide applications with specialized capabilities. Rather than building complex features like optical character recognition (OCR), PDF features, or image cleanup from scratch, developers can instead incorporate the necessary features directly into their software via an SDK or use an API call to access capabilities without expanding their application’s footprint.

From a user experience standpoint, third-party software integrations allow developers to build more cohesive software solutions that provide all the essential features a customer may require. Instead of pushing them into a separate application to interact with documents, provide a signature, or fill out a digital form, they can instead deliver an unbroken experience that’s easier to navigate and manage from start to finish.  

4 Key Third-Party Software Benefits

There are a number of important benefits organizations can gain from using third-party software integrations, but four stand out in particular:

1. Reduce Development Costs

When evaluating whether it makes sense to build functionality for an application in-house or buy a third-party software integration, cost is frequently one of the key considerations. There is often a tendency to think that it would be more cost-effective to have developers already working on the project simply build the capabilities they need on their own. After all, there’s no shortage of open-source SDKs and other tools that are available without having to pay licensing or product fees.

In practice, however, this approach usually ends up being more expensive in the long run. That’s because the developers working on the project often lack the experience needed to build those capabilities quickly. A software engineer hired to help build AI software, for instance, probably doesn’t know a lot about file conversion or annotation. While they might be able to find an open-source tool to build those features, they still need to do quite a bit of development work and on-the-job learning to get the new capabilities stood up and thoroughly tested. 

Focusing on these features means they’re not focusing on the more innovative aspects of their application. From a cost standpoint, that means they’re being paid to build something that’s already readily available in the market. When these internal development costs are taken into account, it’s almost always more cost effective to buy ready-to-implement software features built by an experienced third party. As the saying goes, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. 

2. Get to Market Faster

Software developers are always working against the clock. With new applications hitting the market faster than ever, there’s tremendous pressure to keep development timelines on track and avoid missing important deadlines. This helps projects stay within their expected budgets and prevents potential competitors from getting to market faster. Any steps that can be taken to accelerate development and potentially shorten the timeline to releasing a product could mean the difference between becoming an industry innovator or being labeled as an also-ran.

Third-party software integrations allow developers to quickly and seamlessly integrate essential capabilities into applications without compromising their project timeline. Rather than building features like forms processing, document annotation, and image conversion from scratch, teams can instead use third-party SDKs and APIs to add proven, reliable, and secure features in a fraction of the time. By keeping projects on or ahead of schedule, they can focus on delivering a better, more robust product that exceeds customer expectations. 

3. Expand Application Features & Functionality

Software development teams typically possess the experience and expertise needed to build the core architecture and innovative features of a new application. In many cases, they’re designing something novel that will provide a point of differentiation in the market. The more time they can spend on refining and expanding those capabilities, the more likely the application is to make an impact and win over customers.

What these developers often lack, however, are the skills needed to implement a variety of other features that will enhance the application’s functionality. Features like document conversion, OCR, PDF support, digital forms, eSignature, and image compression are complex and difficult to build from scratch. By integrating third-party software, developers can leverage proven, feature-rich technology to expand their application’s capabilities. This not only allows them to improve their solution’s versatility but also enhance the overall user experience by eliminating the need for external programs or troublesome plug-ins. 

4. Access Specialized Engineering Support

Incorporating features like PDF support, image conversion, and document redaction into an application poses several challenges. Some of those challenges don’t show up right away, instead, they become evident long after a software product launches. If the developers don’t have a lot of experience with the technology behind those features, minor issues can quickly escalate into serious problems that leave customers unhappy and willing to look elsewhere for alternatives. No organization wants to be caught in a situation where a bug embedded in an open-source tool renders a client’s valuable assets unusable.

By leveraging proven, tested, and secure third-party software integrations, developers gain access to support from experienced engineering teams with deep knowledge of their solutions. In addition to documentation and code samples, they can also speak directly with developers who can provide guidance on how to best integrate features and resolve issues when they emerge. The best integration providers will even work with organizations to customize their solutions to meet specific application needs, which helps create even smoother user experiences and enhances reliability.

Integrating Third-Party Software with Accusoft

For over 30 years, Accusoft has helped organizations add essential features like barcode recognition, file conversion, document assembly, and image compression to their applications through an innovative line of SDKs and APIs. Our document lifecycle technologies are backed by multiple patents and have been incorporated successfully into a wide range of applications. Our dedicated engineers provide ongoing support and work closely with customers to implement their specific use cases, ensuring that their software platform is delivering the best possible experience.

To learn more about integrating third-party software with Accusoft SDKs and APIs, talk to one of our solutions experts today.

Barcodes continue to be an essential tool for today’s organizations, whether they’re using them for managing supply chains or sorting documents within a complex digital workflow. Since the early 1990s, however, the potential use cases of barcodes have expanded tremendously. That’s largely due to the invention of the quick response barcode, better known as the QR Code. Developed by the Japanese manufacturer Denso Wave in 1994, this two-dimensional barcode revolutionized the way data was encoded and scanned. Today, QR Codes can be found practically everywhere, along with their smaller cousins, the Micro QR Code.

What Is a Micro QR Code?

Although the standard QR Code could hold a tremendous amount of information, that ability occasionally created challenges for specialized use cases where space was at a premium. Small components like circuit boards or machinery parts, for example, often couldn’t accommodate a QR Code. Even when they could, much of the QR Code’s storage capacity wasn’t being used to its full potential. For use cases where space was at a premium and only a small amount of data needed to be encoded, a more compact version of the QR Code was needed.

The Micro QR Code was designed to solve this specific challenge. Roughly half the size of the conventional QR Code, this smaller version still provided many of the benefits of its bigger cousin, including finder patterns to orient the image properly, multiple levels of error correction, and support for Japanese Kanji, Kana, and Hiragana characters.

The Anatomy of a Micro QR Code

A Micro QR Code consists of four elements that allow it to encode data and provide a barcode reader with instructions for how to read the contents.

Data Modules

Like any other QR Code, Micro QR Codes store binary data in square modules. While the human eye only registers the black modules, a computer scanner also registers white modules when reading the code. A black square represents a binary 1 while white squares are read as a binary 0. The amount of information that can be encoded into these modules changes depending upon the size of the barcode. Micro QR Codes can be written in four different sizes (more on that in a moment), allowing them to store up to 35 numeric digits, 21 alphanumeric characters, or 128 data bits.

Finder Pattern

The finder pattern is the square “bull’s eye” that appears in the upper-left hand corner of a Micro QR Code. This pattern ensures that the barcode is oriented and scanned correctly when read by an application. Since Micro QR Codes contain less complex data, they only require a single pattern finder while a conventional QR Code uses three. While many QR Codes also require an alignment pattern to correct for crookedness or distortion, Micro QR Codes are not large enough for these problems to create much of an issue during scanning.

Timing Pattern

A series of alternating black and white modules running vertically along the left side and horizontally along top of the barcode, the timing pattern is used to configure the rest of the data grid for the scanner. By reading the timing pattern, the scanner software can quickly determine the size of the barcode’s data matrix, as well as the symbol and version density.

Quiet Zone

A clear margin space surrounding the rest of the barcode elements, the quiet zone makes the boundaries easy for scanning software to detect and identify. While a conventional QR Code requires four or more modules of empty space, a Micro QR Code only needs a two module-wide space. This helps to keep the barcode compact regardless of how much data is encoded within it.

Micro QR Code Sizes and Error Correction

Depending upon the amount of data encoded, Micro QR Codes can be written in one of four sizes. The smallest version, M1, consists of 11×11 modules, while the largest, M4, is 17×17 modules. Each size above M1 can support different levels of error correction, although the more thorough the error correction, the less data can be encoded.

Error correction is based on the Reed-Solomon algorithm and allows scanning software to recover lost, poorly printed, or damaged barcode data. Versions M2 and M3 offer two levels of error correction:

• Level L (Low): Capable of recovering up to seven percent of encoded data.
• Level M (Medium): Capable of recovering up to 15 percent of encoded data.

