Advanced Training on Authoring Environment

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to this edition of Adobe Sign Skill Builder. Before we jump in, I’d like to remind you that this session is being recorded and you’ll receive a link to the recording afterwards for on demand viewing. If you have questions during the session, please drop your question into the Q&A pod on the right side of the screen where we’ll have an expert on standby ready to answer. However, if your question does not get addressed, we’ll be sure to follow up with you afterwards directly through email. Let’s jump right in. Do you have documents that you collect signatures on that can be reused and made available as a template, or have form and signature fields that are always placed and located in the same place on your document? Perhaps these are documents that others can benefit by by accessing from a shared library with the form and signature fields already placed. If so, stick around to learn how you can use the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment. (upbeat music) Hi there. Weston Romero here, Technical Product Evangelist at Adobe. Today, we’re going to take a deep dive into the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment, and walk you through all of the available options for applying form and signature fields to your reusable document templates for seamless sending and signing. We’ll cover a deep dive into the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment and go over form and signature field options, template properties, and field assignments. Then, we’ll take the example document template that we created here together and put it to the test by sending it for signature, while showing you the difference between using a reusable document template and a reusable form field layer. I’d like to start the session off with an easy question. What is your experience level with Adobe Acrobat Sign? We’re now going to double-click into the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment and spend some time going over all of the form and signature field options available. We’ll also go over form field template properties and types, as well as field assignment. So let’s take a look.

