Work with e-signatures in your Microsoft apps

Transcript

Hello, everyone and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to this edition of Acrobat Sign Skill Builder. Before we jump in, I’d like to remind you that this session is being recorded and will be available within 24 hours right here where you join today. You’ll also receive an email with a link to the recording for on-demand viewing. As always, please make sure to ask any questions in the Q&A pod on the right side of the screen. We’ll have Adobe experts on standby ready to answer. We’ll answer as many questions as possible, but for those that we aren’t able to get to, there are several great resources that you can visit to learn more. We’ve dropped those in the Q&A pod for you to bookmark. (upbeat music) First, by way of introduction, my name is Weston Romero, Technical Product Evangelist at Adobe. Over the course of the last several years, I’ve had the absolute pleasure of helping a broad range of customers implement and adopt e-signature and digital document technology, all in pursuit of digital transformation. Let me show you what we’ll be covering today. While Acrobat Sign and Microsoft have many available integrations, today we’ll specifically be diving into three of Microsoft’s most popular 365 applications. We’ll take you through the steps of installing and then using the Acrobat Sign integration for Microsoft Outlook, Word and SharePoint. I’d like to start out with an easy poll. What is your experience level with Adobe Acrobat Sign? Let’s start with the Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Outlook integration. Many documents are emailed back and forth, opened directly from Outlook, often requiring approvals or signature. With the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in, users can configure new agreements directly from Outlook by either composing a new email, starting from a blank slate or by replying to an existing email, seamlessly importing the recipient list and automatically attaching any files from the source email. Let’s look at how easy it is to install and use the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in. We’ll start by opening Outlook, then to get the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in, we’ll go to and select to get add-ins from the home ribbon in Outlook. It’s important to know that you might not see this if your admin has blocked you from installing add-ins to your Outlook account. Be sure to get in touch with your Outlook admin if you run into this challenge to have it enabled. Once the get add-ins window has loaded, you can search for Acrobat Sign in the search bar on the top right. Clicking into the app will give us additional details about the add-in, as well as available resources.

When ready to add it, select add.

And then once added, selecting Get Started will provide us with a couple of examples of how the add-in will function in Outlook. Let’s close out of this, and now that we’ve added the Acrobat Sign add-in, let’s put it to use and look at the options that you immediately have available. In the home ribbon, we now see Acrobat Sign where we have three functions available to us. Fill and Sign, which allows us to quickly sign documents requiring a quick signature. Send for Signature, which allows us to define and initiate signature workflows, and Agreement Status, which allows us to get real-time statuses for our agreements. Let’s now use some of these options with the email that I received from Senator Jones. And again, we can use these options right from Outlook. Or we can pop out the email and we’ll have all of those same options available in the email itself. For this example, let’s start with the Send for Signature option. Choosing Send for Signature will pop out a pane on the right side of the window while automatically attaching the document in the email, saving us from having to manually download and upload the document. For the recipients, we’ll simply type in the email address of the participants who are required to take action on this document. Since I’m signing first, I’ll first add my email address. Then, I’ll add the second participant, which is Senator Jones who will need to add their approval after I’ve signed. In this example, I’ll drag and drop Senator’s email address into the recipient section. And now we have a two-participant workflow. Finally, we see that the name of the agreement has automatically been defined by the attached document. And then a section for the message, where we can personalize a message that will be included in the email sent to the participants asking them to take action.

Once the agreement workflow has been defined, we can preview, then send the document should we need to add form fields before it’s sent to the first participant. Selecting more options will pop out a window with the Acrobat Sign send page where you’ll have additional options such as defining the participant role, order and signer authentication. With Senator Jones, as the approver in this workflow, we can change his role from signer to approver. We can also make additional changes to the agreement name, messaging, and attachments. Let’s go ahead and select Next to add signature and form fields to this document before sending out.

This brings us to the alternate view where we can see Adobe’s artificial intelligence agent, Adobe Sensei, has detected that form fields need to be placed on this document.

