Every business runs on documents: sales orders, invoices, contracts, statements. They tend to break in two places: once when they're made, and again after they leave the system that made them.
REFRACT Platform is built to fix both. This post explains what it is, in plain terms, and how it differs from the usual way of producing documents.
Where documents break today
When they're made. Most teams generate documents with a report tool or a Word template. Both are fine for simple layouts. Real documents are harder: an order with grouped lines and subtotals, a contract with clauses that depend on the customer, a report with an annex of photos. Most changes wait for a developer, and month end exposes every weak spot.
After they're made. Once the PDF exists, the rest of its life happens somewhere else:
- approval in an email thread;
- signing in a separate service;
- delivery as an attachment nobody can track;
- accessibility fixed afterwards, if at all;
- the audit trail rebuilt by hand from several systems.
What REFRACT Platform is
REFRACT Platform is one platform to generate, approve, sign, deliver and audit business documents. Your ERP or CRM, such as Dynamics 365 Business Central, stays the system of record. REFRACT adds the document layer around it.
| Step | The usual way | With REFRACT |
|---|---|---|
| Generate | Report tool or Word template | REFRACT PDF™, from a template and your data |
| Approve | Email thread | REFRACT Workflow™, with a recorded decision |
| Sign | A separate signing service | REFRACT eSign™, from the same record |
| Deliver | Email attachment | REFRACT Delivery™, a secure link with a record of who opened it |
| Audit | Rebuilt by hand | REFRACT Lifecycle™ and REFRACT Audit™, one timeline per document (when enabled) |
Five ideas that make it different
1. Your Azure, your documents. Documents are generated in your own Azure subscription and stored in your own SharePoint or Azure storage. REFRACT hosts only what people outside your company use: the signing and recipient portal, and the notification emails.
2. One record, not four tools. The approval, the signature and the delivery all point back to the same document, so there's one story to tell.
3. Accessible from the start. Documents are tagged for screen readers as they're generated, not fixed by a separate tool afterwards.
4. Evidence built in. When it's enabled for a template, every document gets a fingerprint when it's created, every signature and approval goes on one timeline, and changes to the document or its record are detectable.
5. One template, any source. The template holds the design; the business system only sends the data. One template design serves any source that sends the fields it expects: Business Central, Power Platform or any system that can call the REFRACT API, with Dynamics 365 Sales coming soon.
For the technical detail behind that last point, read One JSON payload for every enterprise document.
See it working
Two short videos follow one Business Central sales order, S-ORD101019, through REFRACT:
- ERP to Accessible Document: from the order data to a PDF tagged for accessibility.
- Sales to Signature: the same order signed by two people, sealed and still accessible.
What it isn't
- Not a replacement for your ERP. Business Central, or your other source system, keeps the data; REFRACT handles the document.
- Not a certification. Refract Logic holds no independent certifications today. REFRACT supplies controls and evidence in your tenant; your own policies decide compliance.
- Simple electronic signatures. REFRACT eSign provides simple electronic signatures, not qualified ones.
Common questions
Do we need developers to change a document? Templates are files you can test with your own data in the playground, so layout changes don't wait in a report developer queue.
Where does it run? In your own Azure subscription, with documents stored in your SharePoint and Blob Storage. REFRACT hosts the signing and recipient portal and the notification emails.
How do we start? With a free trial deployed in your own Azure, and your first document from your own data.
Summary
REFRACT Platform keeps the whole life of a business document in one place: generated from your data, approved, signed, delivered and, when enabled, audited, with your documents in your own Azure.
▶ Watch the 2-minute overview: https://youtu.be/D_AACze-g2w See more business processes in the REFRACT business process gallery.