Documentation AEM Forms Automated Conversion Guide

Configure the Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS)

Last update: April 8, 2025

Topics:
Adaptive Forms

CREATED FOR:

Beginner
Intermediate
Admin
Developer
User

This article describes how an AEM administrator can configure Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) to automate conversion of their PDF forms to Adaptive Forms. This article is for IT and AEM administrators at your organization. The information provided is based on the assumption that anyone reading this article is familiar with the following technologies:

Installing, configuring, and administering Adobe Experience Manager and AEM packages,
Using Linux® and Microsoft® Windows® operating systems,

Onboarding

The service is available for free to AEM 6.5 Forms On-Premise term customers and Adobe-Managed Service enterprise customers. You can contact Adobe Sales team or your Adobe representative to request access to the service. The service is also available for free and pre-enabled for AEM Forms as a Cloud Service customers.

Adobe enables access for your organization and provide required privileges to the person designated as administrator in your organization. The administrator can grant access to your AEM Forms developers (users) of your organization to connect to the service.

Prerequisites

You require the following to use the Automated Forms Conversion Service (AFCS):

Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) is enabled for your organization
An Adobe ID account with administrator privileges for the conversion service
An up and running AEM 6.5 with the latest AEM Service Pack or AEM Forms as a Cloud Service author instance with the latest updates.
An AEM user (on your AEM instance) which is member of forms-user group

Set up the environment

Before using the service, prepare your AEM author instance to connect to the service running on Adobe Cloud. Perform the following steps in the listed sequence to prepare your instance for the service:

Download and install AEM 6.5, or onboard AEM Forms as a Cloud Service
(For AEM 6.5 only) Download and install latest AEM Service Pack
(For AEM 6.5 only) Download and install latest AEM Forms add-on package
Create custom themes and templates

1. Download and install AEM 6.5 or onboard AEM Forms as a Cloud Service

Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) runs on AEM author instance. You require AEM 6.5 or AEM Forms as a Cloud Service to set up an AEM author instance.

If you do not have AEM 6.5 up and running, download it from the below locations. After you download AEM, for instructions to set up an AEM author instance, see deploying and maintaining.:
- If you are an existing AEM customer, download AEM 6.5 from Adobe Licensing website.
- If you are an Adobe partner, use Adobe Partner Training Program to request AEM 6.5.
If you are using AEM Forms as a Cloud Service, see onboard to AEM Forms as a Cloud Service and setup a local development environment.

2. (For AEM 6.5 only) Download and install AEM the latest Service Pack

Download and install the latest AEM Service Pack. For detailed instructions see AEM 6.5 Service Pack Release Notes.

3. (For AEM 6.5 only) Download and install AEM Forms add-on package

An AEM instance contains basic forms capabilities. The conversion service requires full capabilities of AEM Forms. Download and install AEM Forms add-on package to avail all the capabilities of AEM Forms. The package is required to set up and run the conversion service. For detailed instructions, see Install and configure data capture capabilities.
https://adminconsole.adobe.com/

NOTE

Ensure that you perform the mandatory post-installation configurations after installing the add-on package.

4. Create custom themes and templates

The reference packages contain sample themes and templates. Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) requires at least one theme and one template to convert a PDF form to an adaptive form. Create a custom theme and template of your own and point service configuration to use custom templates and themes before using the service.

You can also download and install the AEM Forms Reference Assets package on your Author instance. It creates some reference themes and template.

Configure Access and Permissions

Before you proceed to configure the service and connect your instance with the service running on Adobe Cloud, learn about the personas and privileges required to connect to the service. The service uses two different types of personas, administrators and developers:

Administrators: Administrators are responsible for managing Adobe software and services for their organization. Administrators grant access to developers in their organization to connect to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) running on Adobe Cloud. When an administrator is provisioned for an organization, the administrator receives an email with title ‘You now have administrator rights to manage Adobe software and services for your organization’. If you are an administrator, check your mailbox for email with previously mentioned title and proceed to grant access to developers of your organization.