Clicking on it will place fields where detected, which we see the two fields that were placed as well as the fields that were placed below, where even the type of field was detected, including signature, full name and date. Having the fields automatically detected and placed, saves us from having to manually drag and drop each field on the document. Although if needed, we could do so from the pane on the right. We can place additional signature fields, signer info fields like title, company, name, email, and date, as well as many other types of fields that would allow us to collect the needed information from our participants. We are now ready to send this document out for signature and approval. But before we do, I could save this document as a form filled template in my Acrobat Sign library should I expect to use it again in the future. Let’s go ahead and select Sign then Send. And because we defined ourselves as the first signer, it will prompt us to sign the document before being sent out to Senator Jones for his approval. We can now enter in the needed text and the text input fields and can navigate through this document until all required fields have been completed. I can apply my signature to the document by using my saved signature or choosing a new signature by drawing one, uploading an image or using my mobile device to capture it.

I’ll use my saved signature in this example. And now I’m ready to select Click to Sign, which will then advance this agreement to the approver and bring us back to Outlook, where we see a message noting that our agreement has been sent out for signature. Before we approve the document as Senator Jones, we’ll take a glance at checking the status of our agreements directly from Outlook.

Selecting agreement status from the Acrobat Sign add-in will pop out a pane on the right of the window and show me all of my recent activity in my Acrobat Sign account, including the agreement that we just initiated, where we can see the status is currently out for approval. We also see where I played the part of Conrad Sims to initiate and sign the agreement. If we need to take additional action on the agreement or see additional detail, we can select View Agreement and this will pop out a window where we see the option to send reminders or cancel the agreement if we needed. We can also see the recipients and the action they’ve taken so far, while the activity will show us the sequence of events.

Let’s now play the part of the approver, Senator Jones, where I’m logged into my inbox and just received an email from Conrad Sims, asking for my approval on the agreement.

I’ll click into the email and then select Review and Approve to begin the process. In this view, we can see the message from Conrad, as well as access to the options we have available to us. We have the option to delegate to another approver, decline to approve or view the history of this agreement and download the PDF in its current state. However, we intend to approve this document and we’ll scroll down to the bottom and select Click to Approve, which will complete the workflow for this agreement.

Now that all required participants have taken action, and the agreement workflow is complete, all involved parties will automatically receive a follow-up email with the final signed and certified PDF. Returning to Outlook, Conrad also received a follow-up email with the attached PDF and the audit report, and can see that the updated status of the agreement from the Acrobat Sign add-in for Outlook.

We just walked you through how to install and use the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in, and how you can sign, initiate and track your agreements without leaving Outlook or needing to log into another application. If additional instruction is needed for installing and using the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in, please visit helpx.adobe.com, where you can locate the installation and user guide for step-by-step guidance. Before we move on, I have another poll for you.

Let’s take a look at the Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Word integration. Many document files get their start in Word from the first draft to the final version. Now imagine being able to collect signatures and track their status on those very documents without ever leaving the application they were created in. With the Acrobat Sign for Word add-in, users can open any file and use that file as the basis for a new agreement. We’ll now walk you through the steps to install the Acrobat Sign for Word add-in, and then how it can be used to initiate and track signature workflows. We’ll start by opening Microsoft Word, where I have one of my sample documents opened. Before we can use the Acrobat Sign for add-in for Word, we must add it just as we did for Outlook. To do so, we’ll go to the Insert tab and select Get Add-ins. From the pop-out window, we’ll search for Acrobat Sign.

Clicking into the Acrobat Sign add-in will provide us additional details and resources available for the add-in. I’ll select Add, which will then prompt us to agree to the terms and conditions before being installed.

As you can see, we now have the Acrobat Sign add-in successfully installed with the options in the ribbon available for us to begin using.

You’ll find that this experience is very similar to the add-in for Outlook. And now that we’ve installed the add-in, let’s begin using the available options. This time, we’ll start with the Fill and Sign option. Clicking Fill and Sign will allow us to authenticate and connect our Acrobat Sign account to Word. Once authenticated, we can get started.

Fill and Sign will automatically take the document we have opened and attach it as the document that we can then fill and sign. We can also add additional files if needed, but for now, we’ll select Continue, which will then pop out a window that will allow us to begin filling out and signing this document. I’ll place text where needed on this document, and then can add my signature, which I have saved and can simply place in the signature section of this document.

Finally, I can enter in my name as well as the date.

