Email, Browser, Login, Approve is just too long. I don’t know about you but it really bugs me when systems send me emails with links to a browser, which then asks me to authenticate, which then shows me a form that I need to approve. If the system is internal then I need to wait until i’m back in the office or conected via VPN. Ugh!

Adobe have updated the LiveCycle Mobile ES2 client for iOS to include support for the iPad’s extra screen real estate. Now you can fill out forms, approve tasks and navigate through LiveCycle Content services, Alfresco & SharePoint document libraries. This is extremely useful for people out in the field who need to approve tasks, initiate processes or access content on the fly!

Here is a quick video I recorded that demos some of the new capabilities on the iPad.

Have an iPad? Download the app now from the iTunes app store. If you had the existing app it should update!
There is also a version of this app for Android, Blackberry, iPhone & Windows Mobile!
Read more here: LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile

I’m seeing a lot of organisations adopt Microsoft’s SharePoint server lately and one common discussion point is around PDF workflows and how to support functions such as Check In / Check out etc. For those users out there, you’ll be please to know that Adobe has quite a few new ways for you to extend your SharePoint workflows into the world of PDF, including native support within Adobe Acrobat X and LiveCycle ES2.5

Check-in / Check-out support

Acrobat X allows users to support Checkin & out workflows. Acrobat will automatically prompt a user when they open a PDF file from within SharePoint and ask if they just want to open the file, or check it out and open. Acrobat then remembers the links to Sharepoint and will prompt the user to check the file back in when they close it. A new menu item will appear whenever a document is opened from Sharepoint allowing the user to access additional functions.

Good news for Adobe Reader users too.. this functionality is included in the free Adobe Reader X!

Review & Commenting on PDF documents.

Sharepoint can be used as a repository for all the correspondence during an Acrobat Shared Review. As long as all the users have permission and can access the Sharepoint server, the integration is quite easy. With a PDF file open in Acrobat 9 or Acrobat X, simply start the Shared Review wizard, select Sharepoint, select your workspace, then invite other users. Acrobat will upload the file to SharePoint and send out a download link to each invited user. From there on any user with Acrobat or Reader (if the initiator used Acrobat Pro) simply adds comments to the PDF and clicks “Publish My Comments” on the top right of the document.

All the comments  go back into Sharepoint automatically (just the small comment data, not the whole PDF) and all the other reviewers immediately get the new comments!

Acrobat Form Distribution

In much the same way as the Shared Review feature in Acrobat can use SharePoint, so too can PDF Forms. Simply run through the Distribute wizard, select SharePoint and upload and track your PDF Form submissions!

Server-side integration

LiveCycle ES2.5 now includes a connector for SharePoint 2007 & SharePoint 2010. By enabling this connector and configuring it to work with your LiveCycle installation, users can perform server-side conversions of native documents into PDF, invoke LiveCycle processes & secure information with LiveCycle’s Rights Management component.

Read more about the SharePoint Connector for Adobe LiveCycle ES

Demo

I recently recorded a 1 hour demonstration of most of what I’ve talked about above. Take a look and see how Sharepoint & Acrobat X (and a just a quick look at LiveCycle ES) work together: http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p50957540/

Adobe today announced the availability of Adobe® LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite 2.5 (ES2.5), expanding the company’s set ofsolutions for delivering superior customer experiences. New capabilities in LiveCycle ES2.5 include enterprise mobility for improved multiscreen delivery of applications, an enhanced framework for building enterprise rich Internet applications (RIAs),and real-time collaboration to empower organizations to interact with customers and citizens in more meaningful, personal ways. Adobe is also announcing three next-generation Solution Accelerators to reduce development time and increase quality ofenterprise applications.

Improving Customer Experience One Customer at a Time

For organizations with complex multi-channel or multi-device customer contact requirements, IT systems are challenged to keep pace with mobile and social customer adoption and meet customer experience expectations. When customers encounter anegative experience, it undermines brand loyalty. When citizens encounter a negative experience, it impacts an agency’s ability to assist someone in need. Adobe LiveCycle ES2.5 enables organizations to provide their customers with consistent and contextual experiences across channels and devices according to their customers own preference.

• Adobe LiveCycle Mobile ES2, new to the LiveCycle ES2.5 family, extends process management, data capture, andcontent services to mobile devices, providing true enterprise mobility. LiveCycle Mobile ES2 easily integrates with back-end systems and enables intuitive mobile experiences for Android, Blackberry, iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.
• Organizations can also provide more social experiences by creating user-centric RIAs that embed real-time collaborationincluding chat, voice, video, screen and application sharing to their customers. For the developer, LiveCycle ES2.5 provides a standard toolset and methodology for design, modeling and development of user-centric enterprise RIAs.
• LiveCycle ES2.5 enhances company’s ability to improve customer service and operational efficiency by extending existing business processes to the point of customer interaction by leveraging the ubiquitous Adobe® Flash® Platform andAdobe® Reader®.