Admin access grant email

Developers: A developer connects an AEM Forms author instance to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) running on Adobe Cloud. When an administrator grants rights to a developer to connect to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS), an email with title You now have developer access to manage Adobe API integrations for your organization is sent to the developer. If you are a developer, check your mailbox for email with previously mentioned title and proceed to Connect your local AEM instance to Automated Forms Conversion service on Adobe Cloud.

Developer access grant email

Grant access to developers of your organization

After Adobe enables access for your organization and provides required privileges to the administrator, the administrator can log into Admin Console (detailed instructions below), create a profile, and add developers to the profile. Developers can connect an instance of AEM Forms to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) on Adobe Cloud.

Developers are members of your organization designated to run the conversion service. Only those developers which are added to Adobe Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) profile are entitled to use the Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS).
Perform the below steps to create a profile and add developers to it. A minimum of one profile is required to grant required access to developers of your organization:

Log in to Admin Console. Use Adobe ID of administrator provisioned to use Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) to login.
Click the Automated Forms Conversion option.
Click New Profile in the Products tab.
Specify Name, Display Name, and Description for the profile. Click Done. For example, create a profile as AFC_Flamingo_Test_Dev.
Add developer to the profile. To add the developers:
1. In the Admin Console, navigate to the Overview tab.
2. Click Assign Developers on the required product card.
3. Enter the developers email address and, optionally, first and last names.
4. Select product profiles. Click Save.

Repeat above steps for all the users. For more details about adding developers, see Manage developers.

Once an administrator adds developers to Adobe I/O profile, the developers are notified via email (if configured).

Add user to the forms-users group

Specify an email address in the profile of the AEM user designated to run the service. Ensure that the user is the member of the forms-users group. Emails are sent to the email address of user running the conversion. To specify an email address for the user and add user to the forms user group:

Log in to your AEM Forms author instance as an AEM administrator. Use your local AEM credentials to login.
Click Adobe Experience Manager > Tools > Security > Users.
Select a user designated to run the conversion service and click Properties. The Edit User Settings page opens.
Specify an email address in the Email field and click Save. The emails are sent to specified email address on successful completion or failure of the conversion.
Click the Groups tab. In the select group tab, type and select the forms-users group.
Click Save & Close. The user is now a member of the forms-users group.

Connect your AEM Forms instance to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) on Adobe Cloud

After an administrator provides you developer access, you can connect your AEM Forms instance to Automated Forms conversion service (AFCS) running on Adobe Cloud.
Perform the following steps, to connect AEM Forms instance to Automated Forms Conversion service:

1. Configure the service APIs on Adobe Developer Console

2. Create Adobe IMS configurations

3. Create Automated Forms Conversion Configuration

1. Configure the service APIs on Adobe Developer Console

To use Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS), create a project and add Automated Forms Configuration Service API to the project on Adobe Developer Console. The integration generates API Key, Client Secret, Technical Account ID, Scopes and Organization ID.
To configure the Automated Forms Conversion service API on Adobe Developer Console, perform the followin steps:

Log in to https://developer.adobe.com/console . Use your Adobe ID, developer account that your administrator has provisioned to login to Adobe I/O console to login.
Select your organization from the top-right corner. If you do not know your organization, contact your administrator.
Click Create new project. A screen to get started with your new project appears.
Click Add API. A screen with list of all the APIs enabled for your account appears.
Select Automated Forms Conversion service and click Next. A screen to configure the API appears.
Select OAuth Server-to-Server authentication method.
Specify the Credential Name and click Next.
Select a Product Profile. For example, select a profile as AFC_Flamingo_Test_Dev.
Click Save configured API.

NOTE
Select the profile created while granting access to developers of your organization. If you do not know the profile to select, contact your administrator.
Click OAuth Server-to-Server to view the API Key, Client Secret, and other information required to connect your AEM instance to Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS).

The information on the page is used to create IMS configuration, as explained in the Create IMS Technical Configuration on AEM Author Instance section.

2. Create Adobe IMS configurations

Log in to your author instance to create the Adobe IMS configurations. Use the OAuth Credentials Details to retrieve the API Key, Client Secret, Technical Account ID, Scopes, and Organization ID.

