Discover how you can streamline your document editing with Muhimbi’s PDF Editor for SharePoint. Clavin Fernandes — one of the engineers who built the product — will provide you with an overview of our SharePoint PDF editor. He’ll go over some common PDF editing use cases that can help speed up your document workflows.
What will the demo cover?
A quick overview of our PDF editor
Viewing and annotating PDFs in SharePoint
Redacting and signing PDFs
Searching, rearranging, and adding pages to PDFs
Time for technical and non-technical questions
Register here
Speaker
Clavin Fernandes
Developer Relations and Support Services @ PSPDFKit
Clavin Fernandes is a Microsoft Business Applications MVP and Developer Relations and Support Services for PSPDFKit. He supports over 1000 high-level enterprise customers with all kinds of challenges related to PDF Conversion in combination with SharePoint On-Premise Office 365, Azure, Nintex workflow, K2, and Power Platform mostly no-code solutions and Empowering SharePoint and Business Users.
For well over a decade, we've been working with our customers to add new features to our PDF conversion software. We've always listened to your requests, and that has helped us successfully create and launch market-leading products.
However, there's a common request we were never able to address — until now. And that's allowing users to view and edit PDFs seamlessly, directly in SharePoint.
There are many standalone commercial PDF viewers and editors on the market, but anyone using them knows they don't work well with SharePoint. Saving files is difficult, the interfaces are unintuitive, and they don't play well with workflow platforms like SharePoint Designer and Nintex Workflow. Or even worse, some users end up downloading a PDF file, using an editor, and then reuploading the edited document.
This back-and-forth drains users' focus and wastes their time when all they want to do is edit a PDF or create a quick sales form. Wouldn't it be better if you could simply view and edit PDFs inside SharePoint and go about your business?
Of course it would. That's why we're so excited to announce the release of Muhimbi's PDF Editor for SharePoint on-premises (SP2013 and up, including SE). This PDF editor seamlessly integrates with SharePoint, allowing you to view, edit and manipulate PDFs without ever leaving your instance.
Now, let’s talk about why we think you’ll love it…
Great User Experience
As you can see, our PDF editor comes with a sleek and intuitive UI. Users can easily access and use editing tools to annotate, sign, edit, redact and more.
Easy Integration
Not only does our PDF editor integrate fully with SharePoint, but it’s also incredibly easy to get started. There are only two steps: First, download the editor, and then, install it in SharePoint. And presto — you’re ready to edit documents inside SharePoint.
Feature-Rich and Customizable PDF Editor
Just being able to preview and edit text in a PDF isn’t enough for most users. That’s why we rolled out a full suite of features to simplify your work and help you save time. With the Muhimbi PDF Editor for SharePoint, you’ll be able to:
Annotate PDFs
Draw, select a typed signature or upload an image of an electronic signature to PDFs
Move, crop, rotate, duplicate, delete and add pages to PDFs
Merge and combine PDFs
View PDF forms and the data saved in the associated form fields
Fill PDF forms and save form field data
Permanently redact sensitive information from a PDF document
Enterprise-Level Security
The Muhimbi PDF Editor integrates into SharePoint completely. This means you don’t have to install any additional desktop software, download confidential PDF files to your computer or have your files sent to a third-party server. Keeping all your PDF work inside the SharePoint environment means benefitting from SharePoint’s enterprise-level security.
Custom Pricing
This one is new for Muhimbi. We’re trying a pay-as-you-need model for our PDF Editor for SharePoint. What does this mean for you, the user?
It means you won’t have to pay for features or volume you don’t need. Our team will customize the price and the feature set to your unique use case, saving you money, while also making it easy for you to expand the editor’s capabilities as the need arises.
For more information, check out the following resources:
Acquisition strengthens PSPDFKit’s product offering for line-of-business applications deployed on cloud-based and on-premises document management systems.
Vienna, Austria, January 21, 2022 – PSPDFKit, the leading document processing and manipulation platform for developers and enterprise businesses, today announced the acquisition of U.K.-based Muhimbi, a leading software solution provider for cloud and on-premises document management systems. This marks PSPDFKit’s first acquisition, following a €100 million strategic investment from New York-based global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners in September 2021 to fuel PSPDFKit’s next stage of growth. The acquisition advances PSPDFKit’s expansion into the low-code/no-code space, helping democratize robotic process automation, and enabling anyone to build document workflows that automate manual business processes.
