Technical FAQs for "PrizmDoc Viewer"

Access to justice is a problem. As stated by the Honorable Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack in a recent “Reimagining Legal Technology” panel discussion, “8 out of 10 people with civil legal problems can’t afford lawyers.” However, self-service solutions for consumers and productivity applications for litigators could improve outcomes for all parties. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is driving transformation in the legal space as those in the field seek out remote opportunities to keep legal proceedings moving forward. As a result, new remote capabilities have helped to further the conversation around access and a digital-first approach to legal processes, including the storage, review, and delivery of evidence and other supporting case information.

Shifting Mindsets in The Legal Field

An interesting insight offered by Gary Sangha, a serial legal technology company founder, is that technology produced exclusively for the legal market is several years behind the innovation found in other markets. 

This is profound for a few reasons. While it certainly suggests that some areas of the profession are slow to adopt new technology, it could also suggest to software developers that failing to provide cutting-edge capabilities for legal professionals could cause litigators to look elsewhere when selecting new technology upgrades—which are being budgeted for right now as courts and law offices strive to find better ways to serve their clients in a digital-first environment. 

Also interesting is that when you investigate the marketplace for inspiration, you can find a wealth of features with cross-application potential. Serving a market that has been traditionally slower to adopt cutting-edge, purpose-built legal solutions isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to product development because there’s so much inspiration to draw from other markets.  

Technologies Transforming the Legal Space

Legal technologies gaining steam include artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language markup. This represents a giant shift in the way legal professionals work. While lawyers did very individual, competitive work in law school previously, many of the leaders of legal institutions, like Chief Justice McCormack, are trying to shift this mindset to more collaborative work.

The value of legal work used to be in knowing where to find key information. To remain competitive while improving access for those seeking legal services, litigators must move to a team-oriented approach to case making. Systems exist to automate much of the information storage and retrieval process. Therefore, the true value is no longer in being able to find key information, but rather curating the information in such a way as to create solid cases for clients. 

However, without information storing, gathering, and processing software in place, litigators may spend as much time searching for information as they do building cases. That’s why software application developers need to consider advancing the core capabilities of their solutions to include vital legal functionality that automates key elements of The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM), which includes: 

• Identification 
• Preservation 
• Collection 
• Processing
• Review
• Analysis 
• Production 
• Presentation 

One top law firm reported experiencing a 70% increase in phishing attempts since the pandemic began, and as Law.com points out, “IT Managers have gone from managing 400 people in one office to having 400 single-person offices.” This can easily create quite a security crisis as resources are spread thinner than ever before. Without tools to drive accountability to data governance best practices, the odds of one of those hundreds of phishing attempts successfully breaking through significantly improves. 

Umbrella technologies covering most of these processes include cybersecurity and information governance solutions that protect access to critical information while equipping essential personnel to safely and collaboratively markup, redact, and process sensitive data. 

Ramping Up to Meet Emerging Demands

Though litigators have been slow to adopt emerging technologies in the past, COVID-19 is driving fast transformation in this space. The push to digital-first formats is a tremendous growth opportunity for application developers that stand ready to deliver the functionality required to facilitate due process via secure collaboration capabilities that include:

• Annotation 
• Redaction
• Full text search
• Support and aggregation capabilities for hundreds of file formats
• Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• The added security of digital watermarking and 256-bit AES encryption 

If building all these features from the ground up sounds like too much for your already-busy team of developers, then consider partnering with a trusted third-party like Accusoft. When you need to add key functionality quickly in order to meet a legal client’s needs before their budget expires, we can be your competitive advantage. Application developers partner with us for in-demand, brandless features for the legal field because we help them launch a fully supported feature in just weeks instead of months or years. To learn more about Accusoft legal application features, discover our capabilities in our eGuide, Finding Common Ground.

An HTML5 document viewer is a document and image viewing solution that allows users to easily view and collaborate on multiple file types from any desktop or mobile device within a browser. HTML5 document viewers make this possible by converting files from native formats into desired outputs, then presenting the resulting content in a browser using standard HTML5 markup.

Single-interface interaction is the biggest draw of HTML5 viewers. Since everything happens in-browser, they’re ideal for application integration. As a result, they’re often deployed by value-added resellers and software manufacturers to develop specific solutions for client needs. They’re also leveraged by enterprises looking to add functionality to existing document management solutions (DMS) or content management solutions (CMS) that both reduce total costs and improve overall efficiency.

Software developers can embed an HTML5 document viewer into existing websites or applications without the need to create this functionality from the ground up or compromising user security. On the other hand, end-users get the responsive, dynamic viewing experience they want without the need to download plugins or open other applications.

What are the benefits of an HTML5 document viewer?

Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer offers industry-leading HTML5 functionality, making it the viewer of choice for developers, integrators, and system administrators looking to enhance document viewing, collaboration, and security without increasing their workload.

PrizmDoc Viewer makes this possible by using a collection of REST APIs that support more than 100 file types. It also includes built-in support for conversion, OCR, annotation, redaction, advanced search, and large document viewing and server-side search. PrizmDoc Viewer is a cornerstone within thousands of enterprise software solutions across the globe and users have great things to say about its functionality. Along with simple deployment and development, HTML5 document viewers offer other benefits such as:

• Support for multiple software platforms and browsers to ensure consistent viewing across enterprise environments.
• Ability to view a wide variety of file format types used by healthcare, legal, manufacturing, government, and financial firms.
• Reduced need for other viewing applications and software licences.
• Seamless web and mobile-friendly viewing experiences that rely on HTML5 markup rather than device-specific constraints.

How does Accusoft’s HTML5 viewer work?

PrizmDoc Viewer makes it easy to present DOCX, PPT, PDF, TIFF, email, and a host of other file types as part of your existing web application. To achieve this high-speed, high-fidelity document and image viewing, PrizmDoc Viewer leverages three key components:

• The HTML5 viewer itself, which runs in-browser to display content.
• The backend, comprised of PrizmDoc Application Services (PAS) and PrizmDoc Server, which handles document processing.
• Your web application, acting as a reverse proxy, that sits between the HTML5 viewer and the backend to manage content requests.

PrizmDoc Server is the technical heart of the product, the engine that drives document conversion. It takes on the task of converting document pages to SVG using a compute-intensive process and has no permanent storage. 

The PrizmDoc Server handles the heavy lifting but doesn’t hang on to any document pages, while PAS acts much like your own web application. It has privileged access to your document storage solution — such as a file system or database — to deliver key functionality including the long-term caching of pre-converted content and the loading and saving of document annotations. 

Next up: How does this all work? Think of it like a conversation. First your web application POSTs to PAS and asks for a new viewing session. PAS responds with a new ViewingSessionID. This lets your web app render the page HTML and pass it along to the in-browser document viewer, while simultaneously delivering original documents to PAS.

PAS talks to PrizmDoc Server, asking it to start conversion. Meanwhile, the document viewer has its own question for the PAS (via your web proxy): Can I have the first page now? Once available, PAS sends the first page back as an SVG even as other pages are still being converted, letting users view and interact with documents while conversion is underway. 

What can PrizmDoc Viewer do for you?

PrizmDoc Viewer supports 100+ file types using our zero-footprint document viewer and content conversion REST API. The viewer includes an advanced HTML control which allows users to view, search, redact, print, and download documents in many different file formats – from Adobe PDFs and Microsoft Office files to CAD and DICOM – right in their browser. They don’t ever need to leave your application and risk data security. 

Process performance is one thing, but what can PrizmDoc Viewer do in practice? Our interactive demos showcase how PrizmDoc Viewer’s functionality would operate after integration, but there are many use cases that we’ve yet to explore. How does HTML5 document viewing directly impact enterprise workflows? Here are some examples of why PrizmDoc Viewer customers integrate our functionality into their own software:

• Display All Document Types Quickly and Accurately — By eliminating the need for multiple, file-specific applications, PrizmDoc Viewer allows staff to review and provide feedback on any file using a single, common interface, both improving overall performance and reducing your total licensing costs. 
• Provide High-Fidelity Renderings of Microsoft Office Formats — Accurate, high-fidelity, in-browser renderings of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents are often required to ensure regulatory compliance. PrizmDoc Viewer offers true native viewing of these popular file types on-demand. 
• Increase the Performance of Large Document Viewing and Search Functions — PrizmDoc Viewer utilizes both document pre-loading and customizable, server-side search parameters to help your business improve document access and offload the heavy lifting of text-based search to ensure browsers aren’t overloaded.
• Deliver Secure Collaboration — By integrating PrizmDoc Viewer into existing applications, companies can ensure trust and compliance of critical documentation with key security controls. 

It can be extremely time-consuming to keep up with evolving user expectations, regulatory requirements, and file format complexity. That’s why many development teams decide to integrate an HTML5 viewer instead of developing one in-house. PrizmDoc Viewer offers the ability to streamline key functions and enhance security with HTML5-native support to deliver document viewing, annotation, redaction, and conversion on-demand. 

Ready to jump start your PrizmDoc Viewer development? Get started with our Docker evaluation here. To learn more about PrizmDoc Viewer and all of its unique features and functions, download our What is an HTML5 Viewer? whitepaper to learn more.

