During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies suddenly needed to develop new workflows to maintain the health and safety of employees and customers. They wanted fast, easy, automated, and low contact methods to manage visitor registration, sanitization checklists, self-screening tests for employees, and remote worker tracking.

Many companies turned to K2 products, which were acquired by Nintex in October 2020, for the help they needed. K2 Cloud combines pre-built templates with an intuitive low-code interface that makes it easy to build custom workflows and forms with minimal technical support.

Part of what makes K2 Cloud so powerful is its ability to connect with virtually any application or service. Customers can pull together information from across systems to create fully automated, end-to-end workflows and give employees access to all of the data they need in a single interface.

“Our goal is to develop digital process automation software that easily connects people and systems,” says Alex Cobb, Vice President of Product Management at Nintex. “We want to give everyone the information they need to understand what is happening and make informed decisions as to what they should do next. If our products are doing their job, people won’t notice it. It will simply work to create a seamless experience.”

K2 products are designed to incorporate top technologies from industry leaders to build out-of-the-box functionality and integrations. When looking for the best way to turn results into easy-to-read and easy-to store reports, the team immediately thought of PDF files and Adobe.

“Document management is core to many of the processes that we support,” says Cobb. “PDF is the universal and familiar format that anyone can use without worrying about compatibility issues. It can be transmitted electronically or printed for customers who still rely on paper processes. Customers need to have complete trust in any partner technologies that we incorporate into K2 Cloud, so when we decided to add PDF capabilities, we turned to the trusted leader in PDF: Adobe. Using Adobe Acrobat Services APIs, we’re adding exceptional functionality and user experience to K2 Cloud for little time, effort, or risk.”

Accelerating development for faster time to market

The engineering team behind K2 products uses the Node.js SDK to invoke both Adobe PDF Tools API and Adobe PDF Embed API, adding rich documentation functionality to K2 Cloud. With PDF Tools API, customers that leverage K2 products can create a PDF from any type of source document, including text, images, HTML, and Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. K2 Cloud can then combine any number of PDFs into a single PDF. Working together, these two operations enable the software to pull together information from any number of sources and then provide users with a single PDF document containing a full record of the results representing a statement truth.

Meanwhile, the JavaScript PDF Embed API provides key features that allow K2 developers to add embedded PDF to K2 templates enabling users to view, save, and annotate the documents, all within a single interface. Using integration with Adobe Acrobat Sign, users can even send the PDF document for signature and approval from the solution.

When Cobb first worked with Adobe Acrobat Services APIs, he was surprised how fast and easy it was to add new functionality.

“I wanted to try out the annotation API, so I took a look at some Adobe resources,” says Cobb. “I ended up writing an app in a few minutes. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.”

Cobb attributes the speed of development to clear documentation including a wide range of samples showing the APIs used in proven and tested use cases. K2 developers were able to easily adapt these use cases to address their specific scenarios, which further reduced development time.

K2 Cloud provides drag-and-drop forms design with a rich set of controls and design options to build responsive digital experiences across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Developers can further extend and customize these web experiences using industry standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The product team are working to further extend the capabilities of these omnichannel experiences with support for Progressive Web Apps (PWA), which will provide caching, faster performance, and offline support.

“We see PWA as the new standard for responsive application development delivering nearly-native capabilities which reach anyone, anywhere, on any device” says Igor Jericevich, Director of Product Management at Nintex. “One advantage of Adobe Acrobat Services APIs is that they are easy to use with any development approach, including existing established platforms as well as supporting our modern PWA vision. No matter how we are approaching development, we can easily invoke Adobe Acrobat Services APIs.”

The speed and ease of development leads to a much faster time to market. Nintex’s engineering team can release new products and features to keep customers invested in K2 products.

“Adobe Acrobat Services APIs helped us to quickly develop new services for our customers who have invested in K2 Cloud and allowed us to bring these to market faster, even during COVID-19,” says Jericevich. “The fast response helps us continue to drive digital innovation for our customers.”

Enhancing productivity with documentation capabilities

Customers across industries are already taking advantage of the documentation capabilities in the K2 Cloud to enhance processes. A legal firm boosts productivity by using K2 products to create a single interface for lawyers to gather and manage all information needed for a case and collect it in a single PDF document. A renewable energy company uses K2 Cloud to streamline human resources documentation for the growing company. Automated K2 workflows are also used by many healthcare organizations to help document and meet strict compliance regulations.

One insurance company leveraged K2 products to create an online wizard that walks customers through submitting auto insurance claims online. Users can upload documents or images, such as receipts from an auto repair shop or photographs of the damaged vehicle. Artificial intelligence capabilities identify the type of information uploaded, while OCR capabilities pull applicable text from images. The uploaded documents are all transformed into PDF files using the Adobe Acrobat Services APIs. Customers can then view the documents and use annotation tools to add notes to the PDFs, such as explaining charges on a receipt or pointing out areas of damage on a vehicle.

All of the claim information is combined into a single PDF and delivered to customers through Acrobat Sign for review and approval. Meanwhile, an internal-facing portal provides a single interface where claims managers can view information about the incoming claim. The employee portal brings in all information related to the customer, the policy, and the claim on a single screen. The portal even uses Adobe Acrobat Sign API to allow claims managers to check whether the claim has been viewed and signed by customer.

“Users only see a single seamless portal, but underneath the hood APIs allow us to bring in much deeper functionality,” says Jericevich. “Adobe Acrobat Services APIs play a major role in allowing our team to provide truly compelling user experiences.”

Looking to the future with Adobe APIs

The Nintex team continues to work with Adobe Acrobat Services APIs to bring new functionality to K2 products. "Adobe has been a responsive, collaborative, and supportive partner,” says Cobb. “No matter what we need or when we need it, Adobe has always been there to make sure we succeed. The result has been a strong partnership and happy customers.”

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