Prepare Your Agreements for e-signature

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 and 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 and A pod for you to bookmark. Think about how many times a day you do the same repetitive tasks, especially when it comes to preparing and collecting signatures on your documents. Now, think about how many times that’s happening at the organizational level from sales, procurement, legal, HR, finance, IT, and of course, a slew of others, all having those repeatable yet manual and time consuming document processes, much of them using the same document files to collect input and sign-off. And anytime you’re using the same file to define an agreement, you have the opportunity to create a reusable template. Stick around to see how you can use Acrobat Sign to create reusable templates for your agreements, speeding up delivery for your signers, ensuring consistency of final signed contracts, all while passively ensuring your team is always using the latest version.

(upbeat electronic music) Hi there. Weston Romero here, Technical Product Evangelist at Adobe. Today, I am going to show you three effective methods for creating reusable document templates with Acrobat Sign form fields, making the most out of your organization’s most commonly-used forms when collecting input and sign-off. Taking a closer look at what we’ll be covering in this session, there are three main methods for preparing your document files with Acrobat Sign form fields. We’ll show you how to apply Acrobat Sign signature and form fields directly to your PDF files with Adobe Acrobat. Then, how to do the same with your Microsoft Word files using specially formatted strings of text. Finally, we’ll bring it all home by showing you how Acrobat Sign can do all that and more with its in-product authoring environment and document library. Now keep in mind, there’s no one right way when it comes to preparing your documents to be used with Acrobat Sign, each method having its own set of benefits and uses. So let’s jump right in.

Here, I have my PDF opened with Acrobat where we’ll begin applying the Acrobat signed form fields. To begin, I want to use the prepare form function to save myself time by having many of the fields on this document detected and placed for me.

So, I’ll search and select Prepare Form, then Start to begin the process. And just like that, the fields on my document have been detected with Acrobat form fields that have been automatically placed for me. If we weren’t sending this for signature with Acrobat Sign, I could share this PDF as is, and to anyone viewing the PDF would be able to interact with these fields. However, we do intend to send this PDF for collecting signatures, which means we have additional properties that we can assign to the form fields. First, we need to come over to the hammer and ranch icon, which is going to give us the ability to convert this to an Acrobat Sign form.

I’ll select Convert, Next, and then OK, and now I can begin applying properties to my form fields that will be carried over to Acrobat Sign when I upload and send this PDF for signature. Starting from the top, I’ll begin applying additional properties to my form fields. I’ll right-click on the field and select Properties, and then the first thing I want to do is change the name of this field and its tooltip.

Since we want our signer to enter text into this field, we’ll leave the field type as text, but as you can see, I have other field types available to choose from, such as signature, signature block, initials, title, company, name, email, and date. The participant role was assigned Anyone by default, but think about the participant that will be assigned this field and the order in which they’ll be identified in the workflow. Are they the first participant, second, third? In my scenario, this bill will be assigned to the first, so I want to assign it to Signer one.

In the bottom section, we can adjust common properties and specify if the field will contain read only input, or if the field is required for the participant to interact with before they can sign-off on the document. Additional options include changing the appearance of the field at its collected input. We can change the border and field color, the font size and the font itself, while Position and Options provide additional properties such as alignment and setting a default value. And now that we’ve assigned this field the necessary properties, we can select Close and move on to the next. But first, I want to explain the specialty-formatted string of texts that was formed as we assigned the properties that we’re now seeing in the field here. This is known as an Acrobat Sign text tag that is used in conjunction with Acrobat form fields to define the specific properties of a field. To elaborate further, here’s an example that demonstrates the syntax of a text tag. The first part of the field, Address in this example, is the field name. Underscore ES underscore is the electronic signature identifier that will be applied to all text tags and will always come after the name of the field. The next part is separated by a colon that identifies the role and participant order. Lastly, separated by another colon, you have the field type, which in this example, the field type is signature. Returning now to the PDF, we can see where that syntax has been applied to our Acrobat form field, which Acrobat builds much of that for you as you specify the properties. Let’s now apply properties to the next field. I’ll right-click and select properties where I have all of the same options. I’ll change the name, the tooltip, and assign this field to the first participant in my workflow.