As mentioned above, higher levels of error correction impact the amount of data that can be encoded into Micro QR Code modules. That’s because the redundancies necessary to support error correction algorithms take up available space. Increasing an M3 barcode’s error correction from level L to Level M, for instance, would reduce the number of numeric characters that could be supported from 23 to 18.

An M4 Micro QR Code contains enough modules to support a third level of error correction:

• Level Q (Quartile): Capable of recovering up to 25 percent of encoded data.

Although level Q provides excellent durability, it leaves much less space for encoding data. An M4 barcode with this level of error correction actually holds less data than an M3 barcode with level L error correction. When writing a Micro QR Code, it’s important to determine what level of error correction is actually necessary for the use case at hand rather than simply defaulting to the most robust option.

Differences Between Micro QR Codes and Conventional QR Codes

While Micro QR Codes use many of the same 2d barcode principles as traditional QR Codes, it’s not quite accurate to think of them as a condensed version. They have some notable differences that make them more or less suited to specific use cases.

Micro QR Codes

• Provide up to three levels of error correction.
• Needs only a single finder pattern for orientation.
• Can encode up to 128 bits.

Conventional QR Codes

• Provide up to four levels of error correction.
• Requires three finder patterns for orientation.
• Can encode up to 23,658 bits.

Enhance Your Barcode Capabilities with Barcode Xpress

Adding barcode recognition capabilities to an application can help to streamline document management workflows and allow organizations to route files more efficiently. Developers can easily integrate the ability to read and write barcodes into their platforms using a barcode SDK like Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress. With support for more than 30 unique barcode types, including Micro QR Barcodes, this versatile SDK provides the tools to support a wide range of use cases that call for fast, accurate barcode recognition.

For a hands-on evaluation of how Barcode Xpress will perform in your development environment, download a free trial today or start a conversation with one of our SDK specialists.

Although once consigned to retail and supply chain management systems, barcodes are finding their way into applications across a wide range of industries and use cases. Scannable barcodes are ideally suited for a variety of automation strategies because they enable software to identify and sort assets efficiently with minimal processing resources. Rather than relying on error-prone manual practices or building complex artificial intelligence (AI) tools to manage assets, developers can simply deploy barcodes to track them and route information to the proper destination.  In this post we explore the 5 Factors to Consider when Selecting a Barcode SDK.

When selecting a barcode SDK for integration into their software, developers need to ask a few important questions to make sure they’re getting the right tools for the job. Identifying the priorities and features that matter most pre-integration makes it easier to choose a barcode SDK that’s capable of growing with the application’s needs.  

5 Factors to Consider When Selecting a Barcode SDK

1. How accurate is the recognition?

This question might seem a little obvious, but a barcode reader that doesn’t deliver accurate results is going to create far more problems than it solves. Depending upon the use case, an application may frequently encounter barcodes that are blurry, torn, skewed, or even printed in reverse. If a barcode SDK lacks the image processing capabilities necessary to read those codes accurately, it will routinely report errors and read information incorrectly.

The most sophisticated barcode integrations take an intelligent approach to improve accuracy by processing and editing the scanned barcode as needed to create a readable, black and white image. Once the image is properly rotated and deskewed, the SDK can deploy a library of customized algorithms to apply the most relevant solution for common problems, such as image blur, noise, and missing pixels to maximize reading accuracy. 

2. How fast is it?

For enterprise applications where barcodes must be read in large batches, speed is essential. A high performance barcode SDK will be optimized for processing speed and support multi-threading so applications can read barcodes as fast as their hardware allows. The best way to test barcode reader speed is to simply run a timed test of 1,000 barcodes from a set of data. This will provide a real-world speed measurement for specific use cases.

3. How many barcode types does it recognize?

There are many different types of barcodes used across a variety of industries, each one using a slightly different format for encoding data. Even a limited use case could require several variants of barcodes. Selecting a barcode SDK that supports a broad selection of 1D barcodes and 2D barcodes is essential for providing applications with the ability to grow and expand functionality in the future.

4. How versatile is the recognition?

Barcodes aren’t always presented in the most ideal format. Even in a specific use case like document management, barcodes may not be used uniformly across every file. A versatile barcode SDK should be able to recognize barcodes no matter where they appear on a page or how they’re oriented. It should also have the ability to quickly identify different types of barcodes so the application doesn’t need to be reconfigured every time it processes files. Support for multiple file formats also allows developers to apply barcode recognition to a variety of workflows.

5. Is it easy to integrate?

A well-designed SDKs should be flexible enough to integrate seamlessly with an existing application. Difficult to implement solutions can quickly lead to lost development time and wasted resources. By selecting a barcode SDK that can get up and running quickly, developers can keep projects on time and get their solutions to market faster with the features their customers need.

BONUS: 5 More Factors to Consider When Selecting a Barcode SDK

6. Does it also write barcodes?

While the ability to read barcodes quickly and accurately is certainly important, many applications also need to be able to generate barcodes as part of a broader asset management system. Barcode SDKs should be able to write multiple barcode types to help organizations track and route data within their applications.

7. Is it suitable for document management?

While many organizations are now using barcodes as part of their document management systems, not every barcode SDK is well-suited to this task. Several barcode integrations are more focused on physical scanners for inventory management and retail use cases rather than the specific needs of digital documents. Developers building document management systems need to make sure their barcode SDK is specifically optimized for reading and writing barcodes on digital documents to get the best results for their applications.

8. What programming languages does it support?

Developers aren’t going to get very far implementing a barcode SDK if it doesn’t support their application’s programming language. Whether software teams are building products in .NET framework, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, Linux (C/C++), Android, or iOS, they need to secure an SDK that’s compatible with their environment when the time comes for integration.

9. Does it offer developer support?

Barcode processing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There will always be problems with source data (scanned images), and code types are constantly evolving. Working with a vendor that’s committed to supporting their SDK and providing assistance to customers as they work through implementation and performance issues can make the process much smoother. In many cases, this guidance is essential to achieve high accuracy in real-world situations where barcodes and images are far from perfect. Ongoing and active support also ensures that the barcode SDK will receive regular security and performance upgrades. This factor alone makes them a much better choice than a number of unsupported, open-source solutions.

10. Does it provide performance data?

Confidence values help developers actively track barcode recognition performance. This allows them to identify potential issues with reading certain barcodes and understand where errors are most likely to occur. Based on that information, they can actively adjust confidence thresholds to optimize application workflows to prioritize speed in some situations and more rigorous accuracy in others.

Build a Better Barcode Application with Barcode Xpress

Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress is a powerful barcode SDK integration that provides a combination of speed, accuracy, and flexibility. In just a few lines of code, developers can give applications the power to detect, read, and write more than 30 different types of barcodes. Barcode Xpress can recognize multiple barcodes on a page in milliseconds and read broken, damaged, and incomplete codes that other SDKs fail to register.

We’re constantly working to improve Barcode Xpress to add new features and improve usability. Available for multiple operating systems, our barcode SDK is fully optimized for document management to support automation processes and efficient data capture. We constantly test it with the most troublesome barcodes we can find, and that’s one reason it’s become the most reliable toolkit in the industry. Download a free evaluation copy to test it with your own barcodes and judge how it performs in your development environment. 

Legal organizations faced tremendous challenges in 2020 due to the impacts of COVID-19. Firms and departments rapidly transitioned to remote work environments and were forced to rely upon their established technology resources more than ever before. While the industry fared better than many others, the experience has caused organizations to rethink their longstanding business models and workflow processes. As firms consider what steps to take in 2021 and beyond, LegalTech developers must be closely attuned to the pressures informing those decisions so they can provide the software to support automation in law firms.

