PDF Tools & E-Signature — PDF tools, Arabic OCR and e-signature software
A PDF toolbox inside your own system, so nobody has to e-mail a contract to a free website to merge it, shrink it or sign it. It covers everyday page work, Arabic and English scan reading, password protection and clean-up, hand-placed signatures, and certificate signatures with a checker for the ones you receive. It replaces the online PDF sites staff reach for today. Files are kept in your company's own storage; the one optional exception is reading a scan with your AI provider, which sends page images to that provider only when someone chooses it. It does not edit the words in a PDF or fill in forms, and it does not yet make archival PDF/A files or redact.
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117 features in 15 areas · works with 5 other modules · 4 team workflows
Full feature list
Organise pages
Put the pages of a document in the right order and the right shape, without opening a desktop editor.
- Rotate pages — Turn every page, or only the ones you choose, by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. The turn adds to whatever rotation a page already has, which fixes a scan fed in sideways.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
- Merge several PDFs into one — Join several files into a single PDF in the order shown on screen, keeping every page. Useful for assembling a contract pack, a visa file or a month of supplier statements.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Payroll manager, Project manager
- Split one PDF into several — Cut a long file into parts at the page numbers you name, for example one part per employee in a combined payslip run. Every part is listed on the result with its own open and download buttons.For: Employee, HR specialist, Payroll manager, Accountant
- Keep only the pages you name — Produces a new file containing just the pages you pick, in the order you give them. The original file is never changed.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Remove pages and close the gap — Delete a cover sheet, a blank page or a page with something that should not go out, and the remaining pages close up. Like every tool here, it writes a new file and leaves yours alone.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Reverse the page order — Flips a document back to front, the usual fix for a double-sided scan fed the wrong way round.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Crop margins by dragging a box — Drag a box over the part of the page you want to keep and the four margins fill in for you, still editable by hand. The real page size is read from the file, so a Letter page is not cropped as if it were A4.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Choose pages by clicking thumbnails — The tools that take a page range show a thumbnail of every page; click the ones you mean and the range fills in as 1-11 rather than a long list. Typing a range still works, which is faster on a 300-page file.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Look at the file before and the result after — Every tool previews the file you chose with page arrows, and the finished document opens in place under Look at the result. You find out the crop took the wrong edge before downloading anything.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Run one tool over many files — Tick "Run on many files", pick up to 50 PDFs (your administrator can change the limit) and the tool runs on each one with the same settings. The batch reports how many finished and how many did not, with the reason for each failure. Each file is its own run in your history, downloads on its own, and the whole set downloads as one zip. Stop it midway and the files already finished are kept.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Payroll manager
- Batch from a Documents folder — In a batch run, add PDFs straight from a Documents folder: you see only what Documents shows you, files you may not download are listed but cannot be ticked, and the chosen files go through the same upload as files from your computer.For: Employee, HR manager, Tenant admin
- Set how many files a batch takes — An administrator sets the most files in one batch (1 to 200, 50 by default) on the PDF tools home page; a bigger batch is refused with a sentence asking for a second one.For: Tenant admin
Shrink and repair
Make a file small enough to send, or openable again.
- Compress without losing quality — The lossless lane rebuilds the file's structure and recompresses it with every pixel and every letter unchanged. Choose it when quality must not change; on a scan it saves little, because a scan's weight is in its images.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Payroll manager
- Compress much smaller by re-encoding images — The smaller lane resamples the images at 72, 150 or 300 dots per inch, which is where a scanned file loses most of its weight (in one test a 657 KB scan came out 79 percent smaller). The screen says plainly that this cannot be undone.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Payroll manager
- Honest before and after sizes — Both compress lanes report the size before and after, including when the result would have been bigger, in which case you get the original back with an explanation rather than a larger file.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Repair a damaged PDF — Rebuilds a broken index so viewers that refused the file can open it again. It recovers files whose index is broken, not files whose pages are genuinely gone, and says so.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Manager
Convert to and from PDF
Turn photos and scans into one PDF, office files into PDFs and PDF pages into pictures.