Muhimbi’s software is trusted by thousands of leading enterprises across the globe for automatic PDF conversion, merging, securing, watermarking, and optical character recognition (OCR) of most file types, including MS Office, emails, InfoPath, CAD, HTML, and images. Muhimbi’s flagship products, PDF Converter Online and PDF Converter for SharePoint, empower users with powerful actions for PDF conversion and document automation through SharePoint, Microsoft Power Platform, Nintex Workflow, and more. Nearly 1 billion end users in more than 150 different countries rely on PSPDFKit’s software development kits every day while using web and mobile applications that are built on the company’s platform. Their combined offering will further enable tomorrow’s engineers and businesses to innovate beyond paper.
“We are thrilled to welcome Jeroen and the entire Muhimbi team to the PSPDFKit family,” said Jonathan Rhyne, Co-Founder and CEO of PSPDFKit. “With the acquisition of Muhimbi, we are broadening who can build innovative document solutions from IT specialists to a new group of builders who prefer easy-to-use low-code/no-code tools for automating repetitive document processing tasks. Adding Muhimbi’s product line to PSPDFKit’s current offerings will continue to fuel the expansion of our world-class document processing platform. Today’s news is just the beginning, as PSPDFKit looks to expand the scope, reach, and robustness of our platform to cover the entire document lifecycle and further obsolete paper.”
Jeroen Ritmeijer, Founder and CEO of Muhimbi, said, “We are excited to join PSPDFKit and become an integral part of the growing PSPDFKit family. Joining forces will undoubtedly help us bring new innovations to our existing customers and facilitate growth in both our companies while maintaining product quality and continued best-in-class support."
District Capital Partners served as financial advisor, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as legal advisor, and Deloitte served as accounting advisor to PSPDFKit during this transaction. ICON Corporate Finance served as financial advisor and Ashfords served as legal advisor to Muhimbi.
About Muhimbi Muhimbi is a leading cloud software provider of mission-critical document conversion and manipulation functionality to thousands of high-profile international customers. Customers depend on Muhimbi’s software to produce a single searchable version of truth, enhance security, archive compliant documents, future-proof documents from technology obsolescence, and enhance document workflows. For more information on Muhimbi’s software solution for cloud and on-premises document management systems, visit www.muhimbi.com.
About PSPDFKit PSPDFKit develops software development toolkits and related frameworks that enable document creation, manipulation, collaboration, and innovation within its customers’ applications. The company’s products cover all major platforms and support a wide range of programming languages and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud with ease and at any scale. PSPDFKit has earned its developers-first reputation by pioneering products that are easily integrated, completely customizable to fit any deployment and workflow, and trusted by startups, SMBs, and multinational enterprises alike. For more information on PSPDFKit’s document processing platform, visit www.pspdfkit.com.
About Insight Partners Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight's mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.
Like our range of SharePoint products, after years of mammoth releases, we are changing our cadence to smaller and more focussed releases. We will still add big features, just fewer at a time, but more frequently.
Version 10.1.2 of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is the first of these focussed releases. Don't be thrown off by the small (sub) point release, we are adding a major new feature; the ability to extract data from PDF Forms using the FDF, XFDF and XML standards. Absolute brilliant new functionality for organisations and teams looking to automate PDF Form processing. Extract data using code, and store the results in a database, lists or make decisions based on the value of a field.
We love our American friends, but the sooner this form disappears, the better. At least we can process it automatically now.
A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server-based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java, .NET, Ruby & PHP based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, MSG (email), EML, AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents, the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Splitting and Merging facilities, an OCR facility and the ability to secure PDF files. Separate SharePoint and Cloud-based Subscription services are available as well.
After years of mammoth releases, we are changing our cadence to smaller and more focussed releases. We will still add big features, just fewer at a time, but more frequently.
Version 10.1.2 of the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint is the first of these focussed releases. Don't be thrown off by the small (sub) point release, we are adding a major new feature; the ability to extract data from PDF Forms using the FDF, XFDF and XML standards. Absolute brilliant new functionality for organisations and teams looking to automate PDF Form processing. Extract data using workflows or code, and store the results in a database, SharePoint lists or make decisions based on the value of a field.
We love our American friends, but the sooner this form disappears, the better. At least we can process it automatically now.
For those not familiar with the product, the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint is a lightweight solution that allows users to merge, split, watermark, secure, OCR and convert common document types - including InfoPath, AutoCAD, MSG (email), MS-Office, HTML and images - to PDF as well as other formats from within SharePoint using a friendly user interface, workflows or a web service call, without the need to install any client-side software or Adobe Acrobat. It integrates at a deep level with SharePoint and leverages facilities such as the Audit log, Nintex Workflow, K2, localisation, security and tracing. It runs on SharePoint 2007-2019 & SharePoint Online and is available in English, German, Dutch, French, Traditional Chinese and Japanese. This ‘on-premise’ version of the PDF Converter requires software to be installed on the SharePoint server. Please note that if you have no server access, there is always the option to deploy our SharePoint Online App to on-premise versions of SharePoint 2013, 2016 and 2019. For details see this blog post.