The research firm Gartner provided a glimpse into those pressures in a 2020 survey focused on legal spending trends. Their findings reveal an industry in transition as legal organizations increasingly work to expand their internal capabilities, improve legal document automation, and reduce reliance on outside spending. LegalTech developers are uniquely positioned to facilitate this inward turn with versatile legal workflow automation software.

Turning Weaknesses Into Strengths

The COVID-19 pandemic forced law firms and legal departments to take notice of organizational shortcomings that often escaped notice in previous years. According to Gartner research, the biggest area of concern was by far technology solutions. Some organizations found themselves saddled with legacy systems that lacked the robust feature set of modern LegalTech applications. Others, however, wisely made the investment in new software over the last decade, but those systems have not been fully adopted by legal personnel. This echoes the results from a 2020 Accusoft survey that found over 40 percent of firms are still relying on inefficient manual processes for document assembly, discovery, signature gathering, redaction, and contract management. 

For LegalTech developers, these twin shortcomings present a tremendous opportunity. Legal organizations will be in need of technology solutions that help them to automate low-value tasks and enhance collaboration capabilities while also looking to secure broader acceptance and buy-in from employees. That means delivering a streamlined, intuitive user experience will be every bit as important as integrating the latest legal workflow automation software.

Identifying Opportunities

The LegalTech market is a diverse and rapidly growing field that consists of multiple technology solutions. Gartner’s 2020 research into legal organizations offers a helpful snapshot of how far these firms and departments have to go when it comes to legal technology adoption and automation in law firms:

• E-Billing: 48 percent
• Contract LIfecycle Management: 44 percent
• Document Management: 40 percent
• eDiscovery: 33 percent
• Records Management: 28 percent

Although overall legal spend did not change substantially from 2019 to 2020, the pandemic has caused firms to shift resources away from outsourced services and toward their in-house capabilities. With nearly a third of organizations looking to accelerate their technology, there are significant opportunities for LegalTech developers to deliver efficient and cost-effective solutions. Contract automation tools, document management platforms, and eDiscovery applications will all be in high demand thanks to their ability to help firms enhance their productivity and scale services in a sustainable fashion.

Improving Implementation

Understanding the work culture and processes of a legal organization is critical to any successful technology implementation. Without that knowledge, developers can end up building a solution that doesn’t meet a customer’s needs or is too removed from existing workflows to be easily adopted. This problem was quite pronounced in the early days of LegalTech software, when many legal professionals still had doubts about the usefulness of technology.

Communication between developers and legal departments is quickly improving, however. From 2018 to 2020, the number of organizations with a legal operations manager in place increased by 75.8 percent. In 40 percent of firms, that role is filled by a non-lawyer who is better equipped to facilitate conversations between software developers and internal stakeholders.

LegalTech developers can use this channel to get a better idea of how they can implement solutions like legal document automation through an organization’s existing technology stack with minimal disruption. They can also begin to address specific internal pain points and match those needs to the right software integrations to round out their application’s functionality. Versatile SDK and API integrations will play a crucial role in meeting these needs because developers may have to build out customized feature sets to provide the ideal capabilities.

Doing More with Less

Developers with the ability to build out customizable, flexible software applications can also help legal customers to eliminate redundant or outdated solutions they already have in place. There’s no reason for a firm to rely on one program for assembling documents, another for viewing and redlining them, and yet another for redacting them to protect privacy. With the right software integrations, LegalTech developers can build core productivity features into their platforms quickly and easily. They can then offer a comprehensive solution that solves multiple customer needs and allows them to incorporate more of their workflows into a comprehensive, secure application environment.

This consolidation of LegalTech capabilities will continue to be important as all but the largest legal organizations transition toward a more customer service-oriented business model that emphasizes competitive, transparent pricing and “off-the-shelf” legal services. Legal collaboration will increasingly expand to include the firm’s clients, which makes the adoption of easily-accessible web applications more important than ever. An ideal LegalTech solution will allow legal teams to share information easily, quickly, and securely with people inside and outside their organization. Developers can build the applications that make this possible, ushering in a new era of transparency, collaboration, and efficiency that will help firms continue to grow.

Choosing the Right Integrations

Accusoft’s collection of SDK and API integrations have long helped LegalTech developers incorporate the powerful features their customers are looking for into their applications. By turning to contract assembly tools like PrizmDoc Editor or the legal document automation capabilities of Barcode Xpress, software teams can quickly implement core functionality while dedicating the bulk of their resources to building innovative new features that will set their product apart in a crowded market. 

The benefits of selecting the right integration partner are particularly evident when looking at eDiscovery applications. Developing a comprehensive LegalTech eDiscovery platform requires a wide-range of viewing, annotation, comparison, conversion, search, and redaction options. Building those features from scratch can extend development timelines by months, which could potentially cost a software developer their chance to break into a highly competitive market. With an API integration like PrizmDoc Viewer, however, they can rapidly integrate proven features into their application to help deliver better performance to customers while also getting to market faster and saving valuable resources that may be needed elsewhere during the development cycle. 

To learn more about how Accusoft’s family of SDK and API integrations can transform your LegalTech application and improve automation in law firms, have a look at our LegalTech Fact Sheet and match the right solution to your development needs.

Although digital solutions are gradually finding their way into legal practices, there is still a great deal of progress that needs to be made with regards to the discovery process. The dramatic growth of electronic documents over the last few decades has seen the emergence of eDiscovery, which involves all electronic aspects of gathering, identifying, and producing information in preparation for a lawsuit or investigation. Resources gathered during the eDiscovery process are referred to as electronically stored information (ESI) and can consist of things like documents, emails, databases, voicemails, audio/video files, website content, and social media posts.

Today’s LegalTech developers have created a variety of applications to streamline the eDiscovery process and make it easier for legal teams to comply with the regulations pertaining to the management of ESI. Unfortunately, 48 percent of legal professionals admit that their organization is still conducting much of their research and discovery manually. 

By continuing to rely on cumbersome, error prone manual processes, these organizations are missing out on many of the benefits offered by eDiscovery software. This creates an opportunity for LegalTech developers that are continuing to build eDiscovery tools to meet the evolving needs of the legal industry.

5 Undiscovered Benefits of eDiscovery Tools

1. Lower Costs

While there’s a lot more to eDiscovery software than cost savings, it’s important for firms and departments to understand just how much time they could be saving with eDiscovery tools. According to data from Thomson Reuters, the typical lawyer takes about 51 minutes to locate a key document during the litigation process, but using an eDiscovery solution can reduce that time to a mere 16 minutes. The saved time can easily be directed toward more high value tasks, which allows firms to deliver better value to their clients.

LegalTech developers can help deliver these cost-effective platforms by keeping their own costs under control. Implementing key features like file viewing and document assembly by way of SDKs and APIs rather than building them from scratch is one of the best ways to keep projects on time and under budget. 

Designing user interfaces that legal teams can quickly understand and use effectively is also crucial because it increases the likelihood that new platforms will be adopted and used within a firm. Any discovery tasks that can be automated should be integrated into application workflows so that lawyers can spend less time managing documents and more time honing their legal strategy for a case.

2. Better Information

One of the challenges of discovery is the sheer quantity of information that needs to be managed. While a small case may only amount to a gigabyte or two worth of documents, that data could very easily consist of hundreds of files, many of which might not have any relevance to the case itself. 

This is especially true when it comes to records of electronic communication. Simply CCing a relevant party on an email, for instance, could suddenly add dozens or even hundreds of emails to the discovery process. The right eDiscovery tool can help to winnow down this massive trove of data by screening documents for relevance and eliminating redundant or immaterial information.

LegalTech developers can streamline the eDiscovery process by incorporating powerful full-text search tools that can help litigators find what they need quickly and easily. Documents can even be assigned barcodes as they’re scanned into the system so they can be routed to the proper storage location while their metadata is passed along to a database for easy reference in the future. Comparison tools can help identify differences between similar documents and avoid redundancies.  

