Technical FAQs

Question

With a fully-running PrizmDoc environment (version prior to v10.5), I’m noticing times where the system becomes unresponsive. That is, at some point, it no longer processes requests being made to the backend and I have to restart PrizmDoc in order to alleviate it. What could be causing this?

Answer

Prior to version 10.5, PrizmDoc used ProxyServer as its image processing system. Our Development Team eventually began seeing that the ProxyServer exhibited architectural problems that lead to a multitude of issues, such as unresponsiveness.

Starting in version 10.5, the Development Team created the Prizm Content Connect Imaging Service (PCCIS), which is far more stable.

To resolve this issue we suggest upgrading to the latest revision of PrizmDoc. Please see the product page for more information found here: https://www.accusoft.com/products/prizmdoc/overview/

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January 17, 2024 – Tampa, FL – Accusoft, a software company specializing in industry-leading secure document viewing, processing, and automation technologies for integration into Enterprise Content Management solutions, announced the latest release of PrizmDoc today. The latest version now includes AI for Personally Identifiable Information Detection and Redaction.

“Enhanced data security and improved regulatory compliance are very important to our customers, particularly in the Legal, Insurance, and Financial Services industries,” said Steve Wilson, Accusoft’s Chief Product Officer. “This newest version of PrizmDoc makes meeting these requirements easier.”

AI for Personally Identifiable Information in PrizmDoc: Features and Benefits

The new PrizmDoc AI for Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Detection and Redaction module allows end users to search and detect PII in a document. This provides:

  • The page number where the information is located
  • The ability to see the specific related text
  • What type of PII the AI has identified
  • An identification confidence score for each item

Once reviewed, end users can easily redact the information with a click of a button, or this process can be automated by using APIs.

Software developers can access this functionality using APIs to create workflow automation and enable user interface tools to provide functionality to end users.

PrizmDoc’s newest feature removes the need for end users to manually scan documents trying to identify PII for redaction, reducing bottlenecks and delays, and saving companies a significant amount of time.

Accusoft’s Chief Operating Officer Megan Brooks added: “This release marks a distinct milestone for Accusoft and PrizmDoc. Enhancing PrizmDoc with AI gives our customers a unique capability that allows them to differentiate their ECM solutions from the competition. As we stay close to our partners, the market, and the evolution of AI as it impacts the Document Management industry, we look forward to delivering more innovative feature enhancements to our customers.”

Learn more about PrizmDoc or to schedule a demo of the new PII features

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 the most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including Docubee and PrizmDoc 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 releases, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com

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Question

When viewing .csv files in PrizmDoc Viewer, the dates in the CSV file are in UK format (DD/MM/YYYY). However, if the DD is lower than 13 it is converted to US date format (MM/DD/YYYY).

Answer

Workaround:

The suggested workaround is to use Excel files instead of CSV to avoid this situation. Excel file format stores date/time format in the file.

Issue:

This is a bug in the MS Excel COM Interop that is being used by the product (MsOfficeConverter). Here is the related Excel bug: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/82248560-dabd-4c90-b1e2-793b2f32b257/excel-bug-handling-dates-in-csv-files-using-microsoftofficeinteropexcel?forum=exceldev

Problem description:

When using MS Excel Interop to open CSV files, all date/times there are being interpreted with “en-US” locale, regardless of actual system locale. Here is the description from the bug link above:

Excel interpreting dates when its reads csv files via .NET Interop. It is not a excel formatting issue per say. When excel accesses information such as dates (which are stored as numbers in memory to support arithmetic operations) from text files, it has to convert the date from textual representation (within the csv file, such as 2012-09-12) to the equivalent number in Excel memory (e.g. 41164 which represents 2012-09-12). When we use Interop to access this number in memory, many are interpreted incorrectly – swapping days with months and vice versa. This is a bug, as Excel is not abiding by the system culture on interpreting local date formats.

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Question

When viewing .csv files in PrizmDoc Viewer, the dates in the CSV file are in UK format (DD/MM/YYYY). However, if the DD is lower than 13 it is converted to US date format (MM/DD/YYYY).

Answer

Workaround:

The suggested workaround is to use Excel files instead of CSV to avoid this situation. Excel file format stores date/time format in the file.

Issue:

This is a bug in the MS Excel COM Interop that is being used by the product (MsOfficeConverter). Here is the related Excel bug: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/82248560-dabd-4c90-b1e2-793b2f32b257/excel-bug-handling-dates-in-csv-files-using-microsoftofficeinteropexcel?forum=exceldev

Problem description:

When using MS Excel Interop to open CSV files, all date/times there are being interpreted with “en-US” locale, regardless of actual system locale. Here is the description from the bug link above:

Excel interpreting dates when its reads csv files via .NET Interop. It is not a excel formatting issue per say. When excel accesses information such as dates (which are stored as numbers in memory to support arithmetic operations) from text files, it has to convert the date from textual representation (within the csv file, such as 2012-09-12) to the equivalent number in Excel memory (e.g. 41164 which represents 2012-09-12). When we use Interop to access this number in memory, many are interpreted incorrectly – swapping days with months and vice versa. This is a bug, as Excel is not abiding by the system culture on interpreting local date formats.

