Adobe is excited to share new key updates across Acrobat, Acrobat Sign, and our Acrobat Services APIs for large organisations. With the focus on creating automated document workflows, new capabilities in Document Cloud include the new launch of Workflow Automation integrated with Microsoft Power Automate, Adobe PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API to help make documents more accessible for screen readers, and more. Read on for all the new features and updates.
Adobe Acrobat
1. AI-powered Auto-Tag in Adobe Acrobat Pro
With Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can now optimise PDFs for screen readers with Adobe Sensei AI-powered services. The new Auto-Tag tool will now use AI to understand the structure to better identify headings, paragraphs, sections, tables, and other page elements as well as indicate the reading order. This feature is available inside of Adobe Acrobat Pro and part of Adobe Acrobat Services API. Read the Acrobat Services API updates below for automated ways to leverage this function.
Availability: This feature is currently being rolled out to all Acrobat Pro subscribers.
2. Acrobat Standard now available on Mac
For years, Adobe Acrobat has offered in Standard and Pro versions. However, only Acrobat Pro was available to Mac users. Now, Mac users now have the option of installing Adobe Acrobat Standard on desktop, providing more options for using Acrobat.
Availability: Everyone with Acrobat Standard licensing.
3. Acrobat in Microsoft Edge
As part of our partnership with Microsoft, we are committed to helping reimagine the future of workplace and digital experiences. To help this, Microsoft Edge is now powered by Adobe Acrobat PDF engine. This allows you to view PDFs with higher fidelity with Adobe Acrobat, stronger security, and accessibility that you know and trust from Adobe.
Availability: All Edge users can take full advantage of Acrobat in Edge.
4. Acrobat Reader user interface
Adobe introduced an entirely reimagined experience for Acrobat (64-bit) desktop users last year for selected customers. The new experience is now available for all new Acrobat Reader installs in the English locale. For Adobe Acrobat Pro users, currently the new experience is being rolled out as an experiment and is available for the Acrobat (64-bit) English locale only. For enterprise customers, this is not available yet. If you already have Adobe Acrobat installed or you install Adobe Acrobat, you will not see this interface yet.
5. Edit scanned documents and crop pages
With Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile and Acrobat for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, you can now edit your scanned PDF documents. These new improvements will also try to emulate the fonts and stylings in the document so that your edits look like the original document by intelligently creating dynamic fonts just like on Adobe Acrobat desktop based on the other characters on the page. In addition to editing PDF documents, you can crop pages. This is ideal if you have a scan or a section of a document you want to crop and remove.
Availability: Available for Acrobat subscribers using Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile on iOS.
6. Request signatures dialog box and form authoring experience
Adobe Acrobat allows you to request signatures on documents whether you are on desktop, web, in-browser, or mobile. The dialog is now updated for a simpler, and more streamlined process to add recipients. For Adobe Acrobat Sign users, the experience closely mirrors the options available within the Acrobat Sign web experience.
In addition, the interface for placing fields on documents for forms to be sent out for signature has been refreshed. It is now easier than ever to place your fields and Acrobat will intelligently try to predict the type of field that you are placing and set the field to the right field type.
Availability: Available for Acrobat subscribers using Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat web.
Adobe Acrobat Sign
1. Adobe Acrobat Sign – Workflow Automation integrated with Microsoft Power Automate
When operating with many agreements, there are often actions pre-signature that need to be completed, such as determining who to route the document to. That is why at Microsoft Build, Adobe announced the general availability of Workflow Automation integrated with Microsoft Power Automate inside of Adobe Acrobat Sign.
Workflow Automation integrated with Microsoft Power Automate allows Adobe Acrobat Sign users to create automated and connected e-signature workflows directly within Acrobat Sign. You can manage pre-signature workflows, like Approvals, document generation using the Adobe PDF Services connector, create more dynamic e-signature processes, and store documents automatically in the right repository after they are completed. Power Automate allows you to create business processes and automated workflows without having to write code. What’s more, it has over 1000+ connectors to enterprise apps like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Workday, Oracle, BOX, Dropbox, and many other apps which you can easily connect to in a workflow.
Availability: Admins can provision this for all their end-users with Acrobat Sign Enterprise licenses. Users can then get started with entitlements and pre-built templates for workflows or create their own workflow through this low-code/no-code integration at no additional cost. As users navigate through Acrobat Sign’s Microsoft Power Automate Workflows section, they can learn more through embedded help videos.
2. Adobe Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Teams — Send files from OneDrive and Teams
Adobe Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Teams allows you to send, track and manage your agreements without leaving Microsoft Teams. In this new release, you can now send agreements by selecting them from the Documents tab and send them for e-signatures. In addition, to sending agreements, it also allows you to lookup your contacts when sending. This eliminates the need to remember email addresses and instead auto-completes.
Availability: All Adobe Acrobat Sign customers
3. Adobe Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Power Automate — Trigger for web forms
Web Forms in Adobe Acrobat Sign are a great way to turn PDF forms into online forms to view and sign. With Microsoft Power Automate, you can now easily collect these form field values when the form is completed and populate them automatically into tables such as SharePoint Lists, Excel spreadsheets, Salesforce, Dynamics 365, or other tables. This feature also allows you to have granular control and trigger actions when different events happen with Web Forms to help streamline your form workflows and eliminate re-keying information from forms and updating other systems. This is ideal for release forms, account opening forms, insurance claims, and permission slips.
Availability: All users
4. Adobe Acrobat Sign – Enforce save on open for web forms
When filling out web forms, you may have a long form that won’t get completed right away. Now in Adobe Acrobat Sign you can verify your email address when you open the Web Form. This will send an email so that if you can’t finish the form all at once, you can click the link in your email to pick up where you left off.
Availability: all users
5. New Cloud Signature & Digital Identity providers
Identity is a critical part of ensuring that agreements are legally binding. To help with this, Adobe has partnered with Trust Service Providers globally to help ensure that organisations can meet the strictest identity requirements for different regions that require Advanced Signatures (AeS) and Qualified Signatures (QeS). Cloud Signature providers provide a way for signers to be uniquely authenticated with their digital identity at the time of signature.
Digital Identity Gateway provides the ability to recognise the signer when viewing the document with OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication protocol for services like:
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- Video identity verification
- Electronic identity (eID) authentication
- Identity document confirmation
- Knowledge-based authentication (KBA)
- Biometric identification, authentication
Adobe Acrobat Services API
1. Adobe PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API
To read a document’s text and present it in a way that makes sense to people using assistive technology, such as a screen reader, the document must be structured. Document structure tags in a PDF identify headings, paragraphs, sections, tables, and other page elements and indicate the reading order. The tag structure also allows for documents to be resized and reflowed for viewing at larger sizes and on mobile devices.
Powered by Adobe Sensei AI, Adobe PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API automatically identifies the reading order and tags different content types such as tables, headings, lists, paragraphs, and figures accurately. It can be used on both native and scanned PDFs.
Availability: Available for Adobe Acrobat Services customers.
2. Adobe PDF Services connector for Microsoft Power Automate — Create tagged PDF action
With the release of Adobe PDF Accessibility Auto-Tag API, these features are now available within Adobe PDF Services connector in Microsoft Power Automate. Now, you can take your PDF documents and automatically optimise them for screen readers. Through Power Automate, you can easily integrate PDF Auto-Tag API with over 1000+ connectors. This is ideal for remediating documents in OneDrive, SharePoint and other repositories at scale.
Availability: Available for all Adobe Acrobat Services customers.
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Dax data is excited to deliver these new features to our customers – get in contact with our team to find out more.