This time, I’ll leave the required unchecked and allow the field to be optional for the signer. Moving on, I’ll go down to the bottom part of the document and prepare the field in the signer section. Starting with the signature field, we can see that the syntax has already been applied with the field type being signature. This time, instead of selecting properties when right-clicking on the field, I’ll select rename, which shows me a condensed view of the field properties. Here, we see the field name, which includes the entire text tag. We see who this field was assigned to and if this field is required or optional. Then, if needed, we can select All Properties, which will take us back to that full menu of options that we use to set the properties of the first two fields. Here, we see the name of the field, field type, and the participant order this field was assigned.

Let’s close out of that and take a look at the next two fields, which are intended to collect the name of the signer and the date that they sign. I’ll right-click and select properties on the print name field. And while I’m happy with the name and tooltip, I want to change the field type from Text to Name, assign to Signer one, and then finally make the field required. We’ll now do the same for date field. Right-click, select Properties, change the field type from Text to Date, assign to Signer one, and then make it required. Easy enough.

Now, what if we have additional form fields that we need to apply to this document that weren’t detected? Running across the top of Acrobat, you’ll see different field types that can simply be dragged and dropped to its respective location on the PDF. So for example, perhaps I want to collect a counter signature from an additional participant. I would simply go and grab the signature field here and drag and place it.

By default, we see the Acrobat Sign text tag syntax has been applied with signature as the field type. However, I want to assign this to Signer two, since the second participant in my workflow will need to complete this field. On top of signature, across the top here, you also have text input fields, check boxes, radio buttons, drop downs, initials, title, company, name and date, all field types that you can simply drag and drop onto your PDFs if not detected with the prepare form function. Let’s go ahead and add a couple more fields to the document, as I’d also like to collect the name and date for the second signer. I’ll start with the name field, drag and place it, and assign to Signer two.

Then do the same for date.

And now that we’ve placed all the fields needed for this document, we can leverage the pane on the right to see and quickly navigate to each of them by selecting the field we wish to view and further edit. But for now, the document is ready to go, and we’re now ready to upload to Acrobat Sign to put our fields to the test.

Regardless of which Acrobat Sign application or integration we’re using, we can share and upload this PDF and use it as a reusable template for collecting signatures. But since I’m logged into Adobe Acrobat and it tightly integrates with Acrobat Sign, I’m going to use Acrobat to send this document for signature. To begin, I’ll select Acrobat Sign and begin building out my workflow. I’ll add the first participant, Ivanna Sign, who will be assigned all of the fields that were assigned to signer one. Then, I’ll add myself as the second participant, and I’ll be assigned to the fields we assigned to Signer two. Selecting more options will take us to the Send page UI, where we have additional options available to us for preparing the Acrobat Sign agreement. And what I want to do here is check the preview and add signature fields check box, allowing us to view our work before sending. And here, we see that Acrobat Sign has detected the fields placed in Acrobat. Right-clicking on the first will show us the field name, type, and additional properties that we assigned.

Scrolling down to the bottom, we see the signature, full name, and date fields that were also assigned to the first participant in our workflow, as well as the fields that we assigned to the second. And now we’re ready to begin collecting signatures on this PDF, while being able to save and share it for seamless reuse. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use Acrobat to create reusable form field templates with your PDFs, please visit helpx.adobe.com where we have additional instruction and guidance available for you.

We just looked at how you can use Adobe Acrobat to create reusable templates of your PDFs by placing and preparing your PDFs form fields to be used in conjunction with Acrobat Sign. We’d like your feedback. How do you typically use Acrobat Sign? Now that you know how to apply Acrobat Sign form fields to your PDFs using Acrobat, let’s take a look at how this can be achieved when using other formats, such as Microsoft Word files.