3. Privacy Protection

Although most legal teams understand the importance of protecting confidential and private information found in so many documents, they don’t always know the best way to protect it. Redacting content from printed documents can be difficult enough, but all kinds of mistakes are frequently made when it comes to digital files. 

Without dedicated eDiscovery software, firms and departments often end up making classic redaction mistakes like covering text with a black box or changing the text color to match the document background. Using the right eDiscovery tools to redact sensitive content helps to ensure that firms are complying with relevant privacy laws.

When it comes to incorporating redaction features into their eDiscovery software, LegalTech developers need to think beyond the purely visual aspects of redaction. True redaction requires more than simply burning annotation markups into a document. 

Any redaction tools they provide must be able to actually remove sensitive content from a file while still retaining an original, unaltered original for internal use and ESI compliance purposes. They should also give users the ability to add redaction reasons when content is removed to provide better context and justification for why it was excised from the document.

4. Compliant ESI Retention

There are complex standards in place governing the preservation of ESI to ensure that the integrity of documents is maintained. Failing to comply with those laws can result in substantial fines and penalties. 

While the digitization of documents should make preserving them much easier than the hard work of maintaining physical files, the task can quickly become chaotic without a dedicated eDiscovery solution. Manually saving files to hard drives without any clear structure is a recipe for files being misplaced. Even worse, improperly converting files from one format to another could alter or erase metadata that is vital for demonstrating ESI compliance.

By building versatile document management and conversion tools into their eDiscovery tools, LegalTech developers can ensure that files are being preserved in accordance with ESI standards. Centralizing all eDiscovery content into a singular workflow makes it much easier to locate any version of a file at any time. 

Once the review process is completed, it’s not uncommon for attorneys to combine many important documents into a single file for easy reference or to break a long document up into several smaller sections. Effective conversion tools should leave the original version of the file intact, along with any unredacted and unannotated versions of documents. 

5. Improved Access to Data

Courtrooms and legal organizations may still rely on paper for many processes, but during the discovery process, they need to be able to manage a dizzying array of file formats as they gather documents, images, and other sources of information. Some legal teams think they will be able to “get by” relying on a patchwork of software to access this data. 

Unfortunately, managing eDiscovery documents with conventional word processors, PDF readers, and email applications is a recipe for confusion and frustration. Files can be lost or altered easily, and sharing them over email can create significant security risks. Dedicated eDiscovery software provides a central hub that not only makes it easy to access and view information, but also allows legal teams to control who has permission to open or comment on files in the first place.

Developers can easily turn their LegalTech solution into a powerful, collaborative eDiscovery platform by incorporating HTML5 viewing technology. With its ability to display multiple different file formats, an HTML5 viewer allows legal teams to open and review documents, images, and other file types gathered during the discovery process without having to switch between multiple applications. 

For LegalTech developers, integrating an HTML5 viewer is a simple way to quickly give users the ability to access the information they need. Since the viewer can run in a web browser, there’s no need to build a complex viewing solution from the ground up, which could pull resources away from working on other innovative LegalTech tools. 

Enhance Your eDiscovery Capabilities with Accusoft

Accusoft’s collection of SDKs and APIs provide LegalTech developers with a broad range of tools that allow them to add powerful features to their applications. Whether it’s the broad HTML5 viewing, annotation, and redaction capabilities of PrizmDoc Viewer or the data capture and conversion tools offered by ImageGear, our integrations deliver the functionality to support your innovative eDiscovery tools.

Check out our whitepaper to find out how implementing the right features can help your LegalTech application capitalize on the latest trends in the eDiscovery software and services market. Talk to one of our LegalTech solutions experts today to learn how Accusoft integrations can unlock your solution’s full potential.

Today’s legal organizations are facing a number of transformative changes when it comes to managing documents. Briefcases and file folders are rapidly being replaced by laptops and tablets, and firms that are unwilling to adapt to the new digital-first landscape are at risk of falling behind their competitors. As LegalTech developers work to build the legal document software to facilitate this complex transition, they need to keep a few of these challenges in mind.

Top 3 Legal Document Management Challenges

1. Transparency

The ability to deliver a quality customer experience has become the key competitive differentiator for many businesses and the legal industry is no exception. While there will always be a market for specialized “big law” firms that provide strategic, customized services to high-end clients, the majority of firms are focusing more on routine legal services. Today’s legal customers expect the same level of transparency they get from other businesses when it comes to pricing, communication, and visibility into the legal process.

Putting the right LegalTech systems in place to facilitate key document management processes can help legal teams build a better relationship with their clients. Developers can provide those systems by integrating essential features like secure document viewing into their applications. An HTML5 viewer with file conversion capabilities makes it easy for firms to share important documents with clients without endangering privacy. Annotation markups can speed up the review process, and redaction tools allow documents to be shared without exposing personally identifiable or confidential information.

2. Contract Automation

For firms handling high volumes of routine legal work, having the right automation tools in place for streamlined legal document management is essential for sustainable growth. According to one estimate, nearly a quarter of legal work could be handled by automation technology, which not only frees up attorneys to focus on more high value tasks, but also allows firms to take on additional clients without overburdening their existing resources.

Contract management is one area where LegalTech developers are making huge strides in terms of automation. Thanks to document assembly tools, it’s now possible to programmatically build contracts from customizable templates, replacing fillable sections with client and case specific information (such as names, dates, and various numbers). Assembling contracts in this fashion significantly reduces the manual errors so often associated with copying and pasting in a word processing program. It also allows firms to draft contracts much more quickly, helping them to accommodate growing workflows as their business scales over time.

3. Accurate Data Capture

Gathering information quickly and accurately is becoming just as important to the legal industry as it is to other sectors. It’s especially valuable for a legal document management system that needs to support complicated processes like eDiscovery, contract negotiation, client intake, and court filings. Without some way of quickly converting documents into digital form, sorting them into the proper database, or finding and retrieving files when they’re needed, attorneys will struggle to handle cases and the needs of their clients efficiently. 

Law firms have been slow to replace their paper-based records systems with digital versions, but LegalTech developers can help to ease the transition by building forms processing and barcode recognition capabilities into their applications. Data extraction tools can pull essential information from a wide range of legal forms much more quickly and accurately than would be possible with manual entry. This is especially useful for streamlining the client intake process.

During the eDiscovery process, it’s not uncommon for firms to gather scanned images of documents that cannot be readily searched. Optical character recognition (OCR) tools can extract the text from these images and use it to create a searchable PDF file. This makes it much easier for attorneys to locate important details when they’re needed most.

When it comes to managing files, assigning barcodes to them makes it easier to sort and track them within the legal document management system. When a document uploaded months ago is needed for a court filing, it can be pulled up right away simply by referencing the barcode. They are extremely useful in instances where large batches of files need to be processed immediately, but not reviewed until later. This is a common issue during eDiscovery, when a batch of documents may be received from one source (such as a government agency) and stored in a database for later review.

Integrating the Right Features LegalTech Customers Need

Although LegalTech solutions understandably put a lot of focus on managing billable hours and facilitating client communication, developers should not overlook the immense value of effective legal document management software. By building these tools directly into their applications, they can provide an all-in-one solution that allows firms to reduce their technical debt and improve efficiency across their practice.

Accusoft’s collection of API and SDK integrations can transform LegalTech platforms into fully-featured document management systems for law firms. We work closely with developers to ensure that we enhance their application’s capabilities with proven technology so they can get to market faster.

If you’re building the next generation of document management systems for law firms, Accusoft has the integrations that will set your application apart from the crowd. Talk to one of our LegalTech specialists today to learn out how we can help you meet the legal industry’s evolving needs.

_ _ _

Accusoft is attending the LegalWeek 2023 event in NYC, are you? Come visit our booth #2304 and discover software to manage your documents better.

For more information on Accusoft’s software integrations for eDiscovery and case management applications, visit our Legal industries page.