- Photos and scans to one PDF — Choose JPEG or PNG pictures, or take photos with the phone camera, put them in the order you want and get one PDF with a picture on each page. Pick A4, Letter or a page the size of the picture, a white border, and let a sideways phone photo turn upright. A JPEG goes into the file exactly as the camera wrote it, location tag included, so remove that first if the PDF will leave the company. Nothing is straightened or cropped, and one button then reads the result so it becomes searchable.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Project manager
- Word, Excel and PowerPoint to PDF — Converts Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, RTF, CSV and plain text through the same document server the editor uses, so the PDF matches what the office suite would print. A font the server does not have is substituted, which can move a line break, and the screen warns about that.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Project manager
- Turn PDF pages into pictures — Renders each page, or the pages you name such as 3, 2-5 or 1,3,5-7, to a PNG or JPEG at a resolution from 36 to 600 dots per inch. Each page comes back as its own file, and the result reminds you the text in a picture can no longer be searched until it is read again.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Project manager
- Only tools this installation can run are listed — A tool the installation cannot run, such as scan reading when no reader is installed, is left off the list instead of failing after you upload a file. A converter that is installed but temporarily unreachable can still report an error.For: Employee, Tenant admin
Read text and scans
Get the words out of a document, including scans and photographs, in Arabic and English.
- Extract the text as plain text or Markdown — Pulls the text out in reading order for all pages or a range, either plain or as Markdown with each page labelled. The result is a file you download.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Manager, Project member
- A second reader for Arabic and other scripts — When the fast reader finds almost nothing, a second reader that understands the fonts behind Arabic text gets a turn before the file is declared a scan. Otherwise a perfectly good Arabic document would be reported as empty.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Tells you when a file is a scan — If almost no text comes out, the result says the pages are pictures instead of pretending they were blank, and offers a button that carries the same file straight to the scan tool.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Make a scan searchable in Arabic and English — Recognises the words on a scanned page (optical character recognition, OCR) and lays them invisibly under the picture, so the document looks identical but can be searched, copied and read aloud. Choose Arabic, English or both; a scan of up to twelve pages is read at once and a longer one runs in the background (up to 1,000 pages), roughly ten seconds a page.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Payroll manager
- Read every page again for a bad earlier scan — By default pages that already have text are left alone. Tick the option to re-read every page when an earlier pass produced nonsense, knowing the file grows and Compress can shrink it afterwards.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Read a photographed document with your AI provider — In Extract text, choose Read it with AI to have the pages of a scan or phone photo read by the AI provider your company has set up, which can do better than plain recognition on stamped Arabic certificates. It is a deliberate choice on the screen because the page images leave your workspace for that provider; up to 20 pages per run, and it needs an AI provider and the company switch on (on by default).For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, HR manager, Tenant admin
- File details at a glance — Shows page count and sizes, PDF version, whether the file is encrypted, its title, author and producer, and whether it carries JavaScript, attachments or form fields. Nothing is changed.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant, Manager
- Opening a tool does not clutter your History — The page count, page sizes and current details a tool needs are read without recording a run, so opening four tools on one file does not leave four entries in History.For: Employee
- Accessibility check for screen readers — Reports whether the document is tagged, declares a language, and gives images alternative text, and groups each problem by who can fix it: this tool, whoever made the document, or a person who must judge. It states that machine checks cover 87 of the 136 conditions of the PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) standard, so a clean result is never presented as proof of compliance.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Long scans run in the background — A scan of more than twelve pages is not held in the page. The run answers at once, then shows "Running 12 of 150 pages" with a progress bar on the tool page and in History, even after you close the browser. It is read ten pages at a time and put back together in order, up to 1,000 pages. If the service restarts, it carries on from the last finished ten pages; if a page cannot be read, the run fails and names the page and what was kept. An administrator can switch it off, and long scans then run inside the request again, refused past 80 pages.For: Employee, HR manager
Watermarks and page numbers
Stamp a document so everyone knows its status, without turning it into a flat picture.