Log in to your AEM Forms author instance. Navigate to Tools> Security > Adobe IMS Configurations.
Click Create.
The Adobe IMS Technical Account Configuration page appears.
Select Automated Forms Conversion Service in Cloud Solution.
Specify the below:
- Title: Specify a title.
- Authorization Server: https://ims-na1.adobelogin.com
- Retrieve the following from the Configure the service APIs on Adobe Developer Console section:
  - Client Id: Copy and paste API Key(Client ID).
  - Client Secret: Copy and paste Client Secret.
  - Scope: Copy and paste Scopes.
  - Org ID: Copy and paste Technical Account ID.
Click Save. The Adobe IMS configuration is created.

CAUTION
Create only one IMS configuration. Do not create more than one IMS configurations.
Select the Adobe IMS configuration and click Check Health. A dialog box appears.

A Check dialog box appears.
Click Check.

On successful connection, the Token retrieved successfully message appears.
Click Close.

3. Create Automated Forms Conversion Configuration

Create an Automated Forms Conversion configuration to connect your AEM instance to the conversion service. It also allows you to specify a template, theme, and form fragments for a conversion. You can create multiple cloud service configurations separate for each set of forms.
For example, you can have a separate configuration for sales department forms and a separate one for customer support forms. Perform the following steps to create a cloud service configuration:

On your AEM Forms instance, click Adobe Experience Manager > Tools> Cloud Services > Automate Forms Conversion Configuration.
Select the Global folder and click Create.
The page to Create Automated Forms Conversion Configuration appears. The configuration is created in the Global folder. You can also create the configuration in a different folder that exists or create a folder for your configurations.
On the Create Automated Forms Conversion Configuration page, specify value for the following fields and click Next.

Field
Description
Title
Unique title for the configuration. The title is displayed in the UI used to start conversion.
Name
Unique name for the configuration. The configuration is saved in the CRX-Repository with the specified name. The name can be identical to the title.
Thumbnail location
Location of the thumbnail for the configuration.
Service URL
URL of the Automated Forms Conversion service (AFCS) on Adobe Cloud. Use the https://aemformsconversion.adobe.io/ URL.
Template
Default template to be applied to converted forms. You can always specify a different template before starting the conversion. A template contains basic structure and initial content for an adaptive form. You can choose a template from the templates provided out-of-the-box. You can also create a custom template.
Theme
Default theme to be applied to converted forms. You can always specify a different theme before starting the conversion. You can click the icon to choose a theme provided out-of the box. You can also create a custom theme.
Existing Fragments
Location of existing fragments, if any.
Custom Meta-model
Path of the .schema.json file of custom meta-model. You can create separate meta-models for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese languages.
In the Advanced tab of the Create Automated Forms Conversion Configuration page, specify value for the following field:

Field
Description
Generate Document of Record
Select the option to automatically generate Document of Record for converted forms. The option is only for XFA-based forms (XDP and PDF Forms). When you enable the option, after submitting a form, you can allow your customers to keep a record, in print or in document format, of the information they have filled in the form for their future reference. This is referred to as a document of record.
Enable Analytics
(For AEM 6.5) Select the option to enable Adobe Analytics on all the converted forms. Before using the option, ensure that Adobe Analytics is enabled for your AEM Forms instance.
- When the source is an XFA-based form with extension .XDP, then the output DOR retains the XFA layout, else the conversion service uses an out-of-the-box template to generate DOR for other XFA-based forms.
- When an XFA form is submitted, submit data of the form is saved as an XML element or an attribute. For example, <Amount currency="USD"> 10.00 </Amount>. The currency is saved as an attribute and currency amount, 10.00 is saved as an element. Submit data of an adaptive form does not have attributes, it has only elements. So, when an XFA-based form is converted to adaptive form, the adaptive form submit data contains an element for each such attribute. For example,
{ "Type": "Principal", "Amount": "10.00", "currency": "USD" }
Click Create. The cloud configuration is created. Your AEM Forms instance is ready to start converting legacy forms to Adaptive Forms.

recommendation-more-help