FuseWorks powers document signing with Nutrient Web SDK
Table of contents
“It’s been an excellent experience working with Nutrient — one of the best documentation experiences I’ve had.”
Use case
Replacing a deprecated PDF viewer with a reliable, well-documented SDK to power digital signing document workflows for accounting professionals.
Challenge
- Lack of a viable path forward with FuseWorks’ existing PDF viewer, which had been deprecated by its vendor, could no longer open certain PDFs, and whose vendor-offered replacement was too costly to justify upgrading to.
Solution
- Successfully replaced the legacy viewer with Nutrient Web SDK, leaning heavily on Nutrient’s AI chatbot and documentation to work through implementation.
Results
- FuseWorks now manages the full document signing lifecycle, from setup to display, using Nutrient Web SDK.
Dale Chester, frontend technical lead at FuseWorks(opens in a new tab), knows firsthand what it feels like when the tool your product depends on stops working. His team, which was responsible for product development and maintenance, found itself in a position familiar to many engineering teams: Its core PDF viewer had been deprecated. To make matters worse, the vendor’s replacement was too costly, causing end users to feel the impact.
A deprecated PDF viewer disrupts document signing
FuseWorks builds FuseSign(opens in a new tab), a digital signing platform for accounting firms and their end users, which means PDF rendering isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the product. When FuseWorks’ existing viewer began struggling to open certain files, the company discovered that the vendor’s replacement came with a significant price increase and poor documentation. The team decided to look for a better option and soon discovered that Nutrient possessed the rare combination of industry credibility, fair pricing, and documentation that stood apart from everything else it had seen.
“We evaluated three to four other PDF providers and ultimately landed on Nutrient due to its fit for our requirements, fair pricing, and top-shelf documentation.”
How FuseWorks rebuilt on Nutrient Web SDK
Implementation was largely a solo effort led by Chester, though the team validated the approach together first: Before writing a single line of production code, the team built proof-of-concept integrations in Storybook. Throughout the build, Chester leaned heavily on Nutrient’s AI chatbot and documentation to move through the integration efficiently. The integration now manages how documents are prepared and displayed to users through FuseWorks’ platform, connected to an external document management system.
FuseWorks’ new foundation: Reliable document signing at scale
Before the migration, all 150 of FuseWorks’ UK client firms were affected by a PDF compatibility issue. Accountants were forced to reexport their main Tax Calc document through Chrome just to get it processed through FuseSign — an unnecessary manual step that added friction to every signing workflow. Nutrient resolved this out of the box, and the release was very well received by FuseWorks’ UK firms.
“You should choose Nutrient because its API offers great flexibility, is supported by gold-class documentation, and has excellent after-sales support.”
Results
Compatibility restored
All 150 of FuseWorks’ UK client firms, previously affected by PDF compatibility failures, can now process documents through FuseSign without issue.
Friction eliminated
A manual Chrome reexport workaround that burdened every UK signing workflow was eliminated entirely upon Nutrient’s release.
Immediate impact
The release of Nutrient to FuseWorks’ UK firms was very well received, with accountants immediately able to process documents that previously required a manual workaround.
Scaling document signing with Nutrient Web SDK
With Nutrient’s support, FuseWorks replaced a deprecated, cost-prohibitive PDF viewer with a well-documented SDK that now powers its entire digital signing workflow. Where accountants once had to work around broken document experiences, they now have consistent, uninterrupted access to the documents that matter most to their work.
With Nutrient Web SDK in place, FuseWorks is prepared to scale its platform with a stable, well-supported foundation it can build on.