Muhimbi's range of PDF Conversion products are primarily used for ... well ... as the name says .... conversion of various file formats to PDF. This all works great, but once you start generating PDF files, you start to get a lot of questions from customers about other PDF facilities. As a result, over the years we have added PDF merging, splitting and securing.
Happy customers all around, but there is always room for improvement and additional features. As we are very active in the Electronic Forms market (InfoPath to PDF, Microsoft Forms, Nintex Forms, etc.) we decided to add support for the most popular form filling technology, PDF Forms.
As a result it is now possible to take a typical PDF form, being it a government issued W9, or a form specific to your industry or organisation, and use our existing conversion facilities to extract forms data in the FDF, XFDF and XML standards.
Just use our existing conversion facilities, being it our API, Nintex Workflow, or SharePoint Designer and pass in a PDF file containing form data. Select FDF, XFDF or XML as the output format and the form data is extracted in the desired format. Once you have the extracted data, use it in whatever way is required. Save it in a SharePoint column, insert it into a database, make a decision in your code based on the value of a field, etc.
Please note that at the time of writing (version 10.1.2) we support the AcroForms standard, which has broad support across the PDF Market. Support for the XML Forms Architecture standard will not be available until the 10.2 release.
So let's have a look at what this looks like in the real-word. In this case via Nintex Workflow.
Assuming that the Muhimbi PDF Converter is deployed in your environment, and the Nintex Workflow Integration has been activated, it is a matter of adding Muhimbi's Convert Document action to the workflow. Fill in the blanks and make sure you set the Output Format to something that is relatively easy to 'parse', in this example XFDF. In this particular case we capture the Output Item ID, which is the ID of the generated XFDF file. We need this so we can read the content of the generated file in the next step.
The Convert Document action generates XFDF, an XML based format specific to the form fields defined in the source PDF file. An example can be found below:
In the next step we want to extract data from the generated XFDF file, so we can use it in the rest of our workflow. Insert Nintex' standard Query XML action and specify the ItemURL, which is based on the Item ID captured in the previous step. Then use the XPath builder to generate a path to the field to extract. (Please ignore the XPath in the screenshot below, it will be different for your particular document).
This is a very high-level example, which assumes you are familiar with how to create workflows and parse XML.
The Muhimbi PDF Converter Online is constantly being improved and extended. Similar to many other online services, when a new version is rolled out there is nothing to do for our users. New functionality just shows up, existing functionality continues to work as expected.
Since our previous formal announcement, we have added some interesting new facilities, and fixed / improved existing logic.
The full list of changes can be found further down, but the key highlights for versions 9.14.1 are as follows:
Many improvements to our unique real-time watermarking and security facility.
Please note that all SharePoint Online versions are numbered in the 9.X range. At the time of writing the most recent version of the on-premise software is 10.1.1.
A simple 'Confidential' watermark applied to MS-Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF
For those not familiar with the product, the Muhimbi PDF Converter Online is a lightweight subscription based solution that allows users to convert merge, split, watermark, secure, and OCR common document types - including InfoPath, AutoCAD, MSG (email) MS-Office, HTML and images - to PDF using SharePoint Online through a friendly user interface or via workflows, without the need to install any client-side software or Adobe Acrobat. A REST based API as well as Power Automate (Flow), Azure LogicApps and Microsoft Power Apps integration is included in the service. More details can be found on the product page. An on-premise version for SharePoint 2007-2019 is available separately.
In addition to the changes listed above, the key changes and additions in the new version are as follows:
6156
Core
Bug
Some PDF files in Gujurati and Panjabi cannot be processed.
6934
Core
Bug
Fix working with PDF Bookmarks for certain edge cases.
6935
Core
Bug
Fix compatibility for certain PDF files.
7111
Core
Bug
Combination of Watermarking, post processing and ToC in same operation is not supported.
7129
Core
Bug
Bookmarks are missing in Adobe Document Cloud browser viewer.
7227
Core
Bug
Post Processing (watermark, security, PDF/A) of very large documents times out.
4394
Core
Improvement
Enable support for 1GB file operation.
5358
Core
Improvement
Improve support for processing Office documents in non-English languages.
5437
Core
Improvement
Improve regional routing for API requests.
4698
Core
Improvement
Improve error message when custom list is used as destination path.
4647
Core
Improvement
Update message for file type not supported by subscription.
6181
Core
Improvement
Improve compatibility with certain rare PDF files.
