Team collaboration is now more important than ever as companies seek new ways to streamline operations in the digital work era. Remote work, or some hybrid version of it, is slowly becoming the norm across the board. And while there are many opportunities and benefits, this work arrangement isn’t without its share of challenges.
About 16% of the global workforce now works remotely, which could grow with time. The one question on people’s minds is how they can collaborate better online. One way is to use PDF software development kits.
What’s a PDF SDK and Why Does It Matter?
PDF SDKs (software development kits) for developers and software development kits provide a set of tools and resources for interacting with PDF files. You can use these SDKs to create, edit, annotate, and extract data from PDF files in their own programs.
This kind of capability opens up a wide array of applications that could speed up work and collaboration for virtual, hybrid, or even on-site teams. Some of those capabilities include document management systems, e-signature platforms, and custom PDF editors.
Moreover, a PDF software development kit also lets developers create automation that will take care of processing, editing, and creating PDF documents, saving a lot of time over the long-term.
Developers can use Professional PDF SDKs to build out collaborative features in their applications. Here are a few ways in which developers can use these SDKs for collaboration.
Document Sharing and Commenting
Document sharing and commenting are crucial for collaboration. It removes the need to meet excessively over small changes and details to a document or PDF file of a proposal, contract, SOP, or any other written document. As a result, you end up saving collaboration time and focusing on actions and results.
Developers can use the SDK's APIs to let users share PDFs with others and add comments to them. If a team is working together on a project, they can easily share documents and discuss them in real time with more ease and detail.
Document Versioning
Additionally, developers can also use the SDKs for PDFs and so on to track changes made to a document. That way, you and your team can keep a history of different versions for future reference. Having this feature can be useful for teams working on a document together as they can keep track of the evolution of the document.
A great use-case scenario for this also is using this feature to track and report analytics and data. You can store various versions of data and reports as they move and change with time. Pair that up with data visualization software, and you could have a great data system in place. Check out this data visualization software compilation to see what data visualization tools you can use in conjunction with PDF SDKs for document versioning.
Annotation and Markup
You can also use SDKs to add annotation and markup tools to an application. This allows users to highlight, underline, and add notes to documents, making it easy to provide feedback on PDFs.
This is a great feature to have in a team of creatives. For example, you could easily edit and annotate marketing copies saved on a PDF file, or add notes to a website wireframe when designing a website. These are just two of the many example scenarios where annotation and markup would be helpful.
Electronic Signature for Approvals and Contracts
Printing, lodging, and signing a document will take about 5 days on average, slowing down contracts and approvals. But with PDF SDKs, you can speed up that process through electronic signatures, decreasing work overload for 68% of employees and improving productivity.
With a developer SDK, you can add electronic signature capabilities to your applications, putting a document signing and approval system in place. Having this capability enables managers and other team members to sign PDFs electronically, making the process of signing and approving documents faster and more convenient.
PDF Document Editing
With PDF SDKs, people on your team can directly edit PDF documents without Adobe acrobat. A PDF editor SDK has a lot of great uses, like keeping knowledge hubs for customer service agents. When there are changes to a spiel for customer support, a customer service team can easily enter that into an SOP for customer support answers.
Pair that up with a secure customer service management tool, and you could have a highly efficient front-line service.
Adapting to the Times
These are just a few examples of how developers can use PDF SDKs for collaboration. The specific features and capabilities will depend on the SDK being used, but there are so many possibilities.
Times are changing, and they’re changing fast. Teams must be more ready to adapt and pivot as markets speed up and the internet of things radically changes how we conduct business forever. How are you planning to use PDF kit and other SDKs for your business?