- Text watermark with full control — Stamp words such as CONFIDENTIAL or DRAFT as text, not a picture, so the page stays searchable. Pick one of nine positions on a grid, diagonal or tiled across the page, plus angle, colour, size, opacity and distance from the edge.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Tiled watermark across the whole page — A single centred word is easy to crop from a screenshot; a tiled one repeats over the whole page and is much harder to cut away. It is a visible marking, not protection: anyone with a PDF editor can still remove it.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Behind or over the page content — Draw a text watermark over the page, or underneath so the document stays easy to read. You can also limit it to chosen pages with the thumbnail picker.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Logo or Arabic watermark from a PNG image — Upload a PNG such as a company logo, a scanned PAID stamp or Arabic text saved as a picture, and place it in one of nine positions with a size set as a share of the page width. Because it is a share of the width, the same setting works on A4 and A3. It is drawn over the page, and the picture is not marked as page furniture for screen readers.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Typed watermarks and page numbers in Arabic — Type the watermark or the page-number wording in Arabic, English or both, such as "سري - CONFIDENTIAL". Arabic letters join and read right to left, English inside the line stays left to right, the font travels inside the file so it looks the same everywhere, and the words can still be searched and copied. A letter the built-in fonts do not have, such as Chinese, is refused by name instead of being drawn as a box.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Page numbers with your own wording — Number every page in a footer using a template such as Page {n} of {total} or صفحة {n} من {total}. Set where it goes, the first number, text size, distance from the edge, and whether the numbers show as 1 2 3 or Arabic-Indic ١ ٢ ٣.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Stamps stay out of the way of screen readers — Text watermarks and page numbers are marked as page furniture, so a screen reader does not read a page number into the middle of a sentence and an accessible document stays accessible after stamping.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
Protect and clean files before they leave
Control what a PDF exposes and who can open it before it goes to a regulator, a customer or a data-access request.
- Sanitise a PDF — Strips JavaScript, embedded files and launch actions and tells you how many of each were removed. External links can also be removed, off by default because that breaks legitimate references.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Read, edit or strip file properties — Shows the title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer a file carries, pre-filled so you correct one without retyping the rest. Remove all of it deletes the properties and the hidden second copy that survives a naive strip, including the name of the software that made the file.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Password-protect with AES-256 — Encrypts a PDF with a password to open it (AES-256) and lets you decide whether readers may print, edit or copy text. Those permissions are enforced by the reader, not by the file, so only the password itself keeps anyone out. The tool refuses to run with no password.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Remove a password you know — Takes the password off a file you can already open so it behaves normally afterwards. It is not a password cracker: without the right password it refuses and says so.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Signed documents are protected from accidental damage — A tool that re-saves the whole file refuses a PDF that carries a certificate signature, and names how many signatures it would destroy. The file would still open and still show the signer's name, so without this nobody would find out until a counterparty checked. The two tools that place a picture on the page, hand signatures and picture watermarks, do not make this check, so add those before a certificate signature, never after.For: HR manager, Tenant admin, Employee
- Deliberately break signatures when you mean to — A developer connecting to PDF tools can pass an explicit instruction to go ahead and invalidate the signatures. The run then records how many signatures it destroyed and whether a certifying signature was voided. This choice is not on the screen today.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
Your own handwritten signature
Draw, type or photograph your signature once and place it on any document.
- Draw, type or photograph your signature — Draw it with mouse or finger in blue, black or red ink, type it in a script face, or upload a photo of your signature on paper and have the paper removed. It is saved as a transparent picture.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, HR manager, Tenant admin
- Photo background removed in your browser — A photograph of someone's signature is the most reusable personal data in the module, so the paper is made transparent on the person's own computer. Only the finished picture is sent, and only when they press Save.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager
- Signature, initials and company stamp — Keep three kinds of mark: the signature for the foot of a contract, initials for each page, and a company stamp photographed with the paper removed.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, HR manager
- Several of each kind, one default — Keep an Arabic signature and an English one, a full signature for contracts and a quick one for approvals, each with a name. One per kind is the default and a star makes another the default.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, HR manager
- Your signatures live on your profile — Set them up under Settings, Profile, Your signatures because a signature belongs to a person. The first time someone opens PDF tools without one, a dismissible prompt points them there, and the same section also appears on the Signing page. Saved signatures are used by PDF tools; other modules do not place them on their documents today.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Your saved signatures are yours alone — Only you can list, fetch, place or delete your saved signatures. There is deliberately no screen or administrator view that lists the company's signatures, so there is no way to borrow one.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- Delete a signature for good — Deleting a saved signature really removes it rather than archiving it, so a person who asks for theirs to be removed can be told it is gone.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant
- Drag it onto the page — Open the file and drag a signature, initials, company stamp, name, date, text or tick from the palette onto any page, or tap one to drop it on the page you are looking at. Move, resize, nudge with the arrow keys, duplicate or repeat a field on every page, and undo or redo, all in one run of up to 300 fields. Pages show at full size, with a strip of thumbnails to jump between them on a wide screen. Placement follows the page's rotation.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, HR manager
- A picture of your name is labelled as such — Sign & fill says on screen and in the result that it records a person putting their name there but does not prove the file is unchanged afterwards. For that, use a certificate signature.For: Employee, HR manager
- Every placed signature is recorded — Placing a signature on a document writes a permanent record of who did it and how many placements, in addition to the run appearing in History. Saving and deleting a saved signature are recorded too.For: Employee, Tenant admin
Certificate signatures
Sign with your company's own certificate so any change after signing can be detected.