Many documents get their start in Microsoft Word. From the first draft to the final version, Microsoft Word and other file formats such as PowerPoint, Excel, and other text-based file types can all leverage a specially-formatted text known as text tags. Text tags are converted into form fields when the document is sent for signature or uploaded to Acrobat Sign, giving you full control of your document templates and form fields in the application that they’re maintained. Let’s look at how that’s achieved. I’ll start by opening my Word document, where you can see where I might want to place form fields when sending for signature with Acrobat Sign. To apply such fields to this document directly in Word, should we want to continue to maintain it here, we’re going to leverage Acrobat Sign text tags. Let’s provide a refresher of how text tags are structured. Here’s an example that demonstrates the syntax of a text tag. The first part of the field, Address in this example, is the field name. Underscore ES underscore is the electronic signature identifier that will be applied to all text tags and will always come after the name of the field. The next part of the tag is separated by a colon that identifies the role of the participant order. Lastly, separated by another colon, you have the field type, which in this example, the field type is signature. Finally, if you want to identify the field is required, you will include an asterisk at the beginning or an explanation mark for a read-only field. Don’t worry. You’re not expected to memorize all of this. As you’ll see, this document can act as a guide with many examples that you can use as reference when applying text tags to your own. With that in mind, let’s return to my document, where we’ll begin applying tags. Here, we have a field where we’ll be capturing input from our signer. We’ll start by opening the tag with two curly brace brackets required for all text tags, aside from when using in conjunction with Acrobat. Because we want to make this a required field, we’ll add an asterisk. From there, we’ll name the field, and I’ll name it text for now. We then need to include the identifier, which will always be the same, underscore ES underscore. Finally, we separate the next section with a colon, which identifies the role. And in this case, we want to assign it to Signer one.

To complete the tag, I’m now going to close it off with two additional curly brace brackets. Let’s now do this for the next field on the document. But because it has similar properties, I can simply copy and paste the tag.

I do, however, need to give it a unique name. Otherwise, the field data will mirror that of other fields containing that same name, which is sometimes a desired effect when the same information is being collected more than once on a document. Okay, let’s scroll down now to the signature section of this document where we see Signature, Print Name, and Date. To begin, I’ll start with the signature field and open the tag with two curly brace brackets. I’ll name the field sig, short for signature, followed by the underscore ES underscore, separating the next section with a colon, where I’ll identify the role, which is Signer one. Finally, because this is a signature field, we need to give this field the necessary property to properly collect a signature with Acrobat. To confirm formatting for a signature field, we can go back to the documentation, where we see we need to add an additional colon followed by signature and then two curly brace brackets to close it off. Let’s do the same for Print Name now. To confirm the formatting needed to capture a full name, I can check the documentation, where we have an example of how to format our field. And now, we’ll go ahead and do the same for Date.

Something else to keep in mind with text tags is the size of the fields, which is based on the size of the first curly brace bracket. Let’s use Signature as the example and make it larger by increasing the font size of the opening curly brace brackets. And now when uploaded and sent with Acrobat Sign, we’ll see how the fields are sized differently based on that.