6171
Core
Improvement
Improve email delivery.
5976
Core
Improvement
Improve regional scalability.
6900
Core
Improvement
Improve font support for asian languages
6860
Core
Improvement
Improve error message for incorrect cross conversions
7182
Core
Improvement
Add support for additional font types during PDF Conversion
6494
Core
Improvement
Improve error messages for unrecognised file types
6510
Email
Fix
Disable automatic 'ligature' generation when converting emails to pdf.
6178
Excel
Improvement
Improve reliability of Excel converter for some edge cases.
6501
GUI
Improvement
OK and Cancel buttons not placed correctly on Watermark Settings screen.
6919
GUI
Improvement
Improve performance of SharePoint Online folder picker.
7220
GUI
Improvement
Improve user interface performance for large merge operations.
6543
GUI
Improvement
Update Real-Time watermarking screen to reflect it works with Office file types as well.
6198
GUI
Improvement
Improve error messages on Real-Time watermarking screens.
5403
GUI
Improvement
Visual Change to Muhimbi PDF Icons.
7197
GUI
Improvement
Include Subscription ID in SubscriptionDetails.aspx.
6542
GUI
Improvement
Rename the Watermarking and Security options in SharePoint Online UI.
6096
GUI
Improvement
Improve folder picker in SharePoint Online user interface.
6152
GUI
Improvement
Improve folder picker for Firefox users.
7114
HTML
Bug
Fix timeout during size optimisation of HTML Conversions.
5465
HTML
FIx
HTML conversion output is incorrect for sites that don't support redirects for HEAD requests.
4617
HTML
Improvement
Suppress 'working on it' message when converting SharePoint Online pages to PDF.
6183
HTML
Improvement
Resolve rare edge cases in HTML Converter.
6513
HTML
Improvement
Improve PDF rendering of SharePoint Modern pages.
6544
HTML
Improvement
Improve scaling during certain HTML conversions.
6938
HTML
Improvement
Upgrade HTML Converter to support the latest standards.
7123
HTML
Improvement
Improve PDF rendering of certain PowerBI reports.
6164
InfoPath
Improvement
Improve reliability of PowerPoint and InfoPath conversions under extreme load.
6184
InfoPath
Improvement
Improve processing of InfoPath XSN files in certain edge cases.
6933
Merging
Bug
Fix Merging of PDF files for certain edge cases.
7076
Merging
Bug
Fix Chinese bookmark text when merging PDF files.
6021
Merging
Fix
NullReferenceException when merging certain PDFs containing bookmarks and annotations.
6506
Merging
Improvement
Allow overriding of MergeSetting.OmitErrorPages using XML Override.
7215
MS-Word
Bug
Old style MS-Word (.doc) files without headers may be formatted incorrectly.
6512
MS-Word
Fix
Allow digitally signed DOCM files to be converted.
6177
MS-Word
Fix
Improve processing of field codes for Word documents that use revision tracking.
5928
MS-Word
Improvement
Make locking Word fields more versatile.
6549
MS-Word
New
Add support for Document Structure Tags when converting MS-Word and PowerPoint files.
7075
MS-Word
New
Add support for showing MS-Word revisions as 'Simple markup'.
6751
OCR
Bug
Improve ability to index OCRed PDFs using ifilter.
6995
OCR
Bug
Improve reliability of OCR for certain edge cases.
7138
OCR
Improvement
Improve error message for OCR operations that time out.
6131
PDF/A
New
Implement experimental support for PDF/a2u (and a3u).
6502
Power Automate
Improvement
Improve text layout in Power Automate actions.
6174
PowerPoint
Bug
Converting PowerPoint files to PDF/A after OCR doesn't always generate valid PDF/A documents.
7113
PowerPoint
Improvement
Allow PDF Conversion of corrupt PowerPoint files.
6009
Security
New
Support password protecting Office documents in SharePoint Online.
6084
Security
New
Support password protecting Office documents in SharePoint Designer Workflows.
6085
Security
New
Support password protecting Office documents in Power Automate & API.
6033
Setup
Bug
Fix global app deployment to root site collection
6014
Setup
Fix
Fix for 'App not installed' error if add-in deployed with tenant scope.
5964
Setup
Fix
Deployment of Add-in to root site collection using tenant scope deployment.
6923
Setup
Improvement
Improve email address validation for rare address types.
3961
Setup
New
Document code based SPFx package deployment.
6615
Setup
New
Make it possible to enable app-only access tokens via Muhimbi SharePoint Online user interface.
6932
Split
Bug
Invalid file name template not detected during split action.
6496
Watermarking
Bug
Fix visibility of watermarks for certain rare PDF files.