- Add your company's signing certificate — Upload a .p12 or .pfx certificate file exported with its private key (an RSA key of 2048 bits or more, or an ECDSA P-256 key; a shorter RSA key is refused with the reason). It is opened and checked on upload, so a wrong password or a certificate-only export is refused with an explanation instead of failing later.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Certificate and password stored sealed — The certificate file and its password are encrypted before they are stored, tied to your company so a copy cannot be opened under another, and returned by no screen. The list you see is read from the public part of the certificate only.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- See who a certificate belongs to and when it expires — The Signing page lists each certificate's owner, issuer, serial number, validity dates and how many certificates travel with it. A certificate with no issuer chain is flagged because readers will report its validity as unknown. Only people with the sign permission see this list.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Default certificate and archive instead of delete — The first certificate becomes the default. The Sign form starts on the default and lists the others to choose from, marking an expired one. Removing one archives it, so documents already signed with it stay explainable to an auditor years later.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Sign a PDF with the company certificate — Applies a PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) digital signature, an open standard for signatures inside PDFs, and returns a new file. The form picks the certificate, puts a visible box where you click on any page (or none), and writes the reason and place you type into the signature. The first signature can also certify the document, allowing later form filling and signatures (and comments, if you choose).For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Expired certificates cannot sign — A certificate past its end date, or not yet valid, is refused before anything is signed, with the date and what to do: "This certificate expired on 2026-10-17. Add a current certificate under PDF tools → Signing, then sign again." A Contracts seal with an expired company certificate is refused the same way, and the document keeps its fingerprint protection instead. With 30 days or fewer left, signing still works and says when the certificate ends, and the certificate list marks it.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Signing adds to the file instead of rewriting it — A signature is appended as a new revision, so a second signer can sign afterwards and the first signature stays valid. The form proposes the first field name the file does not use yet (Signature1, then Signature2), so a countersignature never collides with the signature before it.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Older signature format when a counterparty needs it — A developer connecting to PDF tools can ask for the older PKCS#7 (Public-Key Cryptography Standard 7) style instead of PAdES for systems that only accept it. PAdES remains the default, and the screen does not offer the choice.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Every signature is read back before you get it — After signing, the result is read by the same checker used on received files, so what you are told at once is what an auditor will be told later.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Honest about trust — The result says the cryptography and coverage check out and that whether a reader shows the signature as trusted depends on whether it trusts the certificate issuer. The product does not promise a green tick in Acrobat, which needs a certificate from a recognised authority that you buy.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Encrypted files are refused for signing — Signing a password-protected file is refused, because the order is sign first and encrypt afterwards, never the reverse.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Signing is its own permission — Only roles holding the sign permission can add or archive a certificate or sign with it, which by default means the HR manager and the tenant administrator. A signature makes a document attributable to the company, so it is not part of everyday access.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Signing and certificate changes are permanently recorded — Adding a certificate and signing a document each write a sensitive audit record that is kept forever, saying who did it and with which certificate. There is no screen for reading these records today; History shows the run itself.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Signing requests with an order — Send one PDF to up to ten colleagues who sign it one after the other: the next is asked only when the one before has signed, and cannot open the file before then. A decline stops the request with the reason, reminders go after the days you set, an expiry date applies, and a cancelled request cannot be signed. The finished file keeps one signature per signer.For: HR manager, Employee, Tenant admin
- Ask a person outside the company to sign — Add a candidate or a supplier by name and e-mail address next to your colleagues, in the order they sign. They get a personal link by e-mail, confirm their address with a one-time code, read the document, draw, type or photograph their signature, tick their consent and sign — or decline with a reason. Their signature is applied with your company's certificate, with a record of how they were identified.For: HR manager, Employee, Tenant admin
- Every signature visible on the last page — A signature box per signer is placed side by side at the foot of the last page, in signing order, and each signer's saved handwritten signature is drawn inside their own signature, so an earlier signature stays valid after a later one. A colleague without a saved signature gets their name and the date in the box.For: HR manager, Employee, Tenant admin
- Evidence packet and link control for a request — The sender gets a record of how the request ran: the file's fingerprint when it was sent and at the end, how each signer was identified, when they opened the link and signed, the kind of signature, their network address and browser, and the full history. The sender can also send an outside signer their link again, which replaces the old one and unlocks a signer who typed too many wrong codes.For: HR manager, Employee, Tenant admin
Check signatures you receive
Find out whether a signed contract is still the document that was signed.