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Benefits of SVG

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

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

SVG in PrizmDoc Viewer

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

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

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

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

Collaboration is key. As noted by Fast Company, 95 percent of businesses now recognize the value of collaboration tools, but just 56 percent have deployed these solutions at scale. Part of the disconnect comes down to adoption. Companies must demonstrate that new applications are worth using for staff and stakeholders alike.

The other half of this holdback stems from the concern around secure content collaboration. Organizations need the ability to handle enterprise content management interactions securely across multiple use cases including internal and external business process automation, task lists, reports, dashboards, and document collaboration. As a result, new frameworks don’t simply offer document management in isolation. Instead, they deliver cross-solution, cross-organizational collaboration that’s available anywhere, anytime, for any user. 

Let’s dive into three use cases that show the collaborative potential of one of these cross-solution frameworks, made possible by a partnership between Accusoft and one of its solution partners, TEAM Informatics. TEAM has developed a new product called M-Connect which leverages Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer to extend the capabilities of the M-Files platform, making true cross-organization collaboration possible. 

Triple Threat

Security remains a critical concern for organizations. If data isn’t properly protected, the results can be disastrous for both clients and companies. Emerging legislation around data protection includes mandates for shared due diligence no matter the origin or intention of data use.

As a result, effective content collaboration also includes actionable defense. It’s not enough to simply process information. Organizations must also secure this critical resource, starting first with streamlining. 

TEAM Informatics makes it possible to take control of your content with forms-based workflow automation. M-Files’ metadata solution, meanwhile, helps eliminate the growing security risk of information silos, while document viewing and control with PrizmDoc Viewer lets staff easily view and annotate documents to empower granular access control. With IT risks on the rise, a triple threat content collaboration response is key.

Back to Front

In addition to security, users must be able to collaborate effectively. One way that users gain context is through metadata. Intelligent access to metadata across your content management system paves the way for increased automation and improved results. As noted by Dark Reading, for example, relevant metadata is critical in the fight against emerging information security threats. 

It also forms the basis of practical process automation at scale. Here’s how the three entities work together to provide metadata context securely: 

• M-Files’ intelligent metadata functionality organizes content based on what it is, not where it’s stored.  
• If you want to include users outside of your M-Files ecosystem, TEAM Informatics’ M-Connect provides this capability. 
• M-Connect joins your external users with your M-Files repository, leveraging organized and secure content and process automation. 
• Accusoft’s embedded PrizmDoc Viewer enables users to capture key backend metadata and automate critical processes without compromising visibility.  
• M-Connect allows users to quickly configure interactions and processes in the form of a digital workspace.   

Consider the complex process of vendor take-on, staff take-on, provider or loan application processing and evaluation. Using M-Files, organizations can leverage key metadata to auto-populate forms and assess mortgage criteria. PrizmDoc Viewer, meanwhile, makes it easy for staff to access and evaluate documents to ensure processes are working as intended. This results in complete content control from back end capture to front end completion.

Sharing the News

Automation and protection form the basis of enhanced enterprise content management — but aren’t enough in isolation. To meet the evolving demands of consumers, C-Suite members, and corporate stakeholders, enterprises must leverage collaboration tools that empower both internal and external document sharing, viewing, and editing.

Best bet? Bridge the gap by finding — and combining — solutions that play to their strengths. Start with M-Files, which helps unify content by context, then leverage M-Connect to automate key functions to empower internal document efficiency. With PrizmDoc Viewer embedded inside, you’re empowering secure document collaboration across third parties and delivering the internal ability to collaborate efficiently.

The COVID-19 crisis has permanently changed the way banks do business. While many financial firms were already shifting away from brick-and-mortar branches toward both mobile and digital alternatives, pervasive pandemic priorities required a rapid shift in physical presence — forcing companies to rapidly react with remote work alternatives.

Some — such as JPMorgan — were already prepping for potential shifts in early March, deploying a pilot project that saw 10% of its 125,000 employees working from home. Banks like BMO, meanwhile, have embraced the new normal. The company says that around 36,000 staff members may permanently split their time between home and corporate offices. 

While this focus on employee efficacy and engagement is critical, productive people aren’t the only element of remote work success. Security and speed are two of the qualities that consumers now expect across all key banking functions, and firms must prioritize digital processes that streamline these processes without compromising financial requirements. 

But what does this look like in practice? How do organizations handle document management, process automation, and employee collaboration at a distance — without breaking the bank?

Facing Financial Frustrations

When work-from-home went from “maybe” to mandate, Deutsche Bank found itself racing to keep up. With just a few thousand out of its 90,000-strong workforce already working remotely, the firm was under pressure to scale capabilities quickly — from reimbursing staff for device purchase to rolling out video conferencing tools for more than 50,000 employees in less than two weeks, the bank has been under pressure to deliver remote work processes that deliver both continuity and compliance.