The simultaneous development of Pfizer and Moderna’s safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year stands as one of the great feats of recent medical science. Now that the vaccines are available, however, the healthcare industry and government authorities must take on the new challenge of distributing doses to the population quickly and effectively. In some respects, this logistical feat will be every bit as daunting as developing the vaccines themselves.

Fortunately, the use of barcoding in healthcare supply chains and patient records will prove incredibly helpful in overcoming some of the key difficulties in vaccine distribution. Medical barcodes are already being used in many essential applications. For organizations that have yet to fully embrace the potential of digital transformation, barcode processing integrations can help them quickly expand their capabilities to meet the growing demands of vaccine delivery.

4 Ways Medical Barcodes Solve Vaccine Delivery Challenges

1. Better Supply Chain Accuracy Means Less Waste

Given the high costs of manufacturing and distributing the vaccines, there is justifiable concern over the potential for waste. Both versions of the vaccine need to be kept at low temperatures for shipping after manufacture (approximately -90 degrees Fahrenheit for Pfizer and about -10 degrees for Moderna). Once they’re moved to a refrigerator for administration, they cannot be refrozen. While the Moderna vaccine can last for up to 30 days refrigerated (provided the vial is not punctured), the Pfizer vaccine must be discarded after a mere six hours. Further complicating matters, each Pfizer thermal shipping container can potentially hold up to 975 multidose vials (4875 individual doses), whereas each box of Moderna vaccine contains 10 vials (100 doses).

Without accurate inventory and shipment tracking, healthcare providers could easily end up with too much supply in one location and not enough elsewhere. In a worst case scenario, unused doses might even go to waste because they can’t be redirected to another site quickly enough. By incorporating medical barcode scanning throughout the supply chain, healthcare organizations can ensure more efficient distribution during the shipping process. They can also verify that delivery sites have the appropriate storage capacity ahead of time to avoid the possibility of doses going to waste due to lack of freezer space.

2. Improved Dosage Records

One of the key challenges with distributing the currently approved vaccines is that they require multiple doses. Although the doses are identical from a chemical composition and dosage standpoint, the problem is that they must be administered after a specified interval. According to the FDA, that interval is approximately 21 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 28 days for the Moderna vaccine. As healthcare providers work to deliver the vaccine effectively, they must keep accurate records to show who has received the first dose and how much supply of each vaccine shipment should be designated for second doses.

The ability to read and print barcodes providers quickly track where patients are in the vaccination process and ensure that second doses will be available at the appropriate time. This is especially important considering that the vaccines are not interchangeable. Once someone has received the first Pfizer dose, for instance, they should not receive the Moderna vaccine for their second dose (except in exceptional circumstances). By generating a specific barcode after the initial dose and including it with a patient’s health records, providers can quickly and easily match people with the correct vaccine and make sure they have available doses on hand.

3. Keeps Essential Medical Equipment On-Hand

Vaccine distribution involves more than just shipping the doses themselves. Many different accessories are required to administer the vaccine, including protective equipment, vials, rubber stoppers, syringes and needles, and alcohol swabs. Healthcare supply chains were already under significant strain throughout the pandemic, so it should not be taken for granted that providers will have everything they need when the vaccine arrives. Furthermore, as the overall pace of vaccinations increases, it will be important to keep an accurate count of available equipment, especially if a provider does a lot of off-site vaccinations.

Barcoding in healthcare is critical to establishing connections between different elements of the supply chain. By using medical barcode integrations, providers can track and coordinate every piece of equipment needed for vaccine delivery in near-real time. Incorporating the same barcodes into patient records also gives a more up-to-date inventory count as doses are administered, ensuring that hospitals and healthcare facilities don’t run out of essential equipment when they need it most.

4. Expands Distribution Beyond Traditional Supply Chain

Distributing the vaccine in major population centers is difficult enough, but extending delivery into underserved rural areas presents a different set of challenges. These areas often lack the supply chain infrastructure to accommodate the rapid and widespread transfer of medical products. Healthcare providers will need technology tools that allow them to set up remote distribution and treatment centers capable of coordinating with local communities in order to extend their reach into these areas.

While barcoding in healthcare may provide the visibility organizations need into vaccine logistics and patient records, certain regions will also require mobile medical barcode integrations that can put more power and control into the hands of field workers. Rugged, reliable barcode integrations capable of reading broken or damaged barcodes using any mobile device will be essential for overcoming the limitations of rural digital infrastructure.

Unlock the Potential of Barcoding in Healthcare with Barcode Xpress

Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress SDK integration helps healthcare applications read, write, and detect more than thirty different barcode types, even if those images are damaged, broken, or incomplete. With the ability to read multiple barcodes at speeds of up to 1,000 pages per minute, Barcode Xpress can help medical providers take control of their supply chains and manage patient records more efficiently. That same functionality can be extended even further thanks to Barcode Xpress Mobile, which can turn any iOS or Android device into a powerful barcode scanner.

Distributing COVID-19 vaccine doses is one of the great logistical undertakings of the 21st century. By expanding the usage of barcoding in healthcare, providers can create greater transparency into their supply chains to reduce waste and deliver the vaccine more efficiently to the patients who need it most. Find out how Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress can help the medical industry upgrade its infrastructure to meet the challenge of restoring a sense of normalcy to people’s lives and overcoming the pandemic. Try a hands-on demo of our barcode SDK today.

Since they first rolled out in supermarkets in the 1970s, barcodes and barcode scanners have become essential tools in today’s globalized economy. No longer confined to retail shelves and supplier warehouses, barcodes are used across multiple industries to streamline operations and improve data accuracy. Given their continued importance, it’s helpful for developers to keep the key advantages of barcodes in mind as they build applications that could benefit from them.

Four Key Barcode Benefits

1. Efficiency

Since scanning a barcode automatically enters a large amount of data into a system, they are incredibly valuable for streamlining recordkeeping and improving efficiency. Modern supply chain and inventory management simply would not be possible without the use of barcodes. Rather than manually entering inventory and shipment data for every item into a system, employees can simply scan entire pallets, crates, and even shipping containers to instantly know what contents they contain inside. Given the sheer scale of products moving through a supply chain, barcodes allow companies to automate a key process to save time and money even as they scale operations. Barcode scanners can also streamline onboarding and training since it takes much less time to teach someone to use a scanner than to manually enter data.

2. Error Reduction

Manual data entry is notorious for its high levels of human error. According to research conducted over several decades, even workplaces with the best performance measures in place see human error rates of five to ten failures in every hundred opportunities. That’s a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, whether it takes the form of inverted characters, skipped lines, misreadings, illegible markings, or faulty keystrokes. Even worse, once an error occurs, it will often be reproduced across a system, making it very difficult to locate and remediate the original mistake. According to one estimate, errors resulting in bad data cost businesses more than $600 billion each year. Scanning a barcode, by contrast, completely automates the data entry process and significantly reduces the risks associated with manual errors. Information encoded into a barcode will be reproduced accurately each and every time the image is scanned to ensure consistency across systems.

3. Tracking

Each time a barcode is scanned, it creates another step in a data trail that can be easily referenced to locate items and events. This allows businesses to greatly improve real-time visibility into their operations. From identifying a shipment’s most recent location or determining whether or not a patient picked up their prescription from a pharmacy, barcodes help organizations and customers alike to track down information quickly and accurately. By improving visibility throughout their systems, companies can deliver a better customer experience that builds trust and prioritizes transparency. Since barcodes are easy to create and print, they can be added to almost any type of business process to streamline productivity and track essential activities.

4. Data Collection

Today’s organizations rely heavily upon data analytics to formulate their business strategy and make key decisions. The more data they have available to them, the more nuanced and accurate their analysis will be. Barcodes play a critical role in data collection strategies. Not only are they used to gather information about inventory, supply chain, and sales activity, but the latest generation of QR codes (a common form of 2d barcode) are also being deployed to learn more about customer behavior and preferences. Thanks to real-time QR code tracking, companies can see how many times the barcode is scanned, where it was scanned, and what devices were used to scan it. Gathering more extensive barcode data provides a more detailed picture of what’s actually happening “on the ground” throughout an organization and in the market. By eliminating conjecture and guesswork, businesses can make much more informed decisions that will help them to sustainably scale operations and capitalize on opportunities.