- Check a signature on any PDF — Upload a signed PDF and see, for each signature, whether it still describes these exact bytes or the file was changed after signing. Anyone who can use PDF tools can check; you do not need signing rights. If the signing switch is off for the company, checking is off too.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
- Knows an earlier version from the latest — Says whether each signature covers the whole file or an earlier version, because a second signature added afterwards is normal and should not look alarming, but the report must not imply the latest bytes are signed when they are not.For: Employee, HR manager, Accountant
- Signer, reason and certifying level — Each signature card shows the field name, who the signer said they were, the stated reason, and whether it is a certifying signature.For: Employee, HR manager, Accountant
- Facts, not a verdict — The checker reports structure and coverage and does not decide whether the signing certificate is one to trust or whether a later change was permitted. The caveat is shown with every result so a clean check is never read as this contract is genuine.For: Employee, HR manager, Accountant
History
A record of what was run, on what, with what result, and a way to tidy it.
- Every run is recorded — History lists what you ran, on how many pages, how long it took, and the sizes in and out. Hand marks, certificate signatures and failed runs appear in the same place. The screen shows your 100 most recent runs.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
- A failed run says why — A run that fails is saved with the reason on its row rather than vanishing, so you are not left with a message that disappeared.For: Employee, HR specialist
- Search and filter your history — Search by file name, tool or the text of an error, and filter to all, succeeded or failed runs.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Select several and remove from history — Tick rows, or select everything the filter shows, and remove them together. Changing the filter drops hidden rows from the selection, so you cannot delete runs you can no longer see.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Removing a run keeps the file — Removing a history row deletes the record, not the produced file, because someone may already hold a link to it. The confirmation says so.For: Employee, HR specialist
- Removal leaves a permanent trace — Deleting a run writes an audit record that outlives the History row, so the sequence a file was produced and then its record removed can still be seen by an auditor. There is no screen for reading these records today.For: Tenant admin
- Open in a new tab or download — Every result and every history row has an open-in-new-tab button beside Download, and downloads are named after your original file instead of an internal code. A multi-file result such as a split has a row per file.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Other people's files stay theirs — Only the person who ran a tool, or an administrator with the module settings permission, can download its output or remove its History record. The History screen lists only your own runs.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- Every file-producing run is audited — Each run that produces a file writes an audit record saying who ran which tool on how many files, in addition to the History row. Removing the History row does not remove the audit record. There is no screen for reading these records today.For: Tenant admin
- Save a result to Documents — With the switch on (Settings, Features, PDF tools), a finished run offers Save to Documents: the result is filed in a Documents workspace and folder you choose, under your own access, so a folder you cannot add files to refuses you in words. The run screen lists the copies it made, you can link a copy to an employee or a contract so it shows on that record's Files tab, and deleting the run later keeps the saved copy.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
- Old results are removed — When a company switches on Remove old results (Settings, Features, PDF tools), result files — and the files people uploaded to the tools — are removed after the number of days it sets (set in a box on the PDF tools home, default 30, 0 = never; files uploaded and never run are removed too). A run stays in History marked File expired, and each removal is recorded in the audit trail. Keep (the pin on a run) exempts its files; deleting a run removes its files with it. Off by default: nothing is removed until a company chooses it.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
History
A record of what was run, on what, with what result, and a way to tidy it.