With finance firms historically lagging on technology adoption, however, this presents a significant problem. While cloud-based communication and collaboration tools are now commonplace — and can be readily adapted to work-from-home environments — the tools and tech necessary to underpin key financial functions are often tied to in-house server stacks and legacy applications. 

This creates a digital disconnect. While staff may have access to corporate networks, many of the secure document management and financial processing solutions they need to complete day-to-day operations simply weren’t designed to operate at a distance. Security accounts for part of this separation — regulatory control is critical for banks to ensure client privacy — but many banks have also focused on familiarity over functionality, adopting a “good enough” approach to cumbersome, on-site applications. As a result, firms now face financial frustration across critical workflows, including:

• Consumer Vetting — How do banks effectively evaluate potential client credit histories and financial foundations to deliver tailored service recommendations at a distance? Insecure credit or personal data access could have significant regulatory and legal repercussions.
• Credit Approvals — Necessary credit checks require secure connections and the assurance that data won’t be subject to theft or man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Loan Applications — Bank staff must complete complex forms at a distance and firms must ensure work-from-home employees have the tools they need to handle multiple file formats.
• Account Management — Opening, closing, and modifying account information requires secure access and the ability to share key documents with specific data removed or redacted. Financial data shared outside secure workflows could result in compliance failures.

Solving for Scale

While many big banks are preparing partial return-to-work strategies or ramping up remote work solutions, smaller financial firms don’t have this luxury. The scale of large enterprises affords bigger budgets for IT management and deployment, giving them a deeper pool of resources to pull from when deciding how best to support staff and systems at a distance. From in-house IT teams capable of creating custom-built apps to legacy software solutions that can be updated to work with new collaboration tools, the scale of big banks offers a marked advantage.

For smaller financial firms with the bulk of their workforce already at home and a return to the office unlikely in the near future, fragmentation is the familiar framework. Many SMEs now use multiple document management applications to streamline key processes — but these apps don’t always work well together.

In the office, this doesn’t pose a significant problem — staff might lose time switching between software tools or moving data across digital divides — but at home, access and agility are both restricted. This becomes more complicated thanks to the rise of multi-cloud computing. While purpose-built cloud services empower small banks to keep pace with their enterprise counterparts, they introduce complexity as access points both multiply and diversify.

Driving Digital Dividends

To drive digital dividends at a distance, smaller banks are well-served by the implementation of advanced software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). These tools make it possible to integrate advanced functionality into existing apps without compromising the security of critical banking data. To deliver remote work potential, firms need SDKs capable of:

• Collaboration — Integrate key collaboration functions including in-app document viewing to enhance data security, easy annotation and commenting options to ensure all staff are on the same page for multi-step application or approval processes, and burn-in redaction to enhance the protection of client or corporate data. 
• Conversion — As complex, compliance-heavy processes such as loan applications, credit evaluations, and financial investments move to remote, on-demand models, banks need no-touch data processing that makes it possible to view multiple file types — including familiar Word and Excel files along with more specialized image formats — and convert these files to PDF documents for easy search. 
• Capture — Automated data capture, field recognition, and forms processing not only reduce the amount of time staff spend creating new forms and completing current applications, they also reduce the risk of human error. Enable your team to take complete control of document management functions with powerful character recognition, scanned document cleanup, and form identification — all from within your own application.

The “new normal” for banking relies on digital services. Advanced SDKs and APIs make it possible for firms to succeed over both time and distance by delivering comprehensive collaboration, conversion, and data capture without breaking the bank.

Redaction is a common practice for legal firms, healthcare organizations, finance institutions, and government agencies. Simply put, it’s the process of deleting or masking sensitive information in a document to prevent misuse and protect specific parties.  Simple redaction is no longer enough; modern applications need to support multiple redaction reasons.

In modern times, document redaction software has replaced the permanent marker of the past. However, while there are many solutions that allow for the electronic removal of protected or sensitive information from a variety of document types, only a few offer the ability to apply customized redaction reasons.

What are redaction reasons?

Redaction reasons help answer a key question: “Why?” They are similar to custom text that appears over a redaction area to indicate the reason the material was redacted. In government documents, these reasons often take the form of codes which represent specific redaction categories.

Consider these codes from the National Archives still commonly used for government document redaction:

• 1.4(a) — This redaction code protects the publication of data relating to military plans, weapons systems, or operations.
• 1.4(e) — Using this code indicates that the redacted information pertains to scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to national security.

A Gap in the Market: Support for Multiple Redaction Reasons

At Accusoft’s recent customer advisory board, we learned that our customers found the ability to configure PrizmDoc Viewer to replace sensitive content with a custom redaction reason to be immensely valuable. However, we also learned there was a gap in the market when it came to support for applying multiple redaction reasons to a given piece of redacted content. That is, until now.