And just like that, we were able to simply fill and sign this document. Now that we’re ready to move on to the next step, we’ll select Done and the document will be saved as a protected PDF that can be shared, downloaded, or further managed. Sending a copy will allow us to enter in the email addresses of the recipients, as well as entering a message similar to composing an email. When ready to be sent, we’ll select Send, and now a copy of the signed PDF has been shared with the identified recipients. Closing out of the pop-out window will return us to Word where we’ll see the pane on the right has been updated, giving us additional options, such as viewing the signed PDF, saving a copy, or go into the Acrobat Sign menu. I’ll select View Signed PDF and here we see a web view of what we just filled out and signed. Now that we’ve shown you Fill and Sign, let’s take a quick glance at the Send for Signature option, which will be very similar to what we showed you with the Acrobat Sign for Outlook add-in. Like Fill and Sign, it will automatically attach the current Word document that we have opened with the ability to attach additional files. But because this time we’re requesting signature versus self-signing a document, we now have the ability to identify the recipients who are required to take action on this document. Finally, we can add a subject line and a message that the identified recipient will see in the email they receive asking them to take action. Just like with the Acrobat Sign add-in for Outlook, we can select more options, which will pop out a new window where we have additional options for customizing our agreement before sending for signature. I don’t need to add any additional options this time around, so I’ll select Send.

Closing out of the pop-up will return me to Word where I can see the pane has been updated, letting me know the agreement has been sent for signature. Let’s now take a look at the Agreement Status option with the Acrobat Sign add-in for Word. And just like with the add-in for Outlook, we’re able to view the recent activity of our agreements directly from Word. We see the agreement that was just sent out and its current status. We also see the status of many of my other agreements. Clicking into the agreement that we just sent out, we see additional details, as well as have the ability to select view agreement, which will pop out a new window where we’ll now see the preview of the document in its current state, as well as have additional options available to us to further manage this agreement. We can set a reminder, cancel the agreement and even modify the agreement while it’s in flight, as long as the first participant hasn’t yet taken action. We can also see the activity on this agreement from this view. We just walked you through the steps to install and use the Acrobat Sign for Word add-in, allowing you to collect signatures and track their status directly from Word. Before we move on, I have another poll for you.

If additional instruction is needed for installing and using the Acrobat Sign for Word add-in, please visit helpx.adobe.com where you can locate the installation and user guide for step-by-step guidance.

We’re going to look at the Acrobat Sign for Microsoft SharePoint integration. SharePoint is often used as a repository to store, organize, share, and access documents from essential and secure location. But what happens when you need to collect signatures or an approval on a file that lives in SharePoint? With the Acrobat Sign for SharePoint integration, users can send documents out for signature, track their progress, and then automatically upload the completed version of those documents back into SharePoint without ever leaving. Let’s walk through the steps of installing the Acrobat Sign for SharePoint integration, and then we’ll show you some of the features and functionality that’s included.

As we get started, please note that you must be both a SharePoint and Acrobat Sign admin to be successful with the Acrobat Sign for SharePoint installation. Logged into my SharePoint site, I’ll begin the process by going to Site contents. From here, I’ll select New and then App.

On this next page, you’ll see that Acrobat Sign is specified as an app I can add, which could simply mean that the app has already been installed at the tenant level. If we didn’t see Acrobat Sign here, we would simply select find more apps in the SharePoint store, and then search by Acrobat Sign.

Once we’ve located the app, we can click into it for additional details as well as add it if we didn’t have it already. Since Acrobat Sign is available in my apps, I’ll return to that view and add it to my SharePoint site. I’ll select Add, and then ensure I’ve trusted it.

And now the Acrobat Sign app is being added to my SharePoint site. Returning to site contents, I now see that the app is being installed, which will just take a minute or two.

Now that the Acrobat Sign app has been installed, I’m ready to establish my connection by logging into my Acrobat Sign account from SharePoint.

Once the connection has been successfully established, we can begin going through each tab to configure the experience. We’ll start by going to the Signed File Settings tab, where we can assign a destination folder for our signed agreements that are sent out from this integration. By default, they are archived in my site’s documents folder. However, I wish to change this to a folder I created called Signed Agreements. Let’s also go ahead and check the box that says, Store audit trail with signed agreements. We’ll select Save, and then move on to the template mappings section.

