Filling out forms like a vagabond
We were traveling back home to be with my family last week and we needed to fill out some paperwork. This was one of those rare instances where we had to deal with a company that was still stuck in the pre-digital age. Specifically, a bank needed us to fax documents to them. They expected us to print out paper, fill them out (with data that they already had on their website), sign it and send it in. I had an iPad and iPhone with me. I wasn’t going to try to print and fax at a Kinko’s. So here was my very convoluted workflow.
On the iPad download the PDF’s from the bank website. Open it in PDFPen and enter all my details. Copy and past data from the a website into a text field on PDFPen. Let it to crash a couple times. Finally get everything entered. Sign it with my finger or Cosmonaut stylus. Save the pages as images in my photo stream. Wait for the images to appear on the iPhone. Use JotNot Pro on the iPhone to open the image files, and then buy a Fax credit pack in the app and fax the pages to the provided bank fax number! Boom. Forms submitted. All digital.
Takeaway 1: Fax credits are kinda expensive, but cheaper than going to an office store.
Takeway 2: I wish JotNot had the ability to fax an original pdf file, not just an imported image of a PDF.
This continues to reinforce it is possible to go all digital with small devices like an iPad or iPhone.