Ultraforms® - Overview

Automate Your Data Capture

Ultraforms® is a powerful 2D barcode generation engine specifically designed to facilitate automated capture data from printed PDF fillable forms. Industries of all types, such as Government (State, Federal and Local), Education, Health, Laboratories, Human Resources, Insurance, Banking, Logistics, etc. can benefit from using Ultraforms®.

To solve data capture issues, customers provide Ultraforms®-enabled PDF fillable forms to their end users. When these end users fill in the PDF form electronically, Ultraforms® generates a 2D barcode right onto the form that contains the variable data entered into the form by the end user. After printing and signing, submitted forms can be quickly scanned and the form's data can be easily and accurately captured into databases or applications.

Data capture using 2D barcode technology:

  • Reduces costs from traditional data capture operations.

  • Reduces time needed to capture data.

  • Makes data available to other systems/processes faster, bridging the gap between disparate IT systems cheaply and efficiently, or speeding the transfer of data to, or within, a business process or workflow.

  • Provides 100% accuracy in the data capture process.

  • Minimizes the number of problems that can arise with conventional data capture methods, e.g. false positives and data errors.

Ultraforms® Barcode Reading

The two ways to read Ultraforms® 2D barcode are:

  • Software - Through document scanning solutions which allow 2D barcode reading. Also, there are several standalone applications that will detect and read 2D barcodes from scanned documents.

  • Hardware - If you only need the form data and don't need to scan the entire document you can use a hand-held barcode scanner. Also, there are some document scanners capable of reading barcodes at runtime through hardware.

The data embedded inside the barcode can be customized to any format required to interface to any back end system, including XML.

UltraForms® Advantages

The advantages of implementing an Ultraforms® solution are:

1. Save Money and Time

  • Reduce the amount of money already being spent on data extraction labor costs.  Any data extraction method other than 2D barcode involves labour costs, whether manual data entry, or quality control as part of OCR.

  • Reduce costs from traditional data capture operations.  OCR solutions can be expensive to buy, implement and maintain.  In addition, OCR drives form development costs associated with maintaining strict form template design.

  • Capture data up to 20x more cost effective

  • Transfers data from a printed PDF Fillable form to ANY application

  • A printed PDF Fillable form with 2D barcode represents a machine-readable portable database of form contents.

  • Make the data available to other systems/processes faster, even to systems that cannot accept a direct data file input.

  • Minimize the number of problems that need to be solved in the data capture process.

  • No plug-ins or additional software needed.  The Ultraforms® solution is fully contained inside the PDF Fillable form itself.  There is no external server infrastructure required.

  • 100 % transparency to end- users.  Users complete a PDF Fillable form as they normally would.

2. Forms data capture environments perform better with Ultraforms® 2D barcode.

  • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) systems are prone to errors and false positives because they rely on a confidence threshold for data recognition and acceptance.  OCR recognition that fails the confidence threshold setting will necessarily involve manual intervention to correct potential data errors.  This manual intervention loop slows down OCR based data capture and adds cost.

3. Technology advantages

  • Ultraforms® provides forms accessibility to the widest possible form user population in that Ultraforms® is the only 2D barcode solution that can render a 2D barcode symbol inside a PDF Fillable form using PDF readers from different vendors.

  • Ultraforms® is fully self-contained within the PDF form.  The technology does not require external server infrastructure or software plugins.  Adobe® Reader® extensions are not required when using Adobe® Reader®.

Ultraforms® has been especially designed to work with the most popular and widespread platforms: PDF format. No further installations of software, plug-ins or libraries are required. The only software the end-user needs is a PDF Reader that supports intelligent form capability.  

It doesn't matter if the form has one page or many, or if the end-user has a laser or an inkjet printer. All the form's data will be encapsulated in a 2D barcode that can be easily read with a handheld scanner, or with a high-speed document scanner equipped with appropriate barcode reading software.

A single PDF417 symbol can hold up to 1600 characters (almost 2Kb) when configured with an industry recommended ‘level four’ error correction setting. Additionally, symbols can be "chained" together and read as if they were a unique file (Macro PDF standard). Almost 175 Mb can be encoded this way.

Ultraforms® works online or offline.  Forms can be accessed from a website, emailed as a normal PDF file, or accessed from CD or USB. Its performance won’t be affected.

Ultraforms® is a very lightweight solution which adds approximately 25kb to a PDF fillable form’s size.

Any PDF Reader

The barcode generation engine of Ultraforms® is embedded inside the PDF file, therefore, no additional software is required from the end-user. Any user with a PDF Reader can easily fill and print a PDF Fillable form embedded with Ultraforms® assuming the PDF reader solution supports minimum levels of the Javascript specification for PDF. No proprietary plug-ins, fonts or libraries are needed.

Once the form is printed, signed and submitted, its data is captured by scanning the 2D barcode. This guarantees 100% accuracy in the data capture process, while reducing to a minimum the time needed to capture the data. You will never have to worry about errors or false positives again.

Services

The Ultraforms® 2D barcode solution requires some implementation services to configure the solution within a given PDF Fillable form.  Foxit can provide any services required to implement the Ultraforms® solution and to optimise the design to ensure customers achieve the highest efficiency of data capture processes. Services range from analysis and implementation, to training and maintenance.

Whether you're researching your first purchase of a data capture system, installing a system you purchased from a reseller, or looking to enhance the system you already use, Foxit's services and support staff can help you get the best return on your investment.