Let’s now say we want to apply an additional field, perhaps a signature field that’s assigned to a second participant. I’ll simply copy and paste the signature field for Signer one, and then change the one to a two so that it gets assigned to the second participant. Now, while my document is ready to go, you might have other field types on your documents that I didn’t include in this example. Returning to the text tag guide, available on helpx.adobe.com, you can see that there are additional field types available, from check boxes, radio buttons, drop down lists, and so on. This guide will act as a companion when using text tags to define form field placement on your Word documents and other text-based files. Returning to my document, we can now save and share this as a document template that we can continue to maintain in Word. If I need to make a change to the terms, no problem. I can remove section five of this document and the tags remain. Let’s now put our tags to the test and upload this document to Acrobat Sign. Since Acrobat Sign has an integration with Microsoft Word, I can send directly from where my documents are created and maintained, which is super convenient. I’ll come to the top, launch Acrobat Sign, and then on the right-hand side, I’ll see where my Word document was automatically attached to the Acrobat Sign agreement. I’ll then start adding my participants. Ivanna Sign is the first signer, who will be assigned the fields we assigned to Signer one. I’ll then add myself as the second signer, who will be assigned the signature field we assign to Signer two. We can edit the agreement name, message, and then send this agreement for signature. But to check our work first, I’ll make sure Preview and send is checked and then hit Continue. This will pop out a window that then shows us a preview of our document, where we can see our tags have been successfully detected by Acrobat Sign. Selecting Edit shows the field assignment, the type of field, as well as the other properties given to this field. Scrolling to the bottom, we can see the larger fields that we defined by sizing the curly brace brackets of the tag. And then right-clicking on each will show us the type of field as well as other properties that we successfully defined in the tag using Microsoft Word. We’re now ready to send this document for signature while we continue to use this Word document as the basis for our template. We just looked at how you can apply text tags to your Word documents and other text-based file formats, tags that will be detected as Acrobat Sign form fields when uploaded and sent for signature with Acrobat Sign. It’s poll time, and we’d now like to hear from you on how you prepare your reusable document templates for collecting e-signatures.

Now that you know how to get the most out of Acrobat Sign text tags when used in conjunction with Microsoft Word and other text-based file formats, we’re now going to look at how you can achieve creating reusable templates directly in Acrobat Sign.

The Acrobat Sign user interface allows users to create reusable, interactive document templates that can be shared and leveraged anytime the same file is used to define an agreement. Acrobat Sign’s in-app authoring environment gives you the ability to place and maintain form fields on your most commonly used documents. Let’s start from the homepage of Acrobat Sign. And to begin the process, I’ll select the Create a reusable template option. On this page, I’ll name my template, I’ll call mine Non Disclosure Agreement, and then attach my file. I can attach files from my computer or from one of the listed cloud storage options. I’ll choose mine for my computer, where I have a Word document that I’ll attach, but Acrobat Sign can also support PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, text, graphics, and web files. Now that I’ve named it, as well as attached the document that I’ll use as the basis for my template, I’ll set some additional properties for how it is used and who it’s shared with. Template type will allow me to define this template as a reusable document, a reusable form field layer, or both. A reusable document will provide both the document and its fields, whereas the reusable form field layer will just provide the fields themselves, that I can then overlay on a document that’s being brought in from outside of the system. More on how that’s achieved later. Then, I can specify who can use this template, only me, any user in my group, or any user in my organization. For template type, I’ll choose both. And then for who can use this template, I’ll choose any user in my group. Now I’m going to select Preview and add fields, where I’ll place and edit my form fields so that we can begin using this template. This brings me to the in-app authoring environment, where the first thing I’ll see is the blue popup, letting me know that form fields were detected on this document. Clicking the button will then place the fields where you can now see that the set of fields on top were just automatically placed. And a set of fields below were automatically placed, as well. This is Adobe’s artificial intelligence agent, Adobe Sensei hard at work, eliminating the need to manually place the fields yourself, which, if needed, we could use the available field sets on the right to do so. The next thing we want to do is go through and review these fields to ensure they have the necessary properties. Right-clicking on each will allow me to select edit to view and change the field’s properties. With this first field, we can see that it was automatically named Custom Field two, but it’s best practice to name your fields based on what type of information the field is collecting. I’ll call mine text input for now. Moving on, we see that this field by default was assigned to participant one, but I can change the assignment to sender, to an additional participant, or anyone. The field type by default was identified as text input, but I can change that from here, as well. I can change it to signature field, a signer info field, or leave it as a data field, which is what I’ll do for this one.