We are pleased to announce that with the release of PrizmDoc Viewer v13.13, our client API now provides support for multiple redaction reasons. Users can apply multiple reasons, selected from a customizable list, to any redaction. 

These reasons are shown on top of the black box of redacted content, and can also be burned into a downloadable PDF along with the rest of the redacted content. In addition, application developers can import pre-built sets of redaction reasons into PrizmDoc Viewer from an existing JSON file to streamline custom redaction reason application for their end-users.

In v13.13, multiple redaction reasons can be easily added using four client-side methods:

• Text Selection Redaction — Simply select the text you want and hover over the context menu to select your preferred redaction reason.

• Filled Rectangle Redaction — Create a filled rectangle of any size and shape and then select or directly customize your redaction reason.

• Full Page Redactions — You can also redact full pages and attach a specific redaction reason to indicate the purpose of redaction.

• Bulk (Sticky) Redactions — Rather than selecting a new redaction reason for each text block, sticky redactions save you time by applying the same redaction reason to multiple blocks of text on the same page.

Give It a Try

Ready to improve your redaction process with multiple redaction reasons that can be easily customized and applied across text, boxes, pages, or in bulk? Try the PrizmDoc Viewer redaction demo, or download a free trial today. Plus, stay tuned for an update to our server-side API for the programmatic application of multiple redaction reasons at scale, coming your way soon. 

Personally identifiable information (PII) is everywhere. Health data, financial information, legal records, even names and birthdates all fall under the auspices of PII. This information now forms the basis for many digital processes — from identity verification to contract creation and application approval.

The challenge? PII has value — and not just to data owners and authorized companies. Malicious actors are now targeting this information across enterprise content management databases, personal devices, and even supposedly secure government systems. 

As a result, governments across the globe are stepping up their PII protection to help improve user privacy across disparate digital processes. For enterprises, this creates a paradox. How do they effectively collect critical PII without risking legislative repercussions?

The Legislative Landscape

Laws are changing to account for PII protection. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the most well-known, and lays out specific rules for collecting and using citizens’ personal data. For example, companies must report PII breaches within 72 hours; failure to comply could mean fines up to four percent of yearly corporate revenue.

In the United States, meanwhile, new legislation such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives state residents the right to request, review, and have companies erase any stored personal information. Consumers can also ask enterprises not to sell their PII. According to the act, “any person, business, or service provider that intentionally violates this title may be liable for a civil penalty of up to seven thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500) for each violation.”

The Storage Situation

As a result, there’s an emerging shift in storage security. Organizations are understandably worried that stolen or compromised PII could have negative impacts on both their revenue and reputation.

Effectively securing personal data is a multi-step process. Companies must first identify what constitutes PII in their system, which regulation(s) apply, and where this data is stored. Then, they need to ensure this data is strongly encrypted, can only be accessed for a specific purpose, and is effectively tracked across all enterprise content management systems. 

Protecting high-value data — such as information protected by HIPAA — gets even more complicated. Any company that collects health PII is responsible for its secure storage and use, even if they rely on third-party providers for storage or analysis. To meet the standard of due diligence under HIPAA regulations, organizations must ensure end-to-end transmission security, robust access controls, audit controls, and even physical safeguards that limit data center access.

The Redaction Remedy

With regulations constantly evolving and the volume of PII continuously increasing, even large enterprises are hard-pressed to develop comprehensive storage and protection processes. The simplest solution? Don’t collect or store PII you don’t need, in turn reducing total risk.

This naturally presents a challenge. To deliver on consumer expectations, many companies now offer digital forms and application processing. From bank loans to legal contracts or mortgage applications, the sophistication of digital form creation, completion, and e-signature tools makes uploading personal data the quickest route to approval. Sidestepping legislative challenge means minimizing the upload and storage of PII, but how do companies separate data needed for processing from extraneous information? Manual redaction. Here’s one way that two companies have solved the issue of document security. 

A Secure Partnership

Accusoft has worked with TEAM Informatics to make secure document collaboration possible within their application. TEAM Informatics is developing a new product called M-Connect, which leverages Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer. M-Connect extends and enhances the capabilities of the M-Files Intelligent Information Management platform. 

Using Accusoft’s PrizmDoc Viewer, users can view and convert documents into the correct upload format. Once they select the information for redaction, TEAM Informatics’ redaction engine burns in this data obfuscation behind the scenes, allowing users to upload only the redacted critical information and companies to avoid storing PII they don’t need, such as social security or account numbers.

PII drives digital application processes — but evolving storage requirements introduce enterprise risk. Manual redaction helps bridge the gap between process and privacy by allowing users to upload function-specific data on demand. Learn more about PrizmDoc Viewer, M-Connect, and M-Files that provide this capability.

