For GroupDocs, 2012 was a significant year marked by milestones; we’re proud and grateful to end a busy year with great achievements. With constant enhancements, we were able to prove that we’re an integral part of the document management world. In 2012, we have introduced enhanced versions of our apps with added features from time to time; created a variety of plugins for multiple platforms; integrated many different storage options with GroupDocs; introduced flexible API SDKs to help you integrate our apps to your existing applications; and were able build a strong base of valuable customers, ranging from small to mid to enterprise levels; amongst many others. [caption id=“attachment_1198” align=“alignnone” width=“600” caption=“A year of great achievements - 2012 in review”]A year of great achievements - 2012 in review [/caption] Let’s have a closer look at some of our achievements in 2012.

We’re Heading to Our 1st Anniversary!

We’re excited that our first anniversary is on our door steps. GroupDocs started its operation in Jan 12th, 2012 as a one-stop shop for all your document management requirements. We aimed at bridging the gap between desktop and cloud computing. For that reason, we opted using Web 2.0 to bridge the platform gap. To serve you with a bunch of apps that are essential for your document management needs, we started off by providing your with the following apps, all under a single roof:

Within a year, we’ve introduced a new app, the GroupDocs Conversion, in addition to our legacy apps; enhanced our existing UIs to include efficient work flows and features; extended our plugin support to many different platforms and CMSs; integrated with multiple 3rd party storage providers; and enhanced our API SDKs; just to name a few. We’re happy that our document management solutions were successful in making your document management and document collaboration processes quicker and easier. With GroupDocs, you get the most efficient, affordable and easy-to-use web-based document management solutions.

New App - GroupDocs Conversion

In addition to our legacy products, we’ve introduced an efficient online document conversion app, the GroupDocs Conversion, in 2012. GroupDocs Conversion is an online document conversion app that lets you convert documents simply using your browser. With GroupDocs Conversion, you can convert different types of word processing documents (DOC, DOCX, TXT, RTF, ODT), presentations (PPT, PPTX), spreadsheets (XLS, XLSX), portable files (PDF), and image files (JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF) to other file formats. Following figure gives you an idea of the file formats supported by GroupDocs Conversion. [caption id=“attachment_1199” align=“alignnone” width=“600” caption=“Convert your documents to many different formats using GroupDocs Conversion”]Convert your documents to many different formats using GroupDocs Conversion [/caption]

Key Innovations

We’ve made various enhancements to improve the look, feel, and efficiency of our apps. All of our apps have undergone substantial modifications to improve the user experience. Improvements include a new streamlined work flow that walks you through each and every step; various uploading options; thumbnail preview of the uploaded document; addition of new features and tools; new options to export, download, print the manipulated document; addition of tools tips and help link to provide you with additional help; support for all business and common file formats; and so on. Lately, we’ve rolled out the GroupDocs Annotation v2.0 beta and GroupDocs Assembly v2.0 beta with advanced features. Both these versions include enhanced, yet easy-to-follow workflows. Moreover, GroupDocs Annotation v2.0 beta consists of new Typewriter and Watermark features, which will take your annotation experience to new heights. The simple work flow for each application lets you complete the desired process quickly and easily. The UI improvements made the apps so intuitive that even a novice user can easily operate our apps without any additional help. We’re in the process of constantly improving the apps at GroupDocs, so you can expect more enhancements in 2013 also.

Integration with 3rd-Party Storage Solutions

In addition to the default, stable storage option from GroupDocs, we offer you multiple storage options to make the storage options more flexible. We’ve joined hands with multiple 3rd party storage service providers so that you can now choose your default storage option from a variety of storage providers. You can now set up Windows Azure or Amazon S3 as your default storage service providers from within your GroupDocs account. Also, you can access your DropBox and Box.com files and folders from within GroupDocs.

Integration with Multiple Platforms and CMSs

2012 was a busy year for our developers. Apart from enhancing the existing apps, creating new versions, etc., our developers were busy designing efficient plugins for multiple platforms and CMSs. Last year, we were able to create plugins for three of our legacy apps, such as GroupDocs Viewer, GroupDocs Annotation and GroupDocs Assembly. We’ve created these plugins for many different platforms including .NET, Java, PHP, Pearl, Ruby, Python, JS, etc. On top of that, our developers made sure to extend our reach to almost all the available CMSs. Following are the details of our plugin integrations:

During 2012, we’ve introduced GroupDocs Annotation plugin to the following platforms: * Radiant * DotNetNuke * Orchard * WordPress * Umbraco * Contao * Textpattern * Magento * Plone * OpenCMS * Magnolia * Pligg * eZPublish * SugarCRM * null * Alfresco

Looking Forward to 2013

Reflecting on the previous year, we’re happy that we hit all the milestones that we set for 2012. We acknowledge your encouragement and support behind our success. We will continue to grow our operation, provide excellent customer support, and proceed with innovations to maintain and continue this kind of success in 2013 too. With a number of integrations and enhancements in the pipeline, we’re looking forward to a bright 2013. Your support and feedback are important for us. Talk to us through our official feedback forum or Live Chat support. Stay tuned for our blogs and newsletters, which bring you all enhancements happening in GroupDocs. Wish you all a happy & prosperous New Year!