Barcode Use Cases by Industry

Although most commonly associated with retail and logistics, barcode scanners are deployed across many industries to improve efficiency and accuracy. Here are a few of the most common use cases:

• Education: From student ID cards to tracking school equipment, educational institutions utilize a variety of barcode types and barcode scanners to streamline operations.
• Government: Federal, state, and local governments use barcode scanning to manage access to secure facilities, catalog physical assets, and organize records. The ability to quickly create barcodes is essential for agencies that need to catalog and track documents and materials.
• Legal, Insurance, & Finance: Various forms of barcodes can be used to improve document management, making it easier to track and organize contracts, applications, and invoices as well as flag sensitive documents that require additional security precautions.
• Healthcare: Barcodes have long been used to streamline hospital processes such as admitting patients and accessing patient records with a simple scan rather than a protracted (and error-prone) manual process. They are especially useful for managing medications and ensuring that critical prescription information like strength and dosage remains accurate and consistent.
• Retail: A classic use case for barcode scanning, retailers use barcodes every day to manage their inventory, track sales, and reduce shrink. Handheld barcode scanners have made it easier than ever for them to process transactions, access product information, and locate products.
• Supply Chain: Barcode scanning technology has helped to automate key elements of logistics across multiple industries. As companies continue to do business around the world, the ability to easily track shipments and provide information to customs authorities is more crucial than ever before.

Implementing Your Barcode Solution

Despite the clear benefits of barcodes, many applications lack the basic functionality necessary to read barcodes, much less write them. Luckily, integrating those features is easy to do with the help of a code-based SDK barcode toolkit like Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress. With support for more than 30 barcode types and the powerful image processing capabilities that can clean up and repair barcodes that are broken, damaged, or poorly printed, Barcode Xpress can enhance the functionality of barcode scanners or allow Windows and Linux-based systems to locate and read barcodes on documents. Capable of reading up to 1,000 pages per minute, Barcode Xpress can turn your application into a barcode scanning powerhouse. Visit our product overview to learn more about how Barcode Xpress can solve your application’s barcode scanning needs.  

The COVID-19 pandemic may not be the first pandemic to impact global supply chains, but its impact has been orders of magnitude greater than previous public health crises. Businesses around the world have been forced to contend with the twin challenges of transitioning to a remote workforce and overcoming severe supply chain disruption. As 2020 winds down to a close, it’s becoming clear that the pandemic may well represent a “new normal” for logistics strategy rather than a temporary situation.

3 Critical Supply Chain Challenges 

From implementing new technology to establishing relationships with alternative vendors, organizations across multiple industries are taking steps to meet the challenges confronting their supply chains in both the immediate and long-term future. One of the biggest areas of focus is barcode integration. Although they may not seem like they belong at the forefront of innovation, barcodes are scanned more than six billion times every day and serve an incredibly important role in modern supply chain management.

Here are a few of the biggest challenges organizations are facing:

1. Supply Chain Visibility

Speed and flexibility are competitive advantages in today’s on-demand marketplace. Customers want products delivered faster and will quickly lose faith in brands that fail to meet their expectations. According to a 2019 survey of online consumers, 72.7% of respondents were unlikely to order from a company again after a poor delivery experience. Given those high stakes, it’s incredibly important for organizations to maintain high levels of visibility into their supply chains.

Barcode technology makes it possible to track products and materials throughout the entire production and distribution process. A quick scan is all that’s needed to update an item’s status every time it’s processed at a location. That information feeds into inventory tracking software that allows businesses to get a more accurate picture of how shipments move through their supply chain. This visibility makes it easier to identify potential problems and enhance overall logistics efficiency. 

2. Digital Transformation

Despite the growing emphasis on digital transformation across the economy, the average supply chain is still held back with inefficient, legacy infrastructure. Small and medium-size businesses face the greatest challenges, with only 21% of them using digital tools to integrate their supply chain operations with other departments. In the retail industry alone, bad processes and data disconnects cost companies over $500 billion annually. As the holiday season draws nearer and promises to bring with it a massive increase in online shopping, having a fully digital supply chain in place with enough speed to handle that demand is essential.

Implementing the right digital technology tools can help organizations to streamline their supply chains and gather the data they need to make better decisions. Barcode integration software is a foundational component of this transformation because it forms a bridge between the physical and digital elements of logistics management. Shipments can be instantly scanned into tracking systems to provide a wealth of data points across the supply chain, making it easier to adapt to disruptions and develop better processes. Barcode libraries also need to be able to scan and decode both traditional 1D codes and newer 2D codes quickly and accurately to keep products moving swiftly and smoothly to consumers.

3. Automation

As many organizations have put social distancing protocols in place during the pandemic to protect the health of both employees and customers, automation has become more important to supply chain performance than ever before. These COVID-19 pressures are sure to accelerate what was already a growing push toward implementing automated software and systems. Gartner even projected in 2019 that 30% of warehouse workers will be replaced by collaborative robots by 2023, which will further drive the demand for automated scanning and inventory management tools to accompany them.

For these automated systems to work effectively, they will need robust software that can withstand the difficult working conditions of warehouses, assembly lines, and distribution centers. A barcode integration that struggles to accurately read damaged or broken barcode images, for instance, won’t last very long in such an environment. The software powering automated systems must be able to function under a variety of conditions and be adaptable enough to overcome obstacles without constant oversight from on-site workers.

Unleash Your Supply Chain With Barcode Xpress

Building software capable of meeting the needs of a truly digital supply chain is no easy task. That’s especially true when it comes to integrating barcode reading capabilities into supply chain applications. With so many barcode formats in use, developers need an SDK with the ability to accurately detect, read, and write both common and uncommon barcode types used across all industries.

Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress is a multi-language barcode integration capable of reading and writing more than 30 different barcode types quickly and accurately. A truly robust SDK solution, Barcode Xpress leverages the imaging functionalities of ImagXpress to repair damaged orbroken barcodes that other readers are unable to read.

Speed

Barcode Xpress is capable of detecting and decoding multiple barcodes on a page at speeds of up to 1,000 pages per minute. It doesn’t matter where the barcode is located, what type of code it is, or how many are present. The control is able to read them regardless of orientation within milliseconds.

Accuracy

Every time Barcode Xpress detects a barcode, it not only provides the information encoded within the image, but also reports a confidence value to ensure high levels of accuracy. Damaged, broken, or poorly printed barcodes can also be scanned thanks to the SDK’s image processing capabilities. Black noise, white noise, erasures, low resolution, white line streaks, and other common barcode problems are reconstructed and scanned automatically to keep the supply chain moving.

Versatility

With the ability to detect, read, and write over 30 different barcode types, Barcode Xpress is available in multiple configurations for Windows and Linux-based operating systems. The SDK library supports 24-bit color images, 8-bit grayscale images, and 1-bit black and white images, as well as providing more than 80 additional image processing and editing functions thanks to its ImagXpress integration.

Experience Barcode Xpress Today

Easy to deploy and utilize, Barcode Xpress is a true all-in-one solution for desktop and web applications seeking barcode recognition capabilities. Just a few lines of code is all it takes to unlock the full potential of your supply chain technology.

Find out just how simple barcode integration can be with Barcode Xpress. Sign up today to download a free trial or talk to one of our SDK specialists today to learn more.

Barcodes remain the basis for product identification and tracking, improving both operational insight and the end-user experience. From common applications in grocery stores to more advanced deployments in warehouses, legal firms, and even post-secondary schools, barcodes are the ubiquitous bridge between digital and physical environments. 