6684
Watermarking
Bug
Watermarks not consistently displayed in Office file formats for certain regional settings.
6884
Watermarking
Bug
PDF watermark from Power Automate always ends up in the foreground.
7330
Watermarking
Bug
Fix Real-Time watermarking on folders with a '.' (dot) in the folder name.
5436
Watermarking
Fix
Error while saving certain watermarked PDFs.
5939
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve watermarking of corrupt PDF files.
5944
Watermarking
Improvement
Support real-time watermarking on pinned documents.
6092
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve real-time watermarking on classic view.
6093
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve real-time watermarking on modern view.
6097
Watermarking
Improvement
Rename PDF watermark settings for site and library settings page.
5420
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve real-time watermarking from document preview window.
4761
Watermarking
Improvement
Support real-time watermarking on multilingual sites.
5391
Watermarking
Improvement
Real-time watermarking issue with call out menu in classic search results.
6505
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve real-time watermarking in Search Results.
7102
Watermarking
Improvement
Support real-time watermarking for all variations of English.
4760
Watermarking
Improvement
Improve real-time watermarking on custom search result page.
7074
Watermarking
Improvement
Real-time watermarking add support for document library web parts on modern pages.
6008
Watermarking
New
Support watermarking of Office documents in SharePoint Online.
4976
Watermarking
New
Add support for including UserProfile properties in watermarks.
6028
Watermarking
New
Support watermarking of Office documents in SharePoint Designer Workflows.
6029
Watermarking
New
Support watermarking of Office documents through the API.
6030
Watermarking
New
Support watermarking of Office documents through Power Automate.
6012
Watermarking
New
Implement EAN/UPC barcodes in SharePoint Online.
4650
Watermarking
New
Support on-open watermarking for Search results in Modern User Interface
6162
Watermarking
New
Add support for the 'PDF watermark type' in Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
For more information check out the following resources:
Every once in a while you need to pause and look back. Stop adding endless new functionality and address some of the lesser exciting issues that have been accumulating over time. Bug fixes that only affect a very small number of operations or happen under an extremely rare combination of circumstances. Issues that no one has really complained about, but we feel need addressing.
In other words, a service release, which is what we are announcing today. A brand new release of the Muhimbi PDF Converter Services, version 10.1.1, that adds almost no new functionality, but fixes a number of issues that may be important depending on your use case. When you run a product at scale, like we do in the Muhimbi PDF Online cloud service, even issues that happen in fewer than 0.01% of the operations add up.
A quick introduction for those not familiar with the product: The Muhimbi PDF Converter Services is an ‘on premises’ server based SDK that allows software developers to convert typical Office files to PDF format using a robust, scalable but friendly Web Services interface from Java, .NET, Ruby & PHP based solutions. It supports a large number of file types including MS-Office and ODF file formats as well as HTML, MSG (email), EML, AutoCAD and Image based files and is used by some of the largest organisations in the world for mission critical document conversions. In addition to converting documents, the product ships with a sophisticated watermarking engine, PDF Splitting and Merging facilities, an OCR facility and the ability to secure PDF files. Separate SharePoint and Cloud-based Subscription services are available as well.
Every once in a while you need to pause and look back. Stop adding endless new functionality and address some of the lesser exciting issues that have been accumulating over time. Bug fixes that only affect a very small number of operations or happen under an extremely rare combination of circumstances. Issues that no one has really complained about, but we feel need fixing.
In other words, a service release, which is what we are announcing today. A brand new release of the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint, version 10.1.1, that adds almost no new functionality, but fixes a number of issues that may be important depending on your use case. When you run a product at scale, like we do in the Muhimbi PDF Online cloud service, even issues that happen in fewer than 0.01% of the operations, add up.
For those not familiar with the product, the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint is a lightweight solution that allows users to merge, split, watermark, secure, OCR and convert common document types - including InfoPath, AutoCAD, MSG (email) MS-Office, HTML and images - to PDF as well as other formats from within SharePoint using a friendly user interface, workflows or a web service call, without the need to install any client-side software or Adobe Acrobat. It integrates at a deep level with SharePoint and leverages facilities such as the Audit log, Nintex Workflow, K2 blackpearl, localisation, security and tracing. It runs on SharePoint 2007-2019 & SharePoint Online and is available in English, German, Dutch, French, Traditional Chinese and Japanese. This ‘on-premise’ version of the PDF Converter requires software to be installed on the SharePoint server. Please note that if you have no server access, there is always the option to deploy our SharePoint Online App to on-premise versions of SharePoint 2013, 2016 and 2019. For details see this blog post.