Electronic signature adoption has been on the rise among businesses since the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act) was passed in 2000. With the sudden growth of remote work and emerging pressures to go digital, businesses are struggling to keep pace with the changing global environment. It’s imperative that they figure out how to reduce manual, paper-based processes to maintain productivity.

Electronic record keeping enables businesses to complete their first step toward digital transformation. The ability to electronically sign documents anywhere in the world, crossing borders and barriers of distance, allows signers and originators to exchange agreements within minutes. Electronic signatures help businesses decrease their environmental footprint, greatly reduce costs on paper, and shorten document life cycles. 

However, there is still a lack of awareness when it comes to the different types of signature technologies available. For example, the terms electronic signature (e-signature) and digital signature are often used interchangeably, but there are critical differences to understand when choosing the right product for your business. 

At a high level, e-signatures are equivalent to signing documents with a handwritten or “wet signature” and are legally binding under certain conditions. They are ideal when users need to indicate the intent to approve or accept the contents of a document such as a contract, invoice, or lease agreement. 

On the other hand, digital signatures are a category of electronic signatures that leverage algorithms to generate a unique digital fingerprint. They provide the most secure form of authentication using digital certificates. This extra security ensures signing parties are willfully entering into an agreement, and the agreement cannot be altered after signing.

Continue reading to see the benefits of signature technology and learn innovative ways to streamline daily processes and diminish manual oversight.

E-Signatures

According to the ESIGN act, an electronic signature is defined as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process that is attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” 

In simple terms, this could be a graphical stamp of your hand-written signature, recorded verbal confirmation, or even your typed name on the signature line of a document.

Indicating an agreement to a contract, e-signatures are legally recognized and legally binding under the ESIGN Act and counterpart Uniform Electronics Transactions Act (UETA). Three main legal conditions must be met, among other best practices:

1. Authentication: Confirms the signer’s identity using various methods such as login, SSN, email address, or IP address.
2. Intent: A signer shows clear intent to electronically sign an agreement by typing or drawing their signature into a field.

Retention of Records: Records must be retained to accurately reflect the agreement by the business, allowing the signer to download a copy of the signed agreement.

Digital Signatures

Digital signatures are a form of an electronic signature, but not all electronic signatures are digital signatures. Digital signatures ensure electronic documents are authentic and use encryption to verify information has not been altered and is coming from a trusted source. 

Complying with strict legal regulations, certificate based digital signatures are the most reliable assurance of a signer’s identity. Digital signers are issued a certificate from a certificate authority (CA), and when a user signs a document, they are assigned a public key infrastructure (PKI), binding their identity to the document. 

Creating digital signatures is a complex mathematical process only handled by a computer and is more secure than other forms of electronic signatures.

Which Signing Technology Is Right for My Business?

While there are many benefits to electronic signatures, many companies face hesitation to adopt new technologies. Whether the uncertainty stems from the cost, implementation time, onboarding procedures, or adjusting to a learning curve, convincing the stakeholders that these technologies hold value is crucial for success. In order to remain competitive, organizations should identify tedious processes in their workflows and learn how to solve them with technology solutions.

While both electronic and digital signatures are legally binding, most businesses choose the convenience of electronic signatures. However, since e-signatures are not regulated like digital signatures, it is often up to individual businesses to develop and implement their own application and code to conform to the requirements of authentication, intent, and records retention. 

While an electronic signature is a graphical image placed on a document, it can’t show if someone tampers with the document after signing. Digital signatures ensure non-tampering, verification, and independent adherence to standards.

Identifying business drivers and security requirements help determine the appropriate electronic signature technology. Below are questions to evaluate when reviewing the three scenarios described in the following section.

• What is the level of sensitivity, assurance, and required proof of signer authenticity for documents to be signed?  
• What processes and workflows does the organization need to design when deploying electronic signatures in their current technology?
• Will there be a need to route documents for additional role signatures and approval signatures?
• Does your organization follow any specific industry standards or compliance providing stakeholders a digital version of documents with certifying signature?

Discover the use cases for digital signatures vs. e-signatures and decide which one is right for your organization in the rest of my article here.

Running containers instead of virtual machines is becoming more and more popular. This is because Docker significantly simplifies deployment, reduces infrastructure requirements, and is very effective from a resource consumption point of view. If you want to add document viewing capabilities to your web application and benefit from the improvements Docker provides, then PrizmDoc Viewer Docker images are a great choice. 

In a matter of minutes, you can get a local PrizmDoc Viewer demo working, open your documents, play with the viewer, and even proceed with prototyping your application code. As you move into development and then deployment, you will also enjoy the ease of both setting up and starting up PrizmDoc containers.