I can make this field a required field, a read-only field, as well as mask the input to mask sensitive information that I might be collecting, such as a social security number. I can also use multi-line data entry for fields that will be collecting multiple lines of entry. Additional options include setting a default value as well as applying a tool tip, should additional instruction be needed for the participant as they complete the field. If I needed to require the input to be collected in a specific format, I would set that with validation, which gives me a list of preexisting options to choose from, as well as the option to create my own with a regular expression.

I also have Options to make this field conditional. That will show or hide the field based on input of other field sets. I can set the appearance. And finally, with Tools, I can copy or clone this field, should I want to use these same properties for another field. For now, I’m happy with this field and can move on the next. Moving on to the bottom section of my template, I can see that Adobe Sensei detected the right type of field for my Signature, Print Name, and Date fields. Double-clicking into the field shows me that the field was assigned to the right participant, as well as the field type being correctly set. With Full Name, we see the same thing. It was named accordingly, assigned it to participant one, as well as set the appropriate field type.

And then, of course, we see that here as well with the Date field.

Now that we’ve reviewed the fields that Adobe Sensei placed for us, let’s take a look at some of the additional options that you have available to you in this environment. On the right-hand side, selecting template properties will allow me to adjust the name and the properties of my template, which we originally set on the previous page. The recipient section shows us all of the possible participants that we can assign fields to in this template, as well as add additional participants, should the workflow for this template contain more than two. Finally, we have all of the different field types that we can drag and drop onto this template, if needed, which Adobe Sensei in this case did for us, fields ranging from signature fields, signer info fields, data fields, to more fields and transaction fields. Now let’s say we need to place an additional field on this template for a counter signer. The first thing I would do is change participant one to participant two.

And now, any fields that I place onto the template will be assigned to the second participant.

Great. My template is now ready to begin using, so I’ll go ahead and save it. But if I ever needed to return to the template editor, I could do so by accessing it from the template section of the Manage page. Now that we used the template editor to upload our document, as well as place an edit form fields needed to begin using for seamless reuse with Acrobat Sign, let’s take a look at a couple of options that we now have available to us when needing to collect sign-off on this particular form. Starting from the homepage, I’ll select Request signatures where I’ll then have the ability to identify our signing participants. I’ll add two for this workflow.

And then I’ll choose my document from my templates folder, where we see that Non Disclosure Agreement that we just created. Next, we’ll select Preview and Add Signature Fields, which will allow us to review the document template that we just created, having all of the right properties and assignment, making this template accessible for seamless reuse for myself and others who have access to it. The other option we have available to us is using the template as a form field overlay. In this example, I’ll add the document itself from my computer.

But this time when navigating to the next page, after checking Preview and Add Form Fields, I can choose from Field Templates in the upper left-hand corner, where I’ll select and apply my field template.

We see now that fields have all been placed as an overlay onto our document that we just uploaded at the time of sending. This method is most effective when you have one field layout that works for multiple documents or if you have a document that can be sent several different ways. If further assistance is needed when creating and managing document templates with Acrobat Sign, be sure to visit helpx.adobe.com, where you’ll find additional step-by-step guidance and instruction. We just looked at how you can use Acrobat Sign’s in-app authoring environment to upload, create, and share document templates for seamless reuse when collecting signatures on your organization’s most commonly-used forms. Today, we showed you three effective methods for creating reusable document templates with Acrobat Sign form fields, from using Acrobat to edit your PDFs, text tags to prepare your Microsoft Word files, and Acrobat Sign’s in-app authoring environment, all methods allowing you to make the most of your organization’s most commonly-used forms when collecting input and sign-off. As a reminder, this session has been recorded and will be available within 24 hours, right here where you joined today. You’ll also receive an email with a link to the recording for on-demand viewing. 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 and 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 Sign 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. Thanks for joining. I’m Weston Romero, and this has been another session of “Adobe Acrobat Sign Skill Builder”. Happy sending. Happy signing. (upbeat electronic music)