Logged into Adobe Acrobat Sign, I’ll select and navigate to create a reusable template to begin the process of setting up my reusable form field template. On this page, I can name the template, add a file, as well as specify the properties for my template. I’ll go ahead and start by naming my template and call it Authoring Deep Dive. Next, I’ll add the file that I wish to upload and use as my base template. I can upload files from one of the cloud storage options listed, whether I’m uploading from the Document Cloud, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, not listed. In my example, I’ll be selecting my file from my computer, and select the file that I’m going to use for my template and then attach it. If I need to add additional files to make up my template, I could select and attach more. Next, let’s take a look at the properties that we can set for this template. We can specify the template type, whether it’s a reusable document, reusable form field layer, or both. A reusable document will save my template with both the field and document layer, whereas a form field layer will be saved as just the field layer. I’ll select both and then move on to the next section, which allows me to define who can use this template. Are you creating and saving this template for your use only, are others in your group going to also access this template, or can anyone in your organization access this template, so they too can use this template when collecting signatures? In my example, I’m going to select just for me, and then select preview and add fields, which will navigate me to the authoring environment where we’re going to spend most of our time going over all of the options available for applying form fields to your document template. In my example today, I’m using a multi-page document that I designed specifically for this session, which will ensure that we touch on most every field type and option. You’ll notice immediately that Adobe’s artificial intelligence agent, Adobe Sensei, is recognizing that there are form fields on this document, and does a really nice job of placing those fields, as you can see here. We can then navigate to the next page and leverage Adobe Sensei there as well to identify and place the fields for us. Now, while Adobe Sensei did a great job of helping us place and identify some of our fields, that’s not all there is to it, especially if we have fields with specific properties, such as defining if the field is required or optional, applying formatting or conditional logic. We also have the ability to drag and drop additional fields onto the template, whether it’s a type of signature or signer info field, data entry field, or a field type available in the more in transaction field section. Let’s begin making edits to our fields, and talk about some of the additional properties we have available to us. We’ll start from the top with our original field. Next to it, you’ll see that we have a section to place a copied and a cloned field, so we’ll delete the fields that Sensei detected so that we can show you the difference between those options. With our original field here, we’re going to select edit, and we’re going to call this Original Field. Then, we can apply additional properties. I’m going to make this a required field and specify the validation as number with the value range from one to 10, which means the participant assigned to this field will be required to enter in a number between, well, one to 10. We’ll call it good for this field, and then select okay. Now, what if we want to reuse this field in other sections of our document, without having to go in and manually set the same properties for each? That’s where the copy and clone function comes into play. Selecting edit on the original field, you’ll see that we have the option to copy or clone this field. If we copy the field, we are making a copy of the original field, including its properties. However, the field’s value will collect a unique value and will not mirror the value that’s entered into the original field. You can also see here that the field in our example was named Copy of Original Field. Now let’s make a clone of our original field. With our clone field, if we select edit and look at the properties, you’ll see that it shares the same exact name as our original field, which means the values entered into the original and clone field will mirror one another. This is great for use cases where you might be asking your signer to enter the same information more than once throughout your document or form. In this next section, we’re going to look at read only, required, and optional fields. Starting with our read only field, if we select edit, we can check the read only check box to make this field, well, read only, which means the assigned participant will not be able to interact with the field, but see the value that’s been entered into it. What I’ll do in this example is enter a default value into the field and call it Test. What we can see now is the field has an entered value, but because it’s read only, this field is essentially locked down so that its value cannot be changed. Read only fields are great for use cases where you might be leveraging an integration like Salesforce, where you can merge record data to Acrobat signed form fields at the time of setting. Some of the data that you’re merging to the fields might be data that you don’t want the signer to change, thus, making a field read only will allow a unique value to be set as the default value at the time of sending. With the required field, we’ll select edit, but this time we’ll choose required as the option, and then give the field a default value as well. This will require the signer to interact with the field, whether they leave the default value as is, or they apply their own. Let’s go ahead and make this a multi-line data entry field, which will allow better support for multiple lines of data, such as a sentence or paragraph. Why don’t we adjust the appearance now and change the font from auto to 12 point, which means the text size will remain 12 point without being auto adjusted to fit the size of the field? Onto the optional field now, which in this example we’ll leave the field optional, but what we’ll do here is select mask field data, which will mask the value that’s entered in by the assigned participant. This masks the value from additional participants who might be in the workflow, as well as remain masked on the fully signed PDF, which is great for securing sensitive data such as a social security or credit card number. Let’s use a fictitious social security number as the example here, and because social security numbers are a known format, nine digits, we can choose US social security number from the list of predefined validation options. Great. Let’s select okay now that we’ve given this field the necessary properties. All right, onto the next section where we have a field section dedicated to a dropdown menu. I’ll delete the existing text input field, and drag and drop a dropdown menu from the field options on the right. Selecting edit will allow us to see the name of the field, which was called dropdown by default. Let’s rename the field to State and use this menu to allow our signer to choose their state as the value for this field. By default, we see that option one and option two were added as example values, but I’m going to copy and paste a list of all 50 states that I found online so that we don’t have to manually type in each one. Now that our dropdown is ready, we’ll select okay and move on to the next section, which will be taking a look at checkboxes and radio buttons. With checkboxes, the signer can check more than one checkbox if multiple are presented, whereas with radio buttons, the signer is only able to make a single selection of a radio button group with more than one option. Starting with checkboxes, we’ll drag and drop a checkbox onto our document. I can either drag and drop additional checkboxes or make a copy of my existing checkbox, which is what I’ll do in this example. Now, I did a horrendous job of aligning my checkboxes, so I’ll use the alignment option to select and align them.

Much better. Furthermore, I can go in and edit each checkbox and set the default value as checked or unchecked, and can even make the checkbox required. It’s also best practice to name each checkbox so that when exporting the form field data to a CSV or a business analytics tool, the data is named accordingly so that you understand what each value means. All right. Let’s move on to radio buttons where we’ll drag and drop the radio button to our form, but this time when we place it, it’s going to ask how many options are in the radio button group. I have three options in mind, so I’ll change two to three and select okay. I’ll now place the radio buttons in their respective location on the form, and can then use the alignment option to align each option.

Because each option is a part of the same group, we can select edit on any of these options and change the group name. I’ll call it Group Options for now. Then we can specify button style, whether it be a check, circle, cross, diamond, square, or star. We’ll keep it as circle and make the radio button group required for our signer to interact with. Next, we’ll specify the value of our options, and for the first, the value is A, so we’ll change zero to A. We’ll move on to the next option where we’ll see it has the same group name, but for this option, the value is represented as one. We’ll change that to B, and then do the same for our final option and change that to C. Moving onto the next field, we’re going to create a field that’s conditional. We’ll leverage the radio button group that we just set up in this example and set our logic to show this field only when A is selected from the radio button group above. So what we’ll do here is select edit, name the field, which I’ll call Conditional Field, and then make this field required. In order to make it conditional, we’ll come down to the condition section where we can specify where we’re showing, hiding, enabling, or disabling this field, if it’s for any or all fields, and then specifying the field and field value that will show this field when selected. I’ll locate the radio button group, which we called group options, and then select equals, and then select the group value that will show this field, which we’ll select A for this example. All right. If that’s the only condition we need to set, we can select okay and move on to the next field. I’ll delete the text input field and select image from the data fields and drag and drop the image field onto my document. The image field will provide your participant the opportunity to upload an image that will be embedded onto the document in the space we’ve set here. Onto the calculation field section, where we’re going to show you how to use the formula tool to build out the desired formula to calculate a read only value. First, we’ll go into each build and make sure each one has been given a name that can be identified when building out our formula. We’ll call the first field here value one, for the next, we’ll call it value two, and then value three for our third field.