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It’s a business battlefield out there. Not one of munitions and machines, but time and resources. Companies are struggling to provide end-users and consumers with the content they need, when they need it, without breaking the bank. Document management now helps companies make progress without losing productivity.

As noted by the SocioHerald, document management solutions are “booming worldwide” and on track for significant growth over the next five years, but as data volumes increase and connectivity allows simple sharing of more complex and media-rich content, large documents pose a new challenge. How do organizations deliver high-volume content quickly and accurately to drive on-demand end-user interaction?

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer can help deliver peace of mind — and win the large document loading war — with dual-pronged delivery of document pre-conversion and server-side search.

The Need for Speed

As noted by Forbes, one second is now the “magic number” when it comes to loading webpages — any slower and potential consumers begin to abandon ship. Welcome to the future.

Employees are now used to this kind of rapid retrieval when they search for data online, so they bring these same expectations into the office when it comes to document loading and access times. What does this mean in practice? Both user satisfaction and overall productivity suffers when documents don’t load fast enough.

So how do companies get to the finish line faster? Start with document pre-conversion. PrizmDoc Viewer contains a pre-conversion API that allows companies to create viewing packages for large documents using POST requests and JSON formatted source objects. Combined with the PAS layer of PrizmDoc server, this pre-conversion feature allows massive documents — such as Tolstoy’s 1493-page epic War and Peace — to load in just 0.69 seconds.

The caveat? Pre-conversion isn’t enough in isolation. To ensure users find what they’re looking for, and fast, organizations also need the benefit of server-side search.

Search and Rescue

Eighty percent of Americans now experience some type of “tech frustration” every day. Spotty connections and smartphone failures top the list, but documents also make the cut. Client-side searches within large documents can put a strain on a browser-based document viewers’ memory load. The best case scenario? Massive load times that frustrate staff efforts. Worst case? Complete viewer crashing as the browser overloads.

There’s a better way. With PrizmDoc Viewer’s server-side search feature, you can offload search work to the server, significantly reducing the strain on client-side viewer code. Using PrizmDoc’s Viewer configuration options, developers can also create custom server-side search parameters to reduce the strain on memory-capped browsers or more easily access text-heavy documents. Put simply? Server-side search can help rescue document retrieval speeds and reduce user frustration.

Document Detente

Slow-loading, large documents can ramp up hostilities between staff trying to get their work done and the tech initiatives that supposedly boost productivity. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce loading times and achieve document detente with PrizmDoc Viewer. Accusoft’s pre-conversion APIs and customizable server-side search parameters make this tech treaty even easier to achieve with straightforward in-app integration, providing complete functionality under the banner of in-house applications.

Ready to ramp up productivity and win the war on large document loading? See server-side speed in action with the server-side search demo or enlist the in-app advantage with a free trial today!

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convert pdf

PDFs are everywhere. Vice calls them “the world’s most important file format,” and that’s not far off the mark. The sheer number of documents converted to, from, and often back to PDFs is astounding. The hard truth? They’re also frustrating to work with. Start a Google search with the word “convert” and three of the top five results involve PDFs. 

While this portable document format lives up to its namesake by making it easy for users to attach and send documents across their organizations, PDFs often run into problems when it comes to conversion, collaboration, and communication. While many tools offer piecemeal PDF functionality, they lack a complete cadre of critical capabilities, in turn forcing software engineers to use multiple software solutions for seemingly simple tasks. 

ImageGear offers a different take on the standard software development kit (SDK) designed to help developers maximize their PDF potential. Here’s how it works. 

The Value of PDF Conversion

While PDF conversion is one of the top sought-after functionalities, there’s another area that’s often overlooked: modifying the characteristics of PDFs on-screen. With companies now handling PDFs from multiple sources that may include everything from computer-generated form data to handwritten information and images, it’s no surprise that staff encounter a wide variety of viewing issues.

ImageGear PDF helps solve these problems by allowing users to call the shots on PDF content at scale with features such as:

  • Conversion
  • Metadata Management
  • Content and Font Editing
  • Text Extraction
  • PDF Watermarking
  • Container, Dictionary, and Layer Creation
  • 3D Asset Modification

ImageGear PDF also helps improve document processing with document cleanup and advanced optical character recognition (OCR). With the ability to encrypt and decrypt entire images (or part of an image), automatic ImageClean correction of white text blocks, borders, and inverted images, plus intelligent re-sizing, any PDF can be cleaned and made more readable for the user. 