- Every run is recorded — History lists what you ran, on how many pages, how long it took, and the sizes in and out. Hand marks, certificate signatures and failed runs appear in the same place. The screen shows your 100 most recent runs.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin
- A failed run says why — A run that fails is saved with the reason on its row rather than vanishing, so you are not left with a message that disappeared.For: Employee, HR specialist
- Search and filter your history — Search by file name, tool or the text of an error, and filter to all, succeeded or failed runs.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Select several and remove from history — Tick rows, or select everything the filter shows, and remove them together. Changing the filter drops hidden rows from the selection, so you cannot delete runs you can no longer see.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Removing a run keeps the file — Removing a history row deletes the record, not the produced file, because someone may already hold a link to it. The confirmation says so.For: Employee, HR specialist
- Removal leaves a permanent trace — Deleting a run writes an audit record that outlives the History row, so the sequence a file was produced and then its record removed can still be seen by an auditor. There is no screen for reading these records today.For: Tenant admin
- Open in a new tab or download — Every result and every history row has an open-in-new-tab button beside Download, and downloads are named after your original file instead of an internal code. A multi-file result such as a split has a row per file.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Other people's files stay theirs — Only the person who ran a tool, or an administrator with the module settings permission, can download its output or remove its History record. The History screen lists only your own runs.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- Every file-producing run is audited — Each run that produces a file writes an audit record saying who ran which tool on how many files, in addition to the History row. Removing the History row does not remove the audit record. There is no screen for reading these records today.For: Tenant admin
- An audit trail for administrators — A read-only page lists who ran a tool, signed or sealed a document, saved or deleted a signature mark or a run record, and when. Filter by what happened, by person, by severity and by period, and export the same rows as a CSV file (up to 5,000, newest first). It needs its own permission, held by the tenant administrator, and everyone appears by name.For: Tenant admin
Who can do what, and company settings
Seven kinds of work, each with its own permission and its own on/off switch.
- A separate permission for each kind of work — Organise and optimise, convert, scan reading, read and extract, protect and sign each have their own permission, so a tool inherits its access from its kind of work. A permission for permanently removing content exists in the role list but has no tool behind it yet.For: Tenant admin
- Sensible starting access for every role — Every employee can organise, convert and read PDFs, add watermarks and page numbers, password-protect, unlock and clean files, place their own hand signature and check signatures; project staff cannot read scans. Signing with the company certificate goes only to the HR manager and the tenant administrator because it is hard to undo.For: Tenant admin
- Switch a kind of work off — The platform operator can switch each kind of work off for every company from the platform feature list. Each company also has its own switch per kind, on Settings → Features in the PDF Tools section. The more restrictive of the two wins. Switching one kind off stops only that kind: the tool list shows the others and History stays open.For: Tenant admin, Platform operator
- Tools you cannot use are not shown — The hub only lists tools your role is allowed to run, so nobody sees a tile that could only answer refused after the upload, and the line above the tiles counts the tools you can run and says how many more need a permission you do not hold. Refusals still name the permission that is missing.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- Upload size limit you can change — The largest single file defaults to 100 MB. A company setting can lower it or raise it up to 512 MB, depending on whether you file payslips or engineering drawings, but there is no settings screen for it today. A too-large file is refused before upload, naming both sizes.For: Tenant admin
- Part of your plan, with its own tile — PDF tools is a separately licensed module with its own launcher tile and sidebar: Overview, History and Signing. It depends on Documents, which a plan with PDF tools also needs, and without the licence its pages do not open.For: Tenant admin, Employee
- Find a tool by name — The hub groups tools by what you are trying to do, with a search box, and marks the slow ones with a note that they run for a while.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
Your files, your storage, your language
Where files go, who can reach them, and how the screens read in Arabic.
- Files go straight to your own storage — Uploads travel from the browser directly to the company's own storage bucket by a short-lived link rather than through the application, which is why a large scan does not time out. The company must have connected its bucket under Settings, Document management, Storage; PDF tools has no shared fallback, and without a bucket uploads are refused.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- A company cannot reach another company's files — Every file location handed back by an upload is checked to belong to your company before a tool will read it, so a guessed location is refused.For: Tenant admin
- Nothing leaves unless you choose it — Inside PDF tools, the only tool that sends page images outside your workspace is the optional AI reading of a scan, which needs the deliberate choice on screen and switches your administrator and the platform operator control. The result says the pages were sent. Separately, importing a scanned PDF through the Copilot sends its pages to your AI provider.For: Employee, Tenant admin
- Arabic screens and right-to-left layout — Option panels, hints, History and Signing are translated into Arabic and follow the company's language and right-to-left layout. Tool names and descriptions, group headings and refusal messages are English today.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Arabic and English scan recognition built in — Arabic and English recognition are installed with the module, which matters for stamped Arabic certificates, IDs and contracts that are common in Gulf offices. Recognition is never perfect, and the screens advise reading back any name or number you will rely on.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Written for people, not engineers — Tools with no options say what they do and what most often surprises people; results show labelled facts such as size before and size after; and every refusal says what went wrong and what to do next.For: Employee
AI Copilot and assistants
Ask the Copilot or a connected assistant to read, check and process PDFs, inside the permissions of the person asking. They work on a file that was already uploaded to PDF tools and is identified by its reference; the chat window has no attach button for these tools today.