Finally, we’ll rename the final field Total.

We can also go in and make these fields required, as well as set the validation to number so that we can ensure the entered value is a number that can be calculated.

Let’s look at the total field now, and this is the field where the formula is going to be set. In this example, we’re doing basic math, however, you can build out as complex of formulas as you need, which works great when needing to dynamically update fields on order forms or populating an expiration date based on a selected contract term. Let’s select edit here and change the field type from entered value to calculated value, which you’ll notice that it gives us this formula option here. Selecting the formula icon will bring you to a tool that helps you build out the expression. From here, we’ll navigate to the fields option and look for the fields that we’ll use to calculate our total here. We’ll take value one, divide it by value two, and add it to value three, and now we’ve built a very simple expression where a calculated value will now appear in this field. Before moving on, we can check the syntax to make sure it’s seen as valid, and then select okay. Now that we covered off on many of the different types of data entry fields, we’re going to move on to the signature and signer info section of this document, which are common fields when capturing and collecting a signature from your signer, such as the signer’s full name, title, and the date the agreement was signed.

Starting with the initial field, we’ll drag and drop the initial field from the signature field section from the menu on the right, since it wasn’t detected. We could have also changed the property of the place field from text input to initial. We’ll leave our first signature field as is, and then change the field type of the second signature field to signature block, which you’ll see collects many pieces of information, including the signature, the signer’s name, sign date, and email address. Onto the date field, which we can see was automatically detected and placed. We can select edit on this field, which will allow us to choose the format for the entered date from a list of options. With the full name field, which was also automatically detected and placed, you can use this field to look at the name value captured in the signature field to then define this field. This ensures the name entered in both the signature and full name field are that of the same signer. We can see that both email and title were also automatically detected and placed. While the title field is used to capture the title of the signer, the email address field will automatically capture the signer’s email address based on the address that the agreement was sent to. With the stamp field, we can capture a stamp that can be used in place of a signature, which is a requirement in some use cases and regions. The stamp field works similarly as the image field, where an image of a stamp or seal will be uploaded by the signer and embedded onto the document. All right. Now that we spent some time going over many of the different data entry field types and options, as well as signature and signer info fields, we’re now going to take a look at the last section of this document, which will cover off on some of the other field types, as well as touch on assigning form fields to additional participants.

The first field that we’ll take a look at in this section is the file attachment field, which I’ll select and drag and drop from the menu on the right. This field will allow the signer to attach a file that gets appended to the end of this document. This is great when needing your signer to attach supporting documents. The hyperlink field is going to give us the ability to define a hyperlink as the value for this field, so that the signer can click the link and be directed to the defined webpage. I’ll drag the hyperlink field onto my document, and then select edit, where I’ll define the website the link will point to, which in this example, I’ll choose adobe.com, then I’ll set the display label to Adobe, and then select okay.

With the transaction ID field, we’ll also drag and drop this field onto our document. This field is a read only field that will capture and display the unique transaction identifier that’s generated for each transaction sent through Acrobat Sign. By default, the transaction ID is captured on the audit report of each transaction, however, this field provides a great option for including the unique identifier on the signed PDF as well.