As noted by Forbes, emerging pandemic pressures have precipitated the return of a familiar code framework, the QR code. Now used by retail stores and restaurants to enable touchless product identification and payment, this rapid code renaissance is a stark reminder that codes remain a key driver of long-term operational success. However, not all barcode reader tools are created equal. Some struggle to handle damaged or deformed barcodes, others limit the type and nature of the codes they scan, and many full-featured solutions come with significant complexity around installation, integration, and ease-of-use.

Barcode Xpress offers the best of both worlds. Here’s what developers need to know.

What is Barcode Xpress?

Accusoft’s Barcode Xpress makes it easy for users to read, write, and detect over 30 different barcodes with a single software development kit (SDK). Barcode Xpress supports:

• 1D Barcodes — Including Add-2, Add-5, Code 39, GS1 and UCC
• 2D Barcodes — Such as Aztec, Data Matrix, PDF417 and QR codes
• Postal Codes — From PLANET and PostNet to Royal Mail and the Australia Post 4-State Code
• Patch Codes — Including Patch 1, 2, 3, 4 (Toggle), 6 and Transfer

Barcode Xpress also reports confidence values for detected codes, reads supported barcodes in any orientation in milliseconds, and can intelligently handle poorly-printed, damaged, or badly-scanned barcode images. This SDK is also available in six development environments, including:

• .NET
• .NET Core
• ActiveX
• Java
• Linux
• Node.js

 Basic Barcode Requirements

Deployment environments for Barcode Xpress must leverage one of the following x64 Windows versions:

• Windows 8.1
• Windows 10 Version 1607 and later
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later
• Windows Server 2012, 2016 or 2019

The SDK can also be deployed on x64 Linux operating systems including:

• Ubuntu 18.04 or 16.04
• CentOS 8 or 7
• Debian 9 or 10

When it comes to Barcode Xpress development environments, requirements include Microsoft .NET Core 2.1 or later along with Java Runtime Environment 1.8 or later for License Manager and Server Licensing Utilities, along with Visual Studio 2017 or later (optional).

Ease of Installation

To streamline installation, Barcode Xpress .NET Core can be deployed via NuGet package or using a zip file provided by Accusoft. In both cases, developers require a valid license to use the SDK. Explore the different license types here.

Evaluation licenses allow your team to explore Barcode Xpress features bounded by timeouts and watermarks. Toolkit licenses remove pop-ups, time outs, and watermarks to enable in-depth development, while Runtime licenses are required to distribute your application.

Navigating NuGet

The simplest way to deploy Barcode Xpress is using the NuGet package manager for Microsoft development platform in Visual Studio. All of Accusoft’s NuGet packages can be found at nuget.org. Find the NuGet Barcode Express .NET package here.

To install the NuGet package, follow these steps:

1. Open the NuGet Package Manager in Visual Studio.
2. In the newly-opened window, ensure the Package Source is set to nuget.org and select the Barcode Xpress package.
3. After selection and installation, look for the newly-added assemblies in your References folder.
4. Add using [namespace] to any CS/VB file you’d like to reference these NuGet libraries.

Need more help? Check out the official NuGet tutorials. 

 Creating a Command Line

Ready to tackle your first project in Barcode Xpress? Here’s a step-by-step guide to building a complete C# application that analyzes 1D barcodes using Visual Studio.

1.Create a new Console App project in .NET core:

2. Add the Barcode Xpress SDK:

3. Add any required Microsoft dlls for the project. In this case, look for System.Drawing.Common at nuget.org, or add them locally if they’re already present as references in your development environment.

4. Add using statements to your generated Program.cs:Program.cs

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk;
namespace MyProject
{
...

5. Create any necessary instances of Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSDK.BarcodeXpress and System.Drawing.BitmapProgram.cs

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk;
namespace MyProject
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            BarcodeXpress barcodeXpress = new BarcodeXpress();
            System.Drawing.Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap("barcode.bmp");
        }
    }
}

6. Pass this bitmap to Barcode Xpress and access the returned resultsProgram.cs

…
namespace MyProject
{
     class Program
     {
         static void Main(string[] args)
         {
             BarcodeXpress barcodeXpress = new BarcodeXpress();

             System.Drawing.Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap("barcode.bmp");
          
             Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk.Result[] results = barcodeXpress.reader.Analyze(bitmap);
          
             if (results.Length > 0)
             {
                 foreach (Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk.Result result in results)
                 {
                     Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}", result.BarcodeType.ToString(), result.BarcodeValue);
                 }
             }
             else
             {
                 Console.WriteLine("No Barcodes Found.");
             }
         }
     }

7. Finally, clean up your code by using the Dispose() methodProgram.cs

…
namespace MyProject
{
    class Program
    {
         static void Main(string[] args)
         {
             BarcodeXpress barcodeXpress = new BarcodeXpress();

             System.Drawing.Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap("barcode.bmp");
          
             Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk.Result[] results = barcodeXpress.reader.Analyze(bitmap);
          
             if (results.Length > 0)
             {
                 foreach (Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk.Result result in results)
                 {
                     Console.WriteLine("{0} : {1}", result.BarcodeType.ToString(), result.BarcodeValue);
                 }
             }
             else
             {
                 Console.WriteLine("No Barcodes Found.");
             }
             barcodeXpress.Dispose();
         }
     }

Ongoing Improvements

Barcode Xpress isn’t a new offering — it’s been part of the Accusoft SDK lineup for more than 15 years. However, John Reynolds, Principal Engineer for Barcode Xpress, recently took a look at the code to improve its functionality. In his whitepaper, Refactoring Legacy Code for Speed in Barcode Xpress, he found that when repeatedly scanning a barcode in a particular direction, the count length of black/white runs in the same direction. 

As a result, continually calculating the mask and data pointers for each coordinate is cumbersome, but also allows for potential shortcuts, such as keeping a running tally of the mask across the image. Applied in depth, this and other code legacy code changes have helped improve 1D barcode analysis times from 5% to 60%, depending on the image.

Barcode Xpress offers comprehensive code recognition that’s easy to implement and customize, while ongoing improvements help streamline SDK deployment, enhance operational speed, and empower software engineers in various markets. Discover the benefits of Barcode Xpress. Download a free trial or try an online demo today.

Barcode Xpress and ImageGear .NET.  Barcode Xpress is a leading barcode reading SDK. While it supports a variety of image formats, Barcode Xpress works with ImageGear to support even more obscure image formats. For example, Barcode Xpress does not support reading barcodes on PDFs. Combined with ImageGear, developers can support a myriad of image formats and PDFs. With Barcode Xpress & ImageGear working together, developers can integrate a barcode reader that can detect barcodes on almost any kind of document.

Barcode Xpress accepts images in multiple different object types, such as System.Drawing.Bitmap. Using the method ImGearFileFormats.ExportPageToBitmap we can easily take any image that ImageGear supports and export it to a System.Drawing.Bitmap object that we can then pass to Barcode Xpress. So, only a tiny amount of code is required to recognize barcodes with ImageGear .NET and Barcode Xpress. Below, we’ll show various ways to pass different types of images and documents to Barcode Xpress.

Image:

// Load the image into the page.
ImGearPage imGearPage = ImGearFileFormats.LoadPage(stream, 0);

// Export the image to a bitmap and pass that bitmap to Barcode Xpress
 Result[] results = barcodeXpress.reader.Analyze(ImGearFileFormats.ExportPageToBitmap(imGearPage));

PDF:

We need slightly more code for a PDF. First, we specify a page number when calling LoadPage. Second, we must dispose of the ImGearPage object after we’re done with it. 

// Load the specified page of the PDF as an ImGearPage object
ImGearPage imGearPDFPage = ImGearFileFormats.LoadPage(stream, pageNumber);

// Export the image to a bitmap and pass that bitmap to Barcode Xpress
Result[] results = barcodeXpress.reader.Analyze(ImGearFileFormats.ExportPageToBitmap(imGearPDFPage));

(imGearPDFPage as IDisposable).Dispose();

Now that we’ve explained the most important part, we’ll show you a simple console app that recognizes barcodes on a PDF using the method above. 