OCR support for almost any document type is also a benefit. This includes those produced on typewriters, dot-matrix printers, ink-jet printers, laser printers, and photocopied, scanned, and faxed documents. ImageGear PDF helps users control and customize multiple PDF variables, making it a fully functional PDF conversion solution for your application.

PDF Pain Points

One of the biggest PDF frustrations? The inability to break apart and combine PDF documents. Let’s imagine you have a massive legal PDF or in-depth medical file. In these circumstances, professionals only need a portion of the PDF, but without the right tools they’re stuck sending entire files when all they need is a single page. In other cases, employees might have a host of related PDFs that are part of the same project, but can’t be easily combined to save space and time.

ImageGear PDF has you covered with the ability to easily delete or insert PDF pages, render pages in a single PDF, split a PDF, merge two or more PDFs into a single file, or even merge specific pages from two or more PDFs into a single PDF. This not only makes a massive difference in time spent working with PDF documents, it helps reduce unnecessary storage and transmission of multiple files. 

Convert PDF: Multiple File Formats for Conversion

Conversion is critical for PDF success. Instead of creating complexity by forcing end-users to stick with original file formats, implementing an SDK with cutting-edge conversion empowers corporate consistency and saves on storage space. ImageGear PDF supports a host of common file formats for conversion including Microsoft Office, JPEG 2000, CAD, and SVG.

Of course, no feature forward PDF framework is complete without robust annotation, redaction, and commenting capabilities. These features make it easy for other users to see exactly what’s been changed, when, and why, along with providing a critical, auditable paper trail to meet evolving compliance and regulatory standards.

PDF Functionality for Your Application

Best of all, ImageGear isn’t designed to replace your current software, but integrate alongside existing workflows. Rather than adding another application to already-overloaded IT arsenals, straightforward SDK integration means everything happens within your own application, making it easy for everyone to find exactly what they’re looking for within familiar territory. Need help jumpstarting your SDK deployment? Check out our full list of ImageGear .NET samples for ASP.NET, CAD, OCR support, and more.

PDFs remain eternally popular and continually frustrating. Solve for document viewing, split and merge, and conversion issues and streamline employee efforts with ImageGear.

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Capital Investment Associates recently published their latest version of its Invest economic report. June’s edition focused on the economic outlook for Tampa. Invest: Tampa Bay is a 156-page economic analysis that reviews Tampa’s diverse economy, appeal for healthcare, tech and innovation, and much more. The 2019 report highlights the growth of Tampa’s businesses as well as the technological revolution the area is currently experiencing.

In the issue, Invest: Tampa Bay reviews tech and innovation’s impact throughout all economic sectors of the community. From residential and commercial development to tourism, arts, culture, and sports, Tampa’s growth reportedly “shows no end in sight.”

In addition to their own research, Capital Investment Associates reached out to the area’s top CEOs and leaders to get some insight on what it’s like to live and work in Tampa Bay. Accusoft’s Jack Berlin was asked to provide his thoughts.

The Technology Landscape in Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay technology has been top-of-mind for Berlin since he chose to locate his headquarters in Seminole Heights. To get the conversation started, Berlin and friend Seng Sun, owner of SunView Software, came up with the idea for Tampa Bay Tech, a group of CEOs that meet quarterly to raise awareness in and around Tampa’s software ecosystem.

“When Seng and I first met, we talked about the whole local software arena and we both lamented the same thing: nobody knows who we are, nobody knows what’s going on in software in Tampa Bay. We wondered if other people in Tampa Bay felt the same way we do,” says Berlin. “So, we put a group together and wrote down a few rules. One, you must be headquartered here. Two, you must be a member of Tampa Bay Tech. Three, you must have at least 10 W2 local software programmers – because we want real software companies in the area.”

Tampa Bay Tech intends to host some events over the next year, and engage others in the community. “I really do think that we have a bigger ecosystem than people know about here. This is a very small group of like-minded CEOs. We can have lunch together, nobody’s going to sell to anybody, we can talk about what we want to talk about. So, it’s very low key, it’s really just building a little bit of an ecosystem around software here,” says Berlin.

Passion that Makes a Difference

In addition to his passion for Tampa technology, Berlin insists that Accusoft employees get involved with the community and share a helping hand. Berlin serves as a chair of the parks board in Hillsborough County. “The experience exposed me to the wonderful world of our county park system. It’s expansive. As chair of the parks board, I became a member of the ELAP committee, which oversees land acquisition and the protection of these lands. A lot of it has to do with restoration and reclamation. We have over 60,000 acres under protection now as a county, which is incredible,” reports Berlin.