The last field we’ll be reviewing is the participation stamp field, which we’ll drag and drop onto our document in its respective section. The participation stamp captures the name, signing or approval time, and the email address of the participant signing or approving. This works great in use cases where you have an approver, but not a form or signature field on the document that captures their approval. The participation stamp offers a way to capture the approval directly on the document without having to look at the audit report to see that an approval was granted, and by whom. In this example, we’re going to assign the participation stamp to another participant, so we’ll select edit, and then change the assignment from participant one to participant two. That’s one method of assigning fields. The other method is by navigating to the top right hand corner here, where we have the option to set fields for the center, participant one, participant two, or selecting add a new participant to add additional participants whom fields will be assigned to. Let’s add a third participant and select them from the list. I can then begin adding fields, which when placed, will automatically be assigned to the selected participant, which in this example is participant three. I’ll go ahead and delete that field for now, as we’ll be showing you a two participant workflow in today’s example. And now that we’ve gone through and placed our fields, as well as set the properties necessary, the last thing we’ll look at is the template properties, which can be changed anytime you’re in the authoring environment. Here, you can change the template name, template type, and who can access the template, which I’ll change from me to anyone in my group.

We’re now ready to save the template, but if you ever need to return to make edits to your templates, it’s as simple as going to the manage page, selecting templates, and then selecting the edit icon on the template in question, which will return you to the authoring environment where you can pick up where you last left off. We just went through many of the Acrobat Sign form field types and options available in the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment, giving you the ability to create, share, and maintain reusable form field templates directly within Acrobat Sign. It’s poll time again. Have you ever created a reusable form field template? We’re now going to take the document template that we set up in our example and send it for signature so that you can see many of the field types in action as the signer interacts with each one. We’ll also show you the difference between a reusable document template and a form field layer, and when each option is applicable. Let’s dive right in.

Logged into Acrobat Sign, we’re going to select request signatures to initiate and send an agreement for signature using the example template we created together in the previous part of this session. On the send page, I’ll go ahead and identify my first signer, Ivanna Sign, and leave her participant role as signer, although I could change that from the list of participant roles. Then, I’ll add myself as the second participant, who will approve the agreement after Ivanna has signed. This will show the participation stamp activated and applied to the document after the second participant approves. I’ll change myself from signer to approver, give the agreement a name, and then select my file, which will be the template we set up and called Authoring Deep Dive. This will be the file that I attach and send out for signature to the identified participants, Ivanna being assigned the participant one fields, and me being assigned the participant two fields. If I wanted to spot check my template before sending, I could select preview and add signature fields, select next, and then be directed to the authoring environment, where we can see our template and form fields. In this example, we’re showing the use of a reusable document template, which means we’re using both the document and the field layer for this agreement. Let’s select send and now play the part of Ivanna to show you the fields we set up in action. Logged into Gmail, we can see that Ivanna just received an email from me asking her to sign. Clicking into the email and then selecting review and sign will allow her to begin interacting with the fields that we set up. Starting with our original field, I’ll enter in a value between one and 10. The clone field will mirror this value, whereas the copied field will remain blank while having the same properties. Next, we can see the read only field with the default value set as test. We cannot change the value of this field, however. Again, great for use cases where you need to set up a unique value for the signer, but with a value that cannot be changed or manipulated by them. With our required field, we see a default value in this field as well, but we’re able to change it. I’ll change it from test to this. Because we set multi-line data entry for this field, it will allow the text to be captured in multiple lines, rather than an ongoing line of text. On top of making this next field optional, we set this field to mask the data entered into it. Using a fictitious social security number, you see that entering a nine digit number meets the validation requirement set for this field while masking the form field data as soon as we click out of it. The number will remain masked, including in the fully signed PDF, requiring the form field data to be retrieved by exporting it from the system as an authorized user. Onto the dropdown menu, which you can see we have an alphabetical list of US states that we can select from. I’ll choose Utah in this example, as that’s my home state, and then move on to the checkboxes. Here, I can check the boxes that apply, whether that’s all of the boxes, or just one or two of them, whereas with the radio buttons, I can only choose one option from the group. I can select B, or if I change my mind, I’ll select C, but I can only ever make one selection from this radio button group. Selecting A from the radio button group will activate our conditional field and make it appear. I’ll enter a value into it, but if I changed my mind again and selected B, the conditional field will disappear. Next, I’ll upload an image to the image field and choose a sample logo that I have saved to my desktop. Selecting the image file will then embed it into the space that we defined for the field.