Expediting Time to Value for a Customer Experience Strategy

Adobe is releasing its next generation of Solution Accelerators for organizations that want to improve customer experience quickly. Built on LiveCycle ES2.5, Solution Accelerators kick-start project planning, decrease development time for production applications, and reduce risk with a supportable and upgradable framework. Solution Accelerators provide best  practice methodologies, solution templates, and building blocks to extend LiveCycle ES2.5. The three Solution Accelerators are:

• Correspondence Management Solution Accelerator: Enable business users to dynamically create personalized communications using pre-approved layouts and content to provide consistent, high quality customer correspondence such as creating a customized claims letter.
• Interactive Statements Solution Accelerator: Engage customers through communications that embed the power ofpersonalized RIAs in secure PDF formats, including credit card statements, telecommunications bills and electronic invoices.
• Managed Review & Approval Solution Accelerator: Enable multi-party participation in content review processes.

Pioneering Solutions for Social Web Content Management, Measurement Optimization and Visualization

Additional enhancements to Adobe’s solutions for customer experience management are planned through Adobe’s intent to acquire Day Software, a leader in Web experience management for the enterprise. The company expects to add dynamic andsocial Web content management solutions, as well as measurement, analytics and visualization tools into future versions of LiveCycle, providing a platform to create, deliver and optimize customer experiences. Organizations will be able to easily trackand analyze customer behavior and process metrics, enabling them to continually hone and improve applications and processes.Ultimately, Day Software’s leading Web solutions, combined with Adobe’s existing enterprise portfolio, will enable customers tobetter integrate their Web presence and business applications and unlock the value of multichannel communications acrossmarketing, sales and services.

What do you get when you combine Adobe LiveCycle ES2, Forms & Adobe AIR? Tetrapod!

Created by my Adobe colleagues in Poland, it provides your end users with desktop access to forms and other content via a simple menu system. Tetrapod exposes information stored in LiveCycle ES Content Services and initiates forms based processes in LiveCycle ES Process Management.

You can watch a presentation on Tetrapod here: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/tetrapod-demo/ or download Tetrapod and trial it yourself: http://devnet.host.adobe.com/download/tetrapod/ and finally a few extra videos on Tetrapod on Piotr Walczyszyn’s RIASPACE blog

Tetrapod Workflow from Piotr Walczyszyn on Vimeo.

Note: This is a repost of an article published in Australian Personal Computer (APC Mag) in January 2010

Adobe Acrobat Professional can do much than just create static PDFs. The Professional version creates interactive forms that collect data.

To start creating your form, open up Acrobat and select the Forms->Start Forms Wizard then choose between one of the options:

An existing electronic document – Converts a Word, Excel or other file types to PDF, then automatically detects & creates interactive form fields based on the existing artwork. You can then modify or add extra fields.

A paper form – Acrobat will use your connected scanner to scan a paper document, recognise the text with OCR, then recognize and creates interactive form fields based on the existing artwork.

No existing form – Windows users can open the bundled LiveCycle Designer application. LiveCycle Designer allows you to either design a form from scratch by dragging and dropping form objects or using one of the many bundled templates

Regardless which method you use above, ensure that you name each field with a meaningful name, as it will make it easier for you to understand the data later. Acrobat makes it easy for you to distribute and organise responses rather than you doing so manually.

Once you have your finished form open in Acrobat, select Forms -> Distribute Form.. to start the forms distribution wizard. There are various ways that Acrobat allows you to collect responses by either to using your own internal server (including SharePoint & network folders) if the form is only for people within your organisation, collect manually via email option or using Acrobat.com. Acrobat.com is a online service run by Adobe that manages the form distribution & collection of your form & data. Select this option and click next.

To use Acrobat.com you need a free Adobe ID. Enter your Adobe ID if you have one, otherwise click on the “Create Adobe ID” link and after creating a new ID click next. Now enter the email addresses of the people you wish to complete the form. Note that each recipient will only require the free Adobe Reader. Customise the message, choose the access level and click send.

Acrobat will open up the Tracker, which will report how many responses you have received, provide links to the form in case you forget where you saved it and allow you to do things like email recipients who haven’t responded. Once a form has been distributed, Tracker will sit in the notification area and let you know when responses are received. Note that the default setting is for Tracker to look for new form data once per hour.

Meanwhile each of your recipients will receive an email from Acrobat.com with a link to the form and instructions on how to complete it. The form can be downloaded to their desktop and even filled out in multiple stages. Adobe Reader will allow forms distributed this way to save the data in the form. Once complete, the user selects “Submit Form” from the purple information bar above the form. They will be asked to enter their name & email address, then the form is submitted back directly to Acrobat.com

Open Tracker, select your form from the list on the left hand side, then select “View Responses”. A new PDF will open up that holds all the collected form data from each user in the one file. You will be able to see the form data in a grid format and use the column names to sort the data. Double click on the PDF icon next to each record to see the data in the original form, then click on the Home icon in the top left to get back to the original view.