- Ask the Copilot what a PDF is — The Copilot can describe a file: pages, sizes, encryption, author, producer, and whether it carries scripts, attachments or a form. It can look at a file without recording a run in History.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Read text and recognise scans by conversation — Ask for a document's text, and when it turns out to be a scan the Copilot knows to run recognition rather than re-extracting. It is told never to present recognised text as an exact transcription of a legal document.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Check signatures and accessibility by conversation — Ask whether a contract's signatures still cover the file, or whether a document can be read by a screen reader. It reports what the checker says and is told not to upgrade a clean result into a verdict.For: Employee, HR manager, Accountant
- Page and optimise tools on request — After you confirm, the Copilot can run the page tools (rotate, merge, extract pages, remove pages, reverse, split) and compress on files already uploaded, and hand back a link to the result. It asks for confirmation before it runs a PDF action.For: Employee, HR specialist, Accountant
- Sanitise and stamp on request — The Copilot can sanitise a file, strip or set its properties, watermark it and number its pages, but only for people holding the protect permission.For: HR manager, Tenant admin
- Review runs and certificates by conversation — Ask for your recent runs, the detail of one run, the list of available tools or the names and expiry of the company's signing certificates. Private keys are never returned by anything, so there is nothing for an assistant to leak.For: Employee, HR manager, Tenant admin
- Works with your own AI assistant too — The same PDF actions are offered to outside AI assistants that you connect, under the same permissions, from a built-in connection point on the module. Downloads stay as links in the browser because a file is not something an assistant can carry, and an assistant cannot upload a file itself.For: Tenant admin
- Scanned pages for the Copilot's document import — When someone imports records from a scanned PDF into the Copilot, PDF tools turns the pages into images that the Copilot reads, by default up to 20 pages and at most 60. A PDF that already has real text is read directly without this step. It needs the permission to extract from PDFs.For: Employee, Accountant, HR specialist, Manager
Learn it in the app
A guided tour inside PDF tools teaches the work by having you do it.
- Hands-on guided tour — 4 short chapters (Run a PDF tool; Find what you ran; Sign and check signatures; See who did what) that start by themselves the first time you open PDF tools. Each step waits for you to really do it, such as opening a list or saving a first record, and any chapter can be paused, resumed or replayed from the last row of the PDF tools menu or from Tours in the account menu.For: Employee, HR specialist, Manager, Accountant, Tenant admin, Payroll manager
Works with other modules
Read, check and process PDFs by conversationThe Copilot (or an AI assistant you connect) reads a PDF's text, runs scan recognition, checks accessibility and signatures and lists processing runs; after confirmation it can also merge, split, rotate, compress, sanitise and stamp files that were already uploaded to PDF tools.Scanned documents are turned into page images for importWhen a scanned PDF is dropped into the Copilot's import, PDF tools renders its pages as images so the Copilot can read them. A PDF that already has real text is read directly and does not use this step.PDF tools writes to the same company storage as DocumentsThe storage bucket connected for Documents is the one PDF tools reads uploads from and writes results to. Nothing is copied between the two: a PDF tools result does not appear in the Documents library.Copilot works with your PDFsCopilot runs tools and reads pages on request.Finished PDFs are sealed with your company certificateWhen the last person signs, Contracts asks PDF Tools to seal the finished PDF with the certificate the administrator chose; a colleague can also sign with their own certificate. Without PDF Tools the copy is protected by its fingerprint.
Done by more than one person
Two people sign the same document by handA pack is prepared by one person and signed by the companyThe company certificate is added, used and retiredAn administrator narrows what staff can do
What each role gets
- Employee — Does the everyday work on a PDF without e-mailing it to a free website: rotates, merges, splits, extracts or removes pages, crops by dragging a box, compresses a scan small enough to send and converts Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to PDF. Reads the text out of a document, makes a scanned Arabic or English file searchable, runs an accessibility check and checks whether a signed contract is still the document that was signed. Stamps text or logo watermarks and page numbers, password-protects or unlocks a file and cleans it before it leaves. Keeps their own signature, initials and company stamp on their profile and drags them onto the page; signing with the company certificate is not part of the role.
- HR manager — Everything an employee can do, plus signing with the company certificate. Adds the company's signing certificate and signs contracts with it, so any later change can be detected, and the result says plainly that whether a reader trusts the signature depends on who issued the certificate. Adding a certificate and every signature are recorded permanently.
