CloudConvert now offers a new and convenient way to convert files on demand: Signed URLs. These URLs allow dynamic, on-demand file conversion and will automatically cache the results.

There are a lot of use cases for such dynamic file conversions: For example, a "Download as PDF" button on a website which dynamically creates a PDF version of the current page. Another use case is a thumbnail image of a DOCX file which is created automatically and on-demand.

As a demo, you can just click on this signed URL which is a dynamically created PNG version of this blog post!

Technically, you first need to create a signed URL base using your dashboard. Using this signed URL base you then can create dynamic signed URLs using URL parameters. To secure the URL a signature is required.

As of today, all of our official SDKs have been updated to support this new feature. Check out the full documentation about signed URLs.

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The new CloudConvert Team feature simplifies the billing for organizations such as companies or schools. A single team owner can share the package or subscription with unlimited team members. Team members do have separate accounts and their conversions/files remain private.

You can see the team owner dashboard below. As a team owner you can invite members via email, assign roles and see usage stats for individual team members.

Team members with the role "Admin" can invite and remove other team members.

The feature is now available for all users with active package or subscription.

We hope you like this new feature! If you have feedback don't hesitate to contact us.

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As of today, API v1 is deprecated. In order to provide our customers the best possible features and a single, consistent REST API we will turn off API v1 on January 1, 2022. API v1 has been serving for nearly 8 years now and it is time to move forward.

API v2 was released for production use earlier this year. With the recent addition of the Get Metadata API, all features of API v1 are now available in API v2. API v2 uses a more robust design and better extensibility for new features. You can read more about the fundamentals of API v2 here.

What does this mean for our customers?

First of all, you want to build all new apps with API v2.

Second, you need to update your existing integrations to API v2. API v2 is using a completely different design, so please check out the API docs to get familiar with it. You have more than one year time to transition your app to API v2, which should be suifficient.

There are already official API v2 SDKs for PHP, node.js, Python and Java available. Ruby will follow soon. You might consider using them when upgrading your integration.

Timeline

• May 27, 2019: Initial Beta release of API v2
• January 7, 2020: Production-ready release of API v2
• October 13, 2020: Deprecaton of API v1
• June 2021: We will start to send out warning mails to remaining API v1 users
• January 1, 2022: API v1 endpoints are turned off

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We are happy to announce that Integromat is now integrated with the CloudConvert API v2. With Integromat, you can link CloudConvert to hundreds of other services to build any custom integration.

Thanks to the handy Integromat scenario builder you can drag and drop your desired apps together to create powerful workflows, without writing any code. 

Some possible example scenarios are:

• Automatically convert files from Google Drive in CloudConvert and upload the output to Google Drive.
• Create an Archive in CloudConvert with files imported from URLs stored in Google Sheets.
• Send a notification to Google Chrome about a new job in CloudConvert.

The integration is available as public Beta. If you have feedback don't hesitate to get in touch with the support.

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We have partnered with PDF Tools from Switzerland to rework the Compress PDF feature. We are now able to significantly reduce the file size while maintaining target quality. Therefore, we provides various optimization profiles to create PDF documents for specific target needs: web, printing, archiving, scanned documents and a profile for maximal size reduction. You can read more about these profiles here.

As usual, the optimize PDF feature is also available via API v1 and API v2.

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For over a year now, we have been actively working on the CloudConvert API v2. Today, we finally release the preview of API v2 for public testing.

How is v2 different from v1?

Under the hood, v2 is a complete rewrite. We did some architectural changes which allow us to scale more efficient and to be more flexible for future extensions.

Jobs & Tasks

API v2 introduces Jobs. Each Job consists of at least one Task. For example: The first task of a job could be importing the file from a S3 bucket. The second task could be converting this file to a different format and the final task of the job could be exporting the file again to a S3 bucket. A single job can process multiple files and it is possible to do multiple operations with the same set of files. This often requested feature will help to increase the flexibility of using our API.

Engines & Engine Versions

For some tasks, there are multiple engines available. For example, it is possible to convert DOCX files with the Office engine or the LibreOffice engine. The available options differ based on the used engine. Also, you can set an engine version to use. For example, you can set a fixed LibreOffice version to use which makes sure that this version is used, even if we update the default version of LibreOffice. There is an API for each task type available that shows the available engines, versions and their options.

Custom Commands

With API v2 you can execute arbitrary FFMPEG, Imagemagick and Graphicsmagick commands. It is now also supported to use commands with multiple input files.

Authentication

You can now create multiple API keys with different scopes. This allows fine granular access control. We have implemented an OAuth 2.0 server and it is possible to perform requests in behalf of clients, without asking for API keys.

Sandbox API

The Sandbox API is a playground for development purposes and integration tests. It allows unlimited requests at no charge but with a fixed set of whitelisted input files only (via MD5 checksum).

There is much more that has changed. Check out the docs of API v2!

Whats next?

The API v2 is now available as "preview". This means the API v2 is not feature complete and there are still bugs. Please do not use v2 in production yet - we might need to temporary take it down or change endpoints without prior notice. However, we encourage you to try out API v2 and we would like to get your feedback! Is there something about API v1 you would like to get changed in v2? Now is the right time to tell us!

In the coming weeks we will update the official SDKs for v2 compatibility. The release of API v2 is planed later this year.

With the release of API v2 we will continue support of API v1 for at least two more years.

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