The code below assumes you’ve installed an evaluation or development license for both Barcode Xpress and ImageGear .NET.

using System;
using System.IO;
using Accusoft.BarcodeXpressSdk;
using ImageGear.Core;
using ImageGear.Evaluation;
using ImageGear.Formats;
using ImageGear.Formats.PDF;

namespace BXandIGDotNet
{
	class Program
	{
    	static int pageNumber = 0;
    	static string fileName = @"Path/To/Your/PDF..pdf";
    	static void Main(string[] args)
    	{
        	// Initialize evaluation license.
        	ImGearEvaluationManager.Initialize();

        	// Initialize common formats.
        	ImGearCommonFormats.Initialize();
        	// Add support for PDF and PS files.
        	ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePDFFormat());
        	ImGearFileFormats.Filters.Insert(0, ImGearPDF.CreatePSFormat());
        	ImGearPDF.Initialize();

        	using (FileStream stream = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
        	using (BarcodeXpress barcodeXpress = new BarcodeXpress())
        	{
            	// Load the specified page of the PDF as an ImGearPage object
            	ImGearPage imGearPDFPage = ImGearFileFormats.LoadPage(stream, pageNumber);

            	// Export the image to a bitmap and pass that bitmap to Barcode Xpress
            	Result[] results = barcodeXpress.reader.Analyze(ImGearFileFormats.ExportPageToBitmap(imGearPDFPage));

            	(imGearPDFPage as IDisposable).Dispose();

            	// Print the values of every barcode detected.
            	for (int i = 0; i < results.Length; i++)
            	{
                	Console.WriteLine("#" + i.ToString() + " Value: " + results[i].BarcodeValue);
            	}
            	Console.ReadKey();
        	}
    	}
	}
}

Using Barcode Xpress and ImageGear in Other Languages & Linux

You can also use Barcode Xpress and ImageGear together outside of the .NET framework. Barcode Xpress supports several different programming languages and frameworks including .NET Core, Java, NodeJS, Python, C, and C++. All of which can be used on Linux. 

ImageGear for C/C++ also supports Linux. Barcode Xpress Linux, which is a C/C++ library, ships with a sample called “ReadBarcodesIG”, that shows how to integrate Barcode Xpress Linux and ImageGear for C/C++. You can find the sample code after downloading our SDK here! For more information on Barcode Xpress, visit our Developer Resources page on the website. In addition, you can also find more information about ImageGear .NET on its respective Developer Resources page as well.

Post-secondary schools look very different this year as colleges and universities embrace both blended learning and online-only approaches to content delivery and engagement. But this isn’t a one-off operation. Even as pandemic pressures ease, the shift to distance learning as the de facto solution for many students won’t disappear.  As a result, it’s critical for schools to develop and deploy learning management systems (LMSs) that both meet current needs and ensure they’re capable of keeping up with educational evolution. But what does this look like in practice? How do developers and team leaders build fully-functional LMS solutions that empower student success without breaking the bank?

Learning Management Systems (LMS) Challenges

When schools first made the shift to distance learning directives, speed was of the essence. While students were barred from campus for safety reasons, they’d paid for a full semester of instruction, and schools needed to deliver. As a result, patchwork programs became commonplace. Colleges and universities combined existing education software with video conferencing and collaboration tools to create “good enough” learning models that got them through to summer break. Despite best educational efforts, however, some students still went after schools with lawsuits, alleging that the quality of instruction didn’t align with tuition totals.

So it’s no surprise that as fall semesters kick off, students aren’t willing to put up with learning management systems that barely make the grade. They want full-featured distance learning that helps them engage with instructors and connect with new content no matter how, where, or when they access campus networks. 

As a result, development teams can’t simply correct for current COVID conditions. Instead, they need to create systems that deliver both blended and purely online interactions, and have the power to ensure students that choose to continue with digital-first learning can still stay connected even after returns to campus become commonplace.

How to Create a Functional LMS Framework

So what does a fully-functional LMS framework look like in practice? Six features are critical for ongoing success. Let’s explore how these features can enhance your learning management system and set your end-users up for success in the classroom and at home:

Diverse Document Viewing

As schools make the shift to distance learning, the ability to view multiple document types is critical for long-term LMS success. From standard Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to more diverse image types — such as those used in medical educational programming or manufacturing courses — students and instructors need the ability to both send and view diverse document types on-demand. 

While both free and paid solutions for viewing exist outside LMS ecosystems, choosing this route creates two potential problems. Students with diverse technological and economic backgrounds may face challenges in finding and using these tools, and data security may be compromised. This is especially critical as schools handle greater volumes of students’ personal and financial information. If document viewing happens outside internal systems, private concerns become paramount.

In-Depth Annotations

With students now submitting assignments and exams via educational software, viewing isn’t enough. Staff also need the ability to annotate assets as they arrive. Here, professors and teaching assistants are best-served by built-in tools that allow them to quickly redline papers or projects, add comments, highlight key passages, and quickly markup documents with specific instructions or corrections. 

Without this ability, staff have two equally unappealing choices. They can either print out, manually correct, and then re-scan documents, or send all comments as separate email attachments. Both are problematic, since they limit the ability of students and teachers to easily interact with the same document.

Comprehensive Conversion

File conversion is critical for effective learning management systems (LMSs). Specifically, schools need ways to quickly convert multiple document types into single, searchable PDFs. Not only do PDFs offer the ability to control who can edit, view, or comment on papers or exams, they make it easy for teachers to quickly find specific content. The permissions-based nature of PDFs makes them ideal for post-secondary applications and a must-have for any education software solution. 

Cutting-Edge OCR and ICR

Optical character recognition and intelligent character recognition also forms a key part of distance learning directives. With some students still more comfortable with hand-written hard copies and some classes that require students to show specific work, OCR can help bridge the gap between form and function. By integrating tools with the ability to recognize and convert multiple character types and sets, schools are better equipped to deal with any document type. Search is also bolstered by cutting-edge OCR; instead of forcing staff to manually examine documents for key data, OCR empowers digital discovery.

Complete Data Capture

Forms are a fundamental part of university and college life — but the myriad of digital documents can quickly overwhelm legacy education software. Integrating tools with robust form-field detection allow schools and staff to streamline the process of complete data capture, both increasing the speed of information processing and reducing the potential for human error.

Barcode Benefits

As campuses shift to hybrid learning models, students occupy two worlds, both physical and digital. But this duality introduces complexity when it comes to tracking who’s on campus, when, and why. These are currently key metrics for schools looking to keep students safe in the era of social distancing. 

By deploying full-featured barcode scanning solutions as part of LMS frameworks, colleges and universities can get ahead of this complexity curve. From scanning ID cards to take attendance and track resource use to using barcodes as no-contact purchase points or metric measurements for ongoing analytics, barcode solutions are an integral part of LMS solutions.

Automation Advantages

The sheer volume of digital documents now generated and handled by post-secondary schools poses the problem of practicality. Teachers and administrators simply don’t have time to evaluate and enter data at scale and speed while also ensuring accuracy. By automating key processes including document conversion, capture, and character recognition, schools can reduce the time required to process documents, leaving more room for student engagement.

Building an LMS Product for Teachers & Students

The bottom line for LMS solutions? If they don’t work for end-users, they won’t work for the broader school system as a whole. Gone are the days of invisible IT infrastructure. Now, students and staff alike are school stakeholders with evolving expectations around technology.

By deploying distance learning solutions that prioritize end-user outcomes with enhanced document viewing, editing, data capture, and automation, developers can create LMS tools capable of both solving immediate issues and offering sustained student success over time. Learn more about these functionality integrations for your learning management system at accusoft.com/products.