Collaborate in real time

Traditional document reviews are time-consuming tasks that are prone to errors. Learn how you can create a document review process that not only enhances efficiency, but boosts content quality as well. Let’s go ahead and take a look. I’ll start by opening up a PDF file directly from my secure SharePoint directory in Acrobat. Remember, you can also access files from Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Opening the file directly from SharePoint centralizes your document management and access control, eliminating potential version control issues. Now before I share the file, I’m going to open AI Assistant to check for grammar and clarity first. This step will catch basic errors and improve the document’s overall quality before even starting the review. The AI Assistant has some great suggestions here, including attribution so I can see exactly where to make the changes. I’m going to go ahead and copy these suggestions here so that I can make my changes in the original Word file. After fixing these issues in the original Word file and then creating a new PDF version as I’ve done here, you can share it directly from Acrobat. In the Share tool popup, you can share a link from popular apps like Outlook, Gmail, WhatsApp, or Teams, or by attaching to email, which isn’t nearly as efficient as cloud collaboration. You also have detailed access settings underneath this dropdown here. Now to invite someone to collaborate, simply enter their email address. Cloud collaboration provides real-time feedback and reliable tracking, making it far more efficient than email attachments. Messages are optional, but I’m going to let my collaborators know what is expected of them. I’m going to encourage them to use sticky notes, inline text comments, and drawing tools for clear feedback. Reviewers can comment using a browser, the Acrobat Reader mobile app, or Acrobat on the desktop. I’ll go ahead and add a deadline to give the workflow a sense of urgency here. Once I select invite, the file is uploaded to Adobe Cloud Platform. Once the file is shared, notice how the icon next to the file name changes. You can access all your shared files from the home page under Shared by You. Now in a shared file, I can also use the AI Assistant to build a better document. I’ll go ahead and ask if any policies are missing, and then paste those suggestions directly into a comment for all the other reviewers to see and reply to. Meanwhile, the collaborators that you invited receive a link to the file in an email that they can open using their browser, Acrobat, or mobile device like I am here. Which is very useful if a reviewer is out of the office. I can see that there are two comments. I’ll go ahead and give these instructions a thumbs up because you can add emojis here. For the second comment, I’m going to reply that these policies should be added, but we should notify our legal team as well. In addition to sticky notes, you can also use the highlighter, strikethrough, underline, and drawing tools at the bottom to make in-line comments. I’ll go ahead and select this paragraph here, and then use the at mention to bring someone else into the conversation. This will notify the individual via email, allowing them to join the conversation. You can also change the color of your highlights simply by tapping the color icon. Also at the bottom, you’ll find the strikethrough, underline, and the drawing tool that you can use to make in-line comments on the document. At the top, under the three ellipse, you’ll be able to see how many people are part of the review and who it’s been shared to. Now once the comments are added, you can use the notification bell to react in real time. I’ll open the file in the desktop version of Acrobat to view and manage the comments. You might also notice how some tools are grayed out, and this is because the document is part of a shared review and cannot be edited at this point. In the right hand pane, I can address the comments and mark them as resolved. You can also create a comment summary, which can be saved to SharePoint as a record of what happened in this particular review. For multiple revisions of a document, you can also use the compare files tool to show changes between various versions. I encourage you to try out real-time collaboration and cloud integrations for your next document review to significantly improve the quality and speed of any document review process. Thanks for watching.