Author: Nellaiappan L

This is the third paper in the series describing Innovatix’s new CCM Migration tool, PDF Morph (v 1.0). PDF Morph is an automation tool, intended to greatly accelerate the conversion from other CCM tools and templates to Quadient Inspire. It saves most of the manual work involved in such conversions and provides for much more accurate and consistent outputs. In this paper, we provide estimates of the manual savings achievable with this application. We are currently using PDF Morph in our own CCM migration practice, so these estimates of time and resource savings are based on the actual migration work of our teams.  We will be happy to show these savings first-hand in a real-life demo, in which we can take one or several different types of your current PDF document templates and convert them to input to Quadient Inspire during an online demo. Contact us to set up a demo. Feature Description PDF Morph is a cloud-based tool that assists users to mark and extract data from their PDF files and create the WFD in Inspire Designer. You can extract data from any kind of PDF. The data are extracted based on X, Y coordinates. It can help users to extract Texts, Font, Barcodes, Image coordinates, etc. from the PDF, and create the corresponding information in Inspire Designer’s WFD. The tool can extract data from a single page PDF, multiple page PDF, and support a multi-layout PDF too. The basic features of the application include the following. Users can extract text field data including font information. Users can extract image coordinates and Barcode information. The system then generates an Excel file from the marked PDF with data and coordinate information. The automation comes in at this point. Once the Excel file is generated the Automation tool will run and read the Excel file, reading row by row and rendering the equivalent flow area in Inspire Designer. At the same time, it will apply the font information extracted from the PDF for the controls in Inspire designer. For image coordinates in Excel, the automation tool will create a container in Inspire Designer at these specific coordinates for the user to input the image into Designer. The Automation tool can be run on any number of PDF files, creating the same number of excel files and rendering all the equivalents in Inspire Designer WFD’s. The system is thus fully scalable, allowing a user to quickly convert a whole set of PDF’s into Inspire Designer. This is the step where very significant savings in manual resources and time are achieved. Time and Resource Savings The chart below summarizes the manual effort (in minutes) and the automation tool time (in minutes) to convert a PDF document to input to Quadient Inspire Designer. There are three document cases shown: The first column in each of these three page types shows the time it took for one of our skilled developers to manually input the document directly into Quadient Inspire Designer. The second and third columns for each of the document types is the time it took to input the same type of document into Quadient Inspire Designer using our automation tool, PDF Morph – the second column is the manual time taken for that particular step and the third column is automation execution time. Under the automation tool, the manual effort column is the time it took an analyst to input the document into Designer using PDF Morph. For the single page document, the analyst’s time was reduced to 10 minutes, which amounted to a savings of 20 minutes (67% savings) over the fully manual process. The third column for each document type is the system time for the conversion, and for single page document it is 1.22 minutes. Effectively, the system time can be made even smaller since the application is cloud-based and we can scale resources to any level desired. At 1.22 minutes for this single page document, system time is essential, not relevant. Also note that our systems use a queueing approach on the cloud, so if your company has multiple concurrent users submitting documents for conversion there can be slight delays in system processing and the system times may be somewhat larger. The savings in manual effort is even greater for the multi-page document, where we found savings to be 85% and for the multi-layout the savings was 76%. In effect, the amount of savings is related to the number of rows in the Excel sheet that is created from each of these documents. For the specific documents used in these time trails the number of rows is as follows: Process Components The components in the process that we timed are in the table above and shown in the below table. For the manual process, the time to extract data from the pdf is not applicable, nor is the time to tweak the layout once the PDF Morph process has run and populated the Designer template. Likewise, for the automated process there is obviously no analyst time needed to design the pdf in Designer since it is being done automatically with the PDF Morph tool. The ‘tweak’ time at the end of the automated process is the time to make minor corrections to the outputs from the PDF Morph tool that are put into Inspire Designer.   Manual Process Automated Process Analyze PDF 2 2 Extract data from PDF’s – 3 Connect to Input module 3 3 Design/Run Automation Script 25 – Tweak layout design (Current) – 2 Summary This paper has shown the results of trials to see the savings achievable with the PDF Morph tool. The results show very significant savings. We are hoping anyone in the midst of conversion of their CCM artifacts to Quadient Inspire (or contemplating such) consider this automation tool to perform their work. PDF Morph is easy to learn and use, and you can have multiple analysts doing conversions at the same time. The net result will be much less manual effort overall

