Paperwork Automation Platform Anvil Launches a Complete API for PDFs

Anvil's latest release acts as a one stop shop for all PDF needs, including easy creation, filling, and signing of documents

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Anvil

Feb 10, 2021, 09:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Anvil, a paperwork automation platform, today announced the launch of it's latest product, a complete, web-based API for PDFs. This API bridges the gap between traditional PDF processes and modern, online-first workflows, helping companies focus on building value added software for their respective industries without having to worry about the underlying paperwork.

Anvil is a paperwork automation platform that helps businesses quickly build simple online experiences for paperwork processes. Paperwork is at the core of office work in America; every day millions of forms are shared, filled out, signed, and processed. The process is insecure, error-prone, tedious and requires countless human hours to transcribe information from PDFs into various computer systems. Endless PDF forms also waste valuable time and cause frustration for consumers who fill them out, often repeating the same information over and over.

Anvil's PDF API makes it possible for technical teams to integrate PDFs into their software systems in mere minutes, eliminating the need for developing and maintaining code for PDF filling, generation, and e-signing. This API is useful to developers creating software in a range of fields and services that have entrenched paperwork processes, including HR, financial services, legal, education, and healthcare among others, the API is industry agnostic making the manipulation of PDFs accessible across industries.

The new "Etch E-Signature API", is a simple, flexible, embeddable, and customizable e-signature solution. Allowing developers fill out a PDF form and/or generate a new PDF to be included in the e-signature request packet with one API call. The "PDF Filling API" is extremely simple and can be used to fill in existing PDF documents, when signatures are not needed. Anyone can set up a template, then the developer simply needs to make a request to the unique template URL with data to be inserted into the template. Lastly, the "PDF Generation API" is an endpoint for creating PDFs from scratch. This endpoint supports markdown for formatting and variable length tables, useful when the amount of data that needs to be rendered is uncertain, such as the case with invoices.

"Paperwork and PDFs are the bottleneck restricting faster adoption of digital tools in every industry," said Mang-Git Ng, Founder and CEO of Anvil. "We set out to build software that bridges the past and all of its entrenched paper processes, to the future of online-first, data centric, operational models. On the surface it seems simple to digitally capture some data, fill out a PDF form, and pass the form along to another party. In reality, paperwork processes are littered with nuances, exceptions, business rules, and logic, each item requiring a new feature adding to the capabilities and complexity of Anvil. We hope that by providing the digital, web-first building blocks for PDFs, we can be the transitional technology that helps accelerate the change from paper and PDFs to a modern data-first, interconnected world."

"The Anvil API is really nice and straight forward to work with. The developer mode and the documentation makes building and testing against the API super easy," says Eric Presley at Data Clover. "The templating system and ability to normalize data keys across PDFs really takes the headache out of managing a large library of PDFs. Also, the support we received from the Anvil team to get our proof of concept working was a huge benefit and is helping our team meet our product development timelines."

These three API endpoints are designed to address paperwork challenges in a way that makes it simple, accessible, and efficient for people and companies to navigate. They are intended to ease the technical headaches of managing and customizing PDFs, and are aiding in accelerating the adoption of digital tools on a wider scale by providing solutions that give people tools for their specific paperwork needs.

The APIs will be available at www.useanvil.com starting February 10th. Comprehensive documentation, simple tutorials, and client libraries, among other resources, will also be accessible to users on the website. You can also check out Anvil on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/anvil-pdf-api.

About Anvil
Anvil is a paperwork automation platform that enables companies to upgrade from inefficient PDF-based processes to modern, online-first workflows by abstracting PDFs into modern web APIs. Anvil's suite of PDF APIs is the easiest way to incorporate PDF creation, filling, and signing into your product so you can focus on core feature development. Companies across many industries have used our platform to programmatically create documents for HR, insurance, financial services, legal, education, and healthcare. Welcome to your digital, automated, PDF-free future with Anvil. Learn more at www.useanvil.com.

SOURCE Anvil