Template mappings allows us to merge SharePoint library and list data to the form fields on our documents that are being set out for signature. In my example, I’ll be using my document library as the source of data. Starting the SharePoint to agreement mappings, I’ll select documents as the library I’ll be mapping my form filled data to. Then, I can define which SharePoint field will contain this data and the name of the field of my document that the data should be mapped to. In my example, I’m using company name. Once defined, we can save and add additional mappings if needed.

Next, we’ll define the mappings for collecting form filled data from the agreement that we wish to merge back into SharePoint.

I’ll choose documents as the library I want the collected data mapped to. But this time, I’ll choose a different SharePoint field. In this example, I want to collect the name of the signer and have that information mapped back to my SharePoint library.

Similar to template mappings, Acrobat Sign supports relating data between Acrobat Sign web form agreements and SharePoint lists. However, we won’t be going into that today. Finally, personal settings is where we can set defaults to items such as the agreement name, and messaging. Now that we’ve made some configurations to the integration, let’s return to our SharePoint site where we can begin using it.

In my example, I’ll be collecting a signature on a saved Word document for my documents library. Clicking into the document, you’ll see where I’ve added Acrobat Sign text acts, which is a simple string of texts that acts as a placeholder for Acrobat Sign form fields while defining the field properties. This is simply an alternative for creating reusable document templates that live and can be maintained outside of your Acrobat Sign account. You’ll see both the company name and signer name fields, which were both fields I defined when configuring the template mapping settings.

Let’s return to the library so that we can send this document out for signature. We’ll select the document where we see the company field name is specified as ABC Inc. Then, we’ll select the three ellipsis where we’ll see all of the options that we have available to us with the Acrobat Sign integration, including Send for Signature, Agreement Status, Library Template, Manage Agreements and Settings. For now, we’ll select Send for Signature, and this will direct us to the Acrobat Sign send page where we’ll see the agreement name and file has been applied based on the selection we made in SharePoint. Let’s add a signer to this workflow and then send the agreement out for signature.

From the perspective of our signer, signer Jane, clicking into the agreement she just received, she begins the process of completing and signing the document. But notice how ABC Inc. has been added as a read-only value to this document. This is the result of defining the template mapping between our SharePoint and document fields. Signer Jane will then sign the document and enter in her name, which is another value that we defined in the template mapping settings. But this time, data that we want to capture on the document and merge back to SharePoint.

Let’s go ahead and click the sign to complete the process and now return to SharePoint where we’ll see the signer name field has automatically been updated. If we go to the Signed Agreements folder, we’ll see both the fully signed PDF and audit report has been automatically uploaded where we can then click into each to view the contents within.

We just walked you through how to install and use the Acrobat Sign for SharePoint integration, enabling users to send, track and share agreements directly from SharePoint. It’s time for a quick poll. We appreciate your participation and your responses.

If additional instruction is needed for installing and using the Acrobat Sign for SharePoint integration, please visit helpx.adobe.com where you can locate the installation and user guide for step-by-step guidance.

As a reminder, this session has been recorded and will be available within 24 hours right here where you join today. You’ll also receive an email with the link to the recording for on-demand viewing. We’ll also have a live Q&A after the session. Before I let you go today, let me point out a few resources you can bookmark to help you find answers to any questions we weren’t able to get to today. We’ve dropped those links in the Q&A pod. The first is the Adobe Help Center where you’ll find user guides, tutorials and can use the search function to find what you are looking for. Next is the Adobe Experience League. Here, you can access a vast library of learning content and courses, get personalized recommendations and connect with fellow learners. The Acrobat Sing Support Community is another resource where you can view past discussions, join current ones or start your own. These monthly Skill Builder webinars are a great place to learn new skills or brush up on existing. You can register for future events and watch past webinars on-demand. And finally, the Acrobat Sign Resource Hub is a one-stop-shop for everything Acrobat Sign. It includes tips and tricks, tutorials, customer stories, the latest integrations and more. We’re always updating and adding to it so be sure to check back frequently. I have one last poll for you. I’d love to know if you’ve learned something new from today’s session. (light music) Thanks for joining. I’m Weston Romero, and this has been another session of Adobe Acrobat Sign Skill Builder. Happy sending, happy signing. (light music)