This is the second paper in the series describing Innovatix’s new Quadient Migration tool, PDF Morph (v 1.0). Here we lay out the basic features of the app, along with a brief view of the underlying technology stack. We also describe how it can be used effectively giving the basic process flow of the system. PDF Morph is an automation tool, intended to greatly accelerate the conversion of PDF templates (derived from other CCM tools in a migration project or based on the day-to-day development work of clients that are using Quadient) to Quadient Inspire. It saves most of the manual work involved in such conversions and provides for much more accurate outputs. In the next paper in this series, we provide estimates of the manual savings achievable with this application. We are currently using PDF Morph in our own Quadient migration and development support practices. Our Quadient developers have registered and self-configured the application and have started using it directly. We are continuing to add new features and functionality to the application and are planning a new release of the software in March 2021. We are continuing to invest in development of the tool to further automate our Quadient work, thereby providing work outputs to our clients that is faster and allows for much higher throughput. Feature Description PDF Morph is a cloud-based tool that assists users to mark and extract data from their PDF files and create the WFD in Inspire Designer. You can extract data from any kind of PDF. The data are extracted based on X, Y coordinates. It helps our Quadient to extract Texts, Font, Barcodes, Image coordinates, etc. from the PDF, and create the corresponding information in Inspire Designer’s WFD. The basic features of the application include the following. Quadient developers can extract text field data including font information. When identified by the Quadient developers, the system will automatically extract image coordinates and extract Barcode information. The system then generates an Excel file from the marked PDF with data and coordinate information. The system is able to extract data from a single page PDF, multiple page PDF, and is able to support a multi-layout PDF too. The automation comes in at this point. An Excel file will be generated when the developers clicks ‘Extract Data’ from the marked PDF. The Automation tool will run and read the Excel file, reading row by row and rendering the equivalent flow area in Inspire Designer. At the same time, it will apply the font information extracted from the PDF for the controls in Inspire designer. For image coordinates in Excel, the automation tool will create a container in Inspire Designer at these specific coordinates for a Quadient developer to input the image into Designer. The Automation tool can be run on any number of PDF files, creating the same number of excel files and rendering all the equivalents in Inspire Designer. The system is thus fully scalable, allowing Quadient developers to quickly convert a whole set of PDF’s into Inspire Designer. This is the step where very significant savings in manual resources and time are achieved. Process Flow The flow chart below gives the basics steps for engaging the system. PDF Morph is cloud-based, and new users can register and use the application on their own. The basic functionality of the system allows for multiple concurrent Quadient developers to work simultaneously. As noted at the bottom of the flow chart, the system automatically logs any errors if any in loading the template designs into Quadient Inspire. Innovatix will respond to any errors encountered, and provide options for overcoming any of these errors. We have used the system widely in our own migration practice and expect there will be few if any errors encountered. Technology Stack The chart below provides details of the technology stack underlying PDF Morph. We currently use a couple of 3rd party libraries for extracting image coordinates, font information, bar codes, and extracting text along with the associated paragraph information. In the next release of the product in March 2021, we expect these libraries to be useful for other elements we might encounter in a PDF template. Have a look at our Roadmap for the second version of PDF Morph. it includes a list of additional features we are committed to for this 2nd version. We encourage anyone to send us the features you would be looking for in this product. While we expect to yet add a few more features to version 2.0, we will be certain to consider any suggested new capabilities for later versions. Walkthrough of User Steps Here we provide a short walk-through of the main user steps to using PDF Morph. Step 1 The Quadient developers starts by opening the PDF Morph tool and clicking on Choose PDF File. A file open dialog will be loaded. The Quadient developers needs to select the PDF file. Step 2 Once the PDF file is loaded, fill in the name and choose the object type (Text; Image; Barcode, other) to select from. Click on Mark Element and mark the section in PDF. The preview will be populated Step 3 Continue the above process and mark all the areas which need to be exported. Once marking is complete, click on the Process Data button for pushing this request in Queue for generating the WFD file. Step 4 Navigate to the Dashboard page and refresh to view the progress of the request. Once the file is generated, you will get a notification. The Dashboard provides an option to download the WFD file and Log file with details on the automation process. A sample of the output the Quadient developers gets in Quadient Inspire is shown in the chart below. Step 5 Once this template is provided in Quadient Inspire, the Quadient developers will need to make any last-minute tweaking of the template. With v 1.0 of the tool, the amount of ‘tweaking’ we are encountering in our migration work is less than 15%