Continue reading to learn more about how PrizmDoc Viewer Docker can streamline your development and deployment processes, see what it takes to get started, and get some useful hints on working with PrizmDoc Viewer Docker.

What You Get with PrizmDoc Viewer Docker

There are a lot of reasons why PrizmDoc Viewer Docker is a great choice, not just for evaluation, but also for use in development and production.

Seamless Installation

You don’t have to worry about specific OS requirements, conflicts with other software installed on the server, or differences between your development and deployment environments. 

Fast Startup

Starting up PrizmDoc containers only takes a matter of seconds. You don’t need to create and keep an image with pre-installed PrizmDoc to be able to start up a fresh instance quickly.

Scaling and Recycling

In the real world, users usually sleep at night, and work with documents during daytime office hours. Even if your customers are healthcare organizations working around the clock, or are distributed across multiple time zones, the load on PrizmDoc servers will vary throughout the day and throughout the week. To reduce computing costs, you will likely start up PrizmDoc instances when the load increases, and recycle them when the load decreases. Using Docker-based PrizmDoc Viewer allows you to start up instances quickly and easily.

Easy Recovery

Although PrizmDoc services have internal machinery for keeping themselves up and productive, there can still be cases when things go wrong. If a PrizmDoc instance reports itself as unhealthy, it is best to simply delete it and start a new one, which is also easiest using Docker.

Since the production version of prizmdoc-server keeps its cache on the host file system, the cache will not be lost when the unhealthy container is deleted, and can be picked up by the fresh container. 

Preview Images

Here at Accusoft, we stay in touch with customers, whether we are working on new features or fixing bugs. With Docker, you can easily pull and run preview versions of PrizmDoc Viewer images to try our new features and fixes.

Special Case: Rendering MS Office Files Natively

All kinds of documents that are supported by PrizmDoc, including Microsoft Office documents, are also supported by PrizmDoc Docker. However, in some cases you may need MS Office documents to render natively, using the MS Office engine. In that case, you will need to use a regular PrizmDoc Windows installation for MS Office conversions. You can still benefit from using PrizmDoc Docker for the rest of your conversions, and set up MSO connectivity specifically for rendering Office documents. 

Quick Start

To get started with Dockerized PrizmDoc Viewer, we suggest you try the accusoft/prizmdoc-viewer-eval image. It combines the complete PrizmDoc backend and a demo web application in a single image.

All you need for this is a Linux, Windows, or Mac system with at least 2 CPUs, 8 GB of RAM, and Docker installed. Note, if you are using Docker Desktop for Windows, make sure it is switched to Linux containers. 

Open your terminal and execute just two commands to run this evaluation container:

1.Pull the latest image:

docker pull accusoft/prizmdoc-viewer-eval:latest

2. Run container: 
docker run --rm -p 8888:8888 -p 3000:3000 -p 18681:18681 -e ACCEPT_EULA=YES --name prizmdoc-viewer-eval accusoft/prizmdoc-viewer-eval:latest


Please note that the environment variable ACCEPT_EULA=YES indicates that you have accepted the PrizmDoc Viewer license agreement.

Once you see “Application running at http://localhost:8888” in the console, open this URL in the browser to see the demo page:

The demo is running in evaluation mode with a fixed-feature set. Please refer to the accusoft/prizmdoc-viewer-eval DockerHub page for complete instructions on how to unlock all PrizmDoc Viewer features for in-depth evaluation.

Please note that the accusoft/prizmdoc-viewer-eval image is suitable for evaluation only, and you will need to use production images for development and deployment. We will touch on this in more depth in the next section. Download the rest of this technical whitepaper to learn more.

Suddenly, it’s all about Docker. Again. It wasn’t last year. As noted by TechCrunch, Docker lost its CEO and sold off its enterprise business in rapid succession. Things looked grim, but the container company doubled down and refocused on its original purpose, driving developer success.

Now, Docker is everywhere as a lighter, more agile alternative for application packaging and performance. But before diving in headfirst, it’s worth redefining what it really means. What exactly is Docker? Why do containers matter so much, and what’s all the hype really about? Here’s the deal with Docker.

Permission to Dock

Docker containers, like virtual machines, allow application developers to deliver an entire running system as a single unit. The container includes the OS, the application, and all of its prerequisites. For the person responsible for deploying an application, there are no surprises about missing dependencies; you just deploy the container and it works.

But, unlike virtual machines, Docker containers can be started, stopped, and restarted very quickly. That’s because containers are really just sandboxed processes which share the host OS kernel. As a result, there’s no need to wait for the container’s operating system to “boot”; the container just starts running. Additionally, containers typically make better use of the underlying hardware resources than virtual machines, allowing you to deploy more containers per host than would be possible with VMs.

