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Adobe and Microsoft announce key updates to improve workplaces
Thu, 2nd Jun 2022
FYI, this story is more than a year old

At Microsoft Build, Adobe announced the latest milestone in its partnership with Microsoft to improve how work gets done.

Through new advances in business processes and intelligent automation, the two companies are working to give joint customers a modern work experience, centred on technology that improves teamwork, collaboration and efficiencies. This includes all-in-one, digital experiences.

More specifically, Adobe and Microsoft have announced the following new capabilities to end users, developers, administrators and IT decision makers:

New advances for Acrobat and Acrobat Sign for Teams: The companies are continuing to build on the Microsoft Teams platform to make the experience of editing, commenting, converting, signing and collaborating on PDFs richer, more efficient, and more personal without moving between different apps, user interfaces or separate log-ins.

In Acrobat for Teams, the companies recently added the convenience of Single Sign-On (SSO) and introduced the personal tab, a home page for curating all your recent documents, tools, and collaboration into one view. These new features are also available in Acrobat Sign for Teams, in addition to enabling signing from a Teams notification. Users can now sign-off on a document instantly, without having to open a browser or app.

Technology Preview of Live Share with Frame.io: Frame.io, now an Adobe company, will preview a Live Share integration with Frame.io at Build. This integration will show how the combination of Frame.io and Microsoft Teams could be used to enable synchronised, interactive reviews of work in progress.

Future products could allow multiple participants to meet via Teams while simultaneously reviewing content from Frame.io with synchronised video playback on everybody's system.

Acrobat and Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Users will soon be able to apply Purview Information Protection labels and policies to their important documents within the desktop version of Acrobat. It's critical for business leaders to add Purview Information Protection to standard business contracts traditionally shared as PDFs like purchase orders, partnership agreements, and service contracts, ensuring that only critical stakeholders can view, manage, and approve those documents.

Acrobat Sign and Power Automate embed: The companies are making it easier for customers to streamline repetitive tasks as well as connect data and apps by bringing Power Automate directly into the Acrobat Sign experience. This means that organisations will be able to automate the workflow and audit of e-signatures across hundreds of business processes like field service requests, sales contracts, new hire forms, and IT requests.

Adobe Experience Manager Forms connector for Power Automate: Adobe Experience Manager Forms offers an end-to-end solution for creating, managing and delivering mobile-responsive, dynamic forms, and documents that integrate natively with Acrobat Sign. Users may connect this tool with Power Automate, and kick-off a business workflow, after a form is submitted through Adobe Experience Manager Forms.

Action items such as review, approve, and trigger notifications are seamlessly integrated within Power Automate to drive higher efficiency and collaboration.

Acrobat Sign Graph Connector: New tasks on active agreements will be indexed alongside data from Microsoft 365 and the broader Microsoft ecosystem. Acrobat Sign users will be able to search for and find agreement tasks right within their Microsoft search results.

Reducing the time to check on signature status, and being actively prompted with newly completed agreements, reduces the cycle time for everything from sales contract closures to employee onboarding, the companies state.

Acrobat - Acrobat Sign for Microsoft 365 Unified Install: IT admins can deploy and manage Acrobat - Acrobat Sign add-ins across Microsoft Teams, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint, reducing the time spent deploying these add-ins to end-users.

Adobe Acrobat Sign for Government FedRAMP Moderate authorisation coming soon: Hosted on Microsoft Azure Government Cloud, Acrobat Sign has achieved a new government authorisation level, FedRAMP Moderate, that extends e-signatures to highly sensitive processes like collecting personal info.

Adobe SVP/GM of digital media, Ashley Still says, “No two companies are better positioned to meet the business imperative of today's hybrid world — easy and secure digital-first experiences with PDF and e-signatures at the core.

“Through the deeper integrations between Adobe and Microsoft that we've announced today, we continue to innovate to elevate today's agile and rapidly evolving workforce.

Microsoft corporate VP business apps - platform Charles Breenna says, “The number one priority for every industry leader is streamlining how business is done with their customers, employees, and partners - wherever they are.

“Together, Adobe and Microsoft are delivering advanced workflow capabilities through Power Automate and Acrobat Sign that will give our joint customers a better way to get things done.