Onto the calculation field, we’ll enter eight divided by two plus six, which will automatically calculate and provide us with the total that is read only. All right, onto the signature and signer info section of this document. Here, we are able to go in and apply our initials, and since we’re playing the part of Ivanna Sign, we’ll put in her initials and then select apply. We also have a signature field, which will capture Ivanna’s signature, whether she’s typing it, drawing it, or uploading an image from her desktop or mobile device.

Notice with the signature block, we have the email address and signature, and once selected will populate the signature based on how Ivanna captured it in the previous signature field. We can see the date field that was automatically populated here based on the current date. The full name field is populated based on the name entered into the signature field. So for instance, if I update Ivanna Sign to Ivanna Signer in the signature field, you’ll see that change reflected in the full name field here as well.

Finally, we have the title field, which we’ll enter as signer, the email field, which was automatically populated with the email address identified for Ivanna in the transaction, and then the stamp field, which would typically be some official form of stamp or seal, but in my example, I’ll use the same image I used to populate my image field, and now you can see that it’s applied as a stamp. Moving onto the last section, we have our hyperlink field here, which will take me to adobe.com when selected.

The attachment field will allow us to attach and amend a file to the end of this agreement. The transaction number is not populated for the first signer, but we’ll see that value as soon as we move on to the next participant. And now that we’ve completed all of the fields as the first signer, we’re now ready to play the part of the second participant, which will show us the transaction number as well as activate the participation stamp.

Returning to Acrobat Sign as the second participant, I can go to the manage page and see that I have the sample agreement waiting for my approval.

So, let’s go ahead and click into the agreement and approve it. Here, we can see the values that Ivanna applied to the document, including her masked social security number. We also see the embedded image, her signatures and signer details, including the image that was entered into the stamp field. Onto the next page, we can see that this agreement includes an attachment, and in fact, if I scroll down to the very bottom of this page, we’ll see where that file was appended to this agreement. The hyperlink works for the second participant as well. Then finally, we can see the unique transaction ID that was added to the document itself. The participation stamp, however, will only appear after I’ve approved the document, as it’s intended to capture the participation’s detail on the document without requiring the participant to enter the details in themselves.

I’ll select approve, and now that both participants have completed this process, each will receive a copy of the signed agreement for their records. The signed agreement will also by default be accessible in the manage page. In the completed section, we’ll now be able to locate and open the agreement that we just completed together. In this view, we can see all of the collected information from the first participant, including her signature and signer details. We can also see the participation stamp that was populated, including the approver’s details, as well as the file that was attached and appended to the end of this agreement. Downloading and opening the PDF and audit report will show the masked data remains masked, as well as all of the other collected data that we’ve just seen in the web view. In the audit report, which includes the sequence of events, we can see the details that a supporting document was attached by Ivanna. All right. Let’s return back to the send page to initiate another agreement, but this time using a form field layer. This time around, we’ll choose a document from our computer, check preview and add signature fields, and then select next. This returns us to the authoring environment, where we’ll see the document that we attached from our desktop without form fields. Selecting from templates from the top will allow us to locate our form field layer and then place on top of our underlying document by selecting apply. And just like that, we’ve applied a form field layer to our document, placing all of our fields in their respective location in one fell swoop. We just took the document template that we set up together and sent it for signature, where we showed the form fields in action and how the assigned participant can interact with each. We also showed you the difference between using a reusable document template and a reusable form field layer. It’s time for another poll. Out of everything that we just covered, what do you think will be the most helpful in the work you do? We took a deep dive into the Acrobat Sign Authoring Environment today, covering off on all of the form field types and options available for customizing your template. We went over a lot today, and I hope you found this session worth your time. Two resources I’d like to make sure you bookmark are the Adobe Acrobat Sign Resource Hub and the Adobe Acrobat Sign Skill Builder Series. The Acrobat Sign Resource Hub is a one-stop shop for tips and tricks, tutorials, customer stories, the latest integrations and more. We’re always updating and adding to it, so check back frequently. And in the Skill Builder Webinar Series, such as this one, we host a monthly session where we cover a variety of Acrobat Sign topics, teaching the basics and diving deep to help you get the most out of Adobe Acrobat Sign. One last poll before we go. As always, we’d love to know if you learned something new today. (bright music) Thanks for joining. I’m Weston Romero, and this has been another session of Adobe Acrobat Sign Skill Builder. Happy sending. Happy signing. (bright music)