- Tenant admin — Connects the company's own storage bucket under Settings, Document management, Storage, without which PDF tools refuses uploads, and changes per role who may organise, convert, read scans, protect or sign; by default only the HR manager and the tenant admin can sign with the company certificate. Adds the company's signing certificate, which is checked on upload, stored sealed and listed with its owner, issuer and expiry, and archives an old one instead of deleting it so documents already signed with it stay explainable; like the HR manager, they can also watermark, sanitise, password-protect and sign. Adding a certificate, signing and every file-producing run are written to a permanent audit record, though there is no screen for reading those records yet, and no screen lists anyone's saved signatures. The company's own on or off switch for each kind of work is under Settings, Features, in the PDF Tools section; the upload size limit has no settings screen today, and the platform operator can switch a kind of work off for every company.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make a scanned Arabic PDF searchable?
Yes. Make a scan searchable recognises Arabic and English, or both, and lays the words invisibly under the picture. A scan of up to twelve pages is read at once; a longer one, up to 1,000 pages, runs in the background and shows its progress, at roughly ten seconds a page. Recognition is never perfect, so read back any name or number you will rely on.
Is the e-signature legally valid in the UAE or Saudi Arabia?
It signs with your own certificate in the PAdES format, so any change after signing can be detected. Whether a reader or a court treats it as trusted depends on the authority that issued your certificate, which you buy; the product does not issue certificates and does not promise a green tick in Acrobat. Ask your legal adviser which kind of certificate your counterparty requires.
Can I send a document to several people to sign in turn, like DocuSign?
Not as an automatic flow. There are no invitations, signing order or reminders today. People can each place their own saved signature, or a certificate signature, on the same file and pass it along themselves. Multi-party signing requests are not built yet.
Can I edit the text in a PDF or fill in a form?
No. Editing existing text and filling form fields are not built, and neither is permanent redaction of content. The module covers pages, compression, conversion, stamping, protection, scan reading and signatures.
Do my files leave my workspace?
Files are stored in your company's own storage bucket, which you connect in Settings, and are not sent to a third party. There are two exceptions you control: the optional AI reading of a scan, and importing a scanned PDF through the Copilot, both of which send page images to the AI provider your company configured, only when someone chooses it. The administrator or the platform operator can switch AI reading off.
Who can sign, protect or watermark a PDF?
By default everyone with PDF tools can organise pages, compress, convert, read text, watermark, number pages, password-protect, sanitise, place their own saved signature and check signatures; project staff cannot read scans. Signing with the company certificate is for the HR manager and the tenant administrator. An administrator can change these permissions per role.
Can I watermark in Arabic or sign a document that already has a certificate signature?
Yes: type the watermark in Arabic, English or both, and the letters are joined and read right to left. Tools that re-save the file refuse a certificate-signed PDF, but placing a hand-drawn signature or a picture watermark does not check for one, so add those before the certificate signature, not after.
Is there a file size limit?
The default is 100 MB per file, which a company can lower or raise up to 512 MB. A file over the limit is refused before it uploads, naming both sizes. A scan of more than twelve pages is read in the background, up to 1,000 pages.
Can I turn images into a PDF, or a PDF into images?
A PDF into images, yes: each page, or a range, becomes a PNG or JPEG at 36 to 600 dots per inch. Images into a PDF is not available. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, RTF, CSV and plain text files can be converted to PDF.
Do I need to set up storage before using PDF tools?
Yes. PDF tools writes files to your company's own storage bucket, connected under Settings, Document management, Storage. Until it is connected, uploads are refused.
Can the Copilot work on a PDF I attach in chat?
Not today. The Copilot's PDF actions work on files already uploaded to PDF tools and identified by their reference, which suits integrations and connected assistants. Attaching a PDF in chat reads its text for the conversation but does not run these tools.
Can I turn pictures into a PDF, make a PDF/A file or black out text for good?
Not yet. PDF/A conversion and redaction (with its check) are named in the product but not built, so they are not offered on the tool list and refuse with a clear message if called. Turning PDF pages into pictures and turning JPEG or PNG pictures into one PDF both work.
Part of one platform
PDF Tools & E-Signature is one of 59 apps (36 business apps and 23 ISO standards) that share the same sign-in, the same people, the same customers and the same AI copilot. See all apps or how Tarleaks ERP compares with Odoo, ERPNext and Zoho.