This ability to easily deploy an application with all of its dependencies while making efficient use of the underlying hardware has fueled the widespread adoption of Docker.

Open Sesame

As noted by Docker’s new CEO, Scott Johnston, the first generation of containers were almost “magical” for organizations struggling to control cloud complexity and virtual sprawl. But as the market matured, containers multiplied and now many companies face the challenge of containing their containers to streamline operations.

So it’s no surprise that last year brought a shift to Docker’s market model. With apps now using dozens or hundreds of containers to operate across multiple cloud instances, the company has created tools like Docker App and Docker Compose to streamline software management. And thanks to their pedigree, as the company that popularized container adoption, there’s growing developer interest in adopting the next generation of container controls.

Docker remains an open source project. While its “freemium” model creates a value chain for the company and lets organizations purchase the tools that best-fit their needs, the builder, engine, and orchestration components that made Docker so popular seven years ago remain fundamentally open source.

Contained Chaos

Docker is all about containing chaos. In 2020, that chaos has simply moved up the stack. The result was an inevitable implosion of their enterprise model as orchestration platform Kubernetes became the go-to option for managing multiple containers. For Docker, success in a new-stack market meant focusing on middleware, often described as “the software glue that lies between an operating system and the applications running on it.” 

In practice, the company pivoted to target DevOps teams. By allowing them to better manage code-to-cloud deployments and simplify their container space, Docker has managed to reposition itself as a valuable tool for developers and operations teams alike. Already, the company has seen significant uptick across its Docker Hub repository as software developers design Docker images for cutting-edge applications.

Bottom line? The hype is real. Docker is doubling down on containers, adjusting its market model, and refocusing on middleware to help companies better manage cloud application sprawl and reduce total complexity. Discover how Accusoft is using Docker in PrizmDoc Viewer in our engineer’s upcoming blog. Stay tuned.

Contracts are everywhere. From straightforward mobile phone agreements and facility use waivers to more in-depth arrangements that cover everything from large investments, parental custody, and long-term employment. As noted by Queen’s University Law, the ubiquity of contracts means they’re often entered and agreed to without so much as a second thought by citizens and consumers. 

But these contracts don’t exist in isolation. For every contract created and agreement drafted, there’s a legal contract specialist responsible for ensuring its accuracy, reliability, and relevance. Given both the increasing volume and complexity of these documents, more companies are advocating for a new advantage, contract automation. Here’s how it can help.

Identifying Key Issues

According to legal firm UpCounsel, it’s critical to identify potential contract issues before agreeing to any terms — no matter how favorable they appear. The same advice applies to contract creators, who can save time and money by ensuring agreements are accurate and complete before sending them to clients for review.

There are three key issues that automation can help address:

• Confidentiality — Secure handling of confidential information is critical in contract negotiation. By leveraging automation and editing solutions that keep contract negotiations in-browser and behind corporate firewalls, legal teams can ensure confidential information is not compromised so no significant and/or long-term harm is brought to the institution’s and/or individual’s data.

• Sensitive Information — Many contracts contain sensitive information that require limited dissemination. Here, legal teams need permission-based tools that empower them to track changes across contracts and create an end-to-end chain of custody to ensure information is viewed only by those who have permission to do so.

• Human Error — Errors happen, even in straightforward contract creation. Contract automation tools can help catch these common errors before they reach clients.

Lightening the Contract Load

The workload of legal contract managers is rapidly increasing. As noted by Law Technology Today, managers are often responsible for 20,000 to 40,000 contracts at any given time. 

Automation can help lighten the contract assembly load by empowering staff to easily insert common text strings or contract formats. Using advanced APIs that integrate with existing legal applications, teams get full control over contract generation and deployment at scale, in turn giving them more time to refine contract processes and tighten legal language.

Managing Force Majeure

One emerging challenge for legal contract negotiation centers around the concept of force majeure. Merriam Webster defines force majeure as “those uncontrollable events (such as war, labor stoppages, or extreme weather) that are not the fault of any party and that make it difficult or impossible to carry out normal business.” 

As noted by Law 360, the evolving Coronavirus pandemic means that many organizations will be examining their contracts to determine if force majeure clauses exist and apply, effectively allowing them to suspend or terminate agreements. The Law 360 piece points out that in most cases, force majeure is defined narrowly “to avoid undercutting the stability and predictability of commercial transactions.” 

The increasing scope of global health challenges, however, may require a reexamination of contracts at scale. Manually attempting this task could take weeks if not months for smaller firms. Here, contract automation tools that deliver straightforward, keyword-based search tools can help streamline the ability of contract specialists to find relevant clauses and determine their applicability, if any.

Contracts are everywhere — but they’re not effortless. Improve contract security, assembly, and search with advanced automation tools.