Click on the Export button on the left of the data grid to export the collected form data as either XML or CSV for opening in a spreadsheet, completing the data capture process.

Acrobat really takes control of the form authoring, distribution and collation of form data, making it easy for you to collect the information you need.

I’ll be running a live repeat of my recent “Introduction to LiveCycle Designer ES2” eSeminar via Adobe Connect this Thursday at 12pm, 24th July 2010, Sydney, Australia time (GMT+10 – roughly 7pm Wednesday in California).

Watch me build a form from scratch in about 45 minutes as I take you through some of the features of Designer. This session will be good for both Adobe Acrobat users & LiveCycle developers. Come say hello and ask your questions live!

Register to attend the eSeminar on the Australian eSeminar site at http://adobeeseminars.com.au/sessions/view/acrobat/

Today I ran a live eSeminar introducing LiveCycle Designer ES2. In this session I covered how to build forms from scratch, included some tips and tricks along the way and included some of the latest features available in the latest Designer ES2 release.

The session was recorded and includes over 45 minutes of me demonstrating how to build a complete form from scratch. The recording is here;

http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p29554294/

Here is the form I built:Leave Form (ok..  this is the form I built, but the other one is a bit tidier)

Some other useful links are here;

• http://www.acrobattown.com/au/
• http://www.adobe.com/ap/products/acrobatpro/tryout.html
• http://forms.stefcameron.com/
• http://blogs.adobe.com/stevex/
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/
• http://www.adobeeseminars.com.au/

Adobe is hosting a free full day workshop at the Canberra Convention Centre on Tuesday 3rd February. If you keep wondering what the big deal with Acrobat (it only makes PDF right? Wrong!) or never really understood what Adobe LiveCycle was for, then come along and say hi.

The first part of the workshop is presented by Adobe colleagues Lindsay Brown and Adam Jeske. They will cover how to get the most out of Adobe Acrobat 9, including how to create accessible content, interactive presentations and use the new built in Flash runtime to create PDF portfolios.

At 1pm I’ll be taking over and presenting a two hour deep dive on building forms with LiveCycle Designer, as well as a quick look at how to take the new form and add a Flash based form guide and add workflow with the rest of the LiveCycle suite. Even if you have current budget issues, I’ll talk about how you can leverage the Business.gov.au SmartForms hosted service to get your smart forms hosted.

The full session breakdown of the workshop is listed in the attached PDF, and although it is free you will need to register to attend.

Adobe Workshop Registration Form

Over the weekend Australia’s ANZ Bank went live with their first few forms built with Adobe LiveCycle ES. PDF Forms you may think? Meh says some? No no no.. check out these great Flash based forms;

https://apply2.anz.com/au/savings/onlinesaver/ [Updated]

http://apply.onedirect.com.au/savings

So what makes the forms so special and customer friendly?  Well consider the following features of the form and compare it to your last web form experience;

1. Smooth form flow – The user has control and can move back and forth between form sections as it suits them and there is no need to wait for browser refreshes etc as the content is rendered in the Adobe Flash Player.
2. Guided transitions between panes – The user is visibly guided from one section to the next
3. Rich form experience – Easy to use form with contextual based help to assist the user in filling in the form
4. Contextual based help to assist the user in filling in the form – Immediate non-evasive error reporting using the Flex validation techniques – Don’t just tell the user that they made a error, show them where and why.

What are the benefits to ANZ by using LiveCycle ES and Form Guides?

1. Easy to add additional features/offers – The forms can be maintained without developers by using LiveCycle Designer ES
2. Easy to turn into new products – Branded templates built for the new forms above can now be reused to bring new products to market quickly and easily.
3. Options to embed interactive Flash advertisements, Flash video etc – Create a great branded application process and guide customers through the experience. The form guides are based on Adobe Flex and can be extended using Adobe Flex Builder
4. Reusable template to allow form developers to concentrate on form logic and not worry about the UI, resulting in reduced development time and costs
5. Easy to white label for multi branding

But hang on.. i’m a Flex developer.. can’t I just use Flex Builder?

Well of course, and for many developers this will be the path you take, however for large organisations with many many forms, maintaining all that code can be cumbersome, and as a developer do you really want to be bothered opening up old projects just to change some wording for some business user standing over your shoulder?  No.. the trend in enterprise is to give power back to the business community. LiveCycle Designer allows you to capture the power of Flex and place it into reusable templates that business users and form designers can quickly create forms with.

This is a great start for such an innovative bank and I hear this is just the beginning for ANZ’s online status.