Berlin is still on the site selection committee, as well as on the board of the environmental land program. Additionally, he is a member of the Friends of the County Parks and Recreation Inc board, which is a different organization. This charity focuses its efforts around raising money for parks programs that aren’t funded through budget.

Accusoft enables its employees to take one paid day a year to go out and get their hands dirty. It even sponsors its own Champion a Charity program, where employees can pick a non-profit each year and Accusoft will match the donation. The company also has a Change Makers Committee that comes up with ideas for volunteerism and hosts different events throughout the year.

A Great Place to Grow

Accusoft is always growing and developing, but it keeps its charm with a small business approach. “Our core values and company culture make us stand out,” he said. “Accusoft fosters a competitive and positive work environment, and we are a place where people want to come to work every day. Even as we’ve grown into a large organization, we have a small business mindset where we value and support each individual employee.”

He provides this advice to entrepreneurs. “Go with your gut,” he said. “If you have a great idea, a go-getter attitude and a solid team, you will go a long way. I’ve had to make tough and risky decisions, but each one has excelled Accusoft as a company, and that comes from trusting my intuition and having a strong team behind me. Also, prioritization is key. As an entrepreneur, getting into the habit of deciding what needs to get done from day-to-day can be difficult, but ultimately, it will free up your time so you can focus on what’s incredibly important.”

To learn more about Accusoft’s interview with Invest: Tampa Bay, check out their economic report here.

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Demo: BarcodeXpress for .NET Core Demo:  Barcode Xpress is a multi-language library that runs in multiple platforms including Windows and Linux-based systems. This barcode library can read and write over 30 different barcode types with high speed and accuracy. Barcode Xpress also comes with a free license to ImagXpress, one of our image processing SDKs, which supports loading and saving numerous image file formats including BMP, JPG, multi-page TIFF, among many others.

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Question

What is the absolute bare minimum I need to use PrizmDoc Cloud?

Answer

This will allow you to load a document via a URL using PrizmDoc Cloud. Just include your PrizmDoc Cloud API key in the POST request headers.

Please note: This is purely intended as a proof-of-concept. You should never include your API key in your client-side Javascript.

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">
<head>
    <!-- Metadata -->
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <meta name="description" content="" />

    <!-- Title -->
    <title>AccuSample</title>

    <!-- Libraries -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/normalize/8.0.0/normalize.min.css">

    <!-- PrizmDoc CSS -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/css/viewercontrol.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/css/viewer.css">

    <!-- Inline Stylesheet -->
    <style></style>

</head>
<body>

    <!-- #viewer -->
    <div id="viewer" class="pccv pcc-full-screen"></div>

    <!-- Libraries -->
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/jquery-3.4.1.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/jquery.hotkeys.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/underscore.min.js"></script>

    <!-- PrizmDoc JS -->
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/viewercontrol.js"></script>
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/viewer.js"></script>
    <script src="https://raw.githack.com/Accusoft/hello-prizmdoc-viewer-with-nodejs-and-html/master/public/viewer-assets/js/viewerCustomizations.js"></script>

    <!-- Inline Script -->
    <script>

        let viewingSessionId;
        let viewerControl;

        $(document).ready(function() {
            $.ajax({
                "type": "POST",
                "url": "https://api.accusoft.com/prizmdoc/ViewingSession",
                "headers": {
                    "acs-api-key": "4lTamQVZmrkqZhH8cZhdu7L0xyhUa3gorcaCFQpA_zmuowZs4zoF39V4IckpnVW_"
                },
                "data": JSON.stringify({
                    "source": {
                        "type": "url",
                        "url": "https://www.usability.gov/sites/default/files/creating-wireframes.pdf"
                    }
                })
            }).done(function(response) {
                PCCViewer.Ajax.setHeaders({
                    "acs-api-key": "4lTamQVZmrkqZhH8cZhdu7L0xyhUa3gorcaCFQpA_zmuowZs4zoF39V4IckpnVW_"
                });

                viewingSessionId = response["viewingSessionId"];

                // Initialize viewer
                viewerControl = $("#viewer").pccViewer({ 
                    "documentID": viewingSessionId,
                    "imageHandlerUrl": "https://api.accusoft.com/prizmdoc",
                    "language": viewerCustomizations.languages["en-US"],
                    "template": viewerCustomizations.template,
                    "icons": viewerCustomizations.icons,
                    "annotationsMode": "LayeredAnnotations"
                }).viewerControl;

                viewerControl.on("ViewerReady", function() {
                    console.log("Ready!");
                });
            });
        });

    </script>

</body>
</html>
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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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