Additional information on signing agreements can be found here.
Welcome to Adobe Acrobat Sign!
Before you begin using Adobe Acrobat Sign, we’ve got some basics to run through. The purpose of this guide is to get you familiar with Acrobat Sign and the functionality available to you as a user.
This guide covers all the important processes in Acrobat Sign and familiarizes you with the user interface. The
Acrobat Sign Help system provides more in-depth information where needed. If you are connected to the Internet, you can click on the links in the grey boxes that begin with the text “Additional information …” to view the related help topics.
Where applicable, features and functions specific to business and/or enterprise levels of service are noted. This guide documents the features and functions available at the highest level of license agreement, Acrobat Sign for enterprise. To determine your license type, go to My Profile. If you have questions about the features available for your license, please contact your Client Success Manager or Adobe Acrobat Sign Support.
Acrobat Sign is a highly customizable application with a wide range of features that may or may not apply to how you do business. Your account administrator or group administrator may have disabled some of the options described. If you have a need for something you don’t see available to you, contact your group or account administrator. Our service supports different configurations for different groups so even if it’s best to have a feature disabled for one group, it’s possible to have it enabled for another.
By the end of this guide, you’ll be familiar with all of the standard “send” workflows in Acrobat Sign as well as how to manage your agreements, and how to generate reports so you can stay on top of what’s complete, and what is still pending.
Personalize your Account
When you first log into Acrobat Sign, take a minute to review your personal user information. This information is used in several templates, so it’s important to ensure it is correct.
- Mouse over your name in the upper-right corner to open the menu, and click My Profile
The profile page shows the specific values that Acrobat Sign will use when personalizing any of your transactions. Of particular interest are:
- Your full name – Used in email communications and for your default typeset signature
- Your job title – Automatically populates if you ever have a Title field to fill in
- Your company name – Reflected in email communications, this should be the full legal company name
- Time Zone - Time/Date stamps will be cast in your time zone for better clarity when running reports.
If you need to adjust any of the content, click the Edit Profile button, make the required changes, and then Save your edits.
After configuring your personal information, take a quick look through the other personal preferences you see listed on the left side of the screen. These options are specific to you as a user, and may be useful automation:
- My Profile – Your personally identifying information.
- Access Tokens – If you are a developer, this is where your API tokens are defined and listed
- Twitter Integration – Send a Tweet every time an agreement is completed!
- My Email Footer – Add a custom (plain text) footer to the bottom of your email templates when sending new agreements.
- Auto Delegation – Automatically delegate any Acrobat Sign agreements sent to you for signature to the named party. Similar to an “Out of Office” forwarding process for Acrobat Sign agreements.
- My Notifications – Configure which types of events/alerts you want Acrobat Sign to notify you about, and how you want to be notified. You can get a real-time email, or log the event and set up reporting on a daily or weekly cycle. (Events are triggers when something happens. Alerts are triggered when a time interval passes and something doesn’t happen).
- Shared Notifications –If another user’s account is shared with you, you can customize which of their events and alerts you’d like to be informed of.
- My Signature – Upload an image of your signature and initials. PNG files work best.
- Language Preferences – There are two settings to consider under this heading:
- My Language Preference – This setting allows you to define the language used for you within the
Acrobat Sign web application. - Signing Language – This setting defines the default language used for the email notifications and the recipient’s guided signing experience.
- My Language Preference – This setting allows you to define the language used for you within the
- View Other Accounts – If you need to view the agreements on another user’s account, you can request that here. A list of all viewed accounts will be enumerated. This is a “read-only” perspective.
- Share My Account – If you need to share your account with another person, you can specify who can see your agreements here. Sharing your account is a view only. The viewer cannot sign, cancel or delegate.
Page by Page Overview
Sending agreements
Sending documents and collecting signatures and approvals is what Acrobat Sign is all about! Every customer has different requirements regarding who needs to interact with the document and in what order, so there are a number of workflow features available in the Send page interface you should know about.
Signing environment
Experiencing the signing process is helpful in understanding the end result of the configurations done by the sender.
Managing Agreements
Managing your agreements is an important part of working with Acrobat Sign. Use the Manage page to track, process, and customize agreements. Whether it’s canceling an agreement or replacing the signer, these processes allow you to influence the transaction’s progress in the system.
Reports (Business and enterprise service levels only)
The report feature lets you check on how your account is using Acrobat Sign. Build your own reports and gain complete visibility into your document signing process, while seeing how individual groups or users are doing.
Preview and the authoring experience
The Authoring environment provides the form-building functionality for Acrobat Sign. Beyond placing signature fields, you can include fields that auto-populate content, like the date or the signer's signature values (when known), or text fields that do content validation and/or complex calculations. Other common field types such as dropdown boxes, radio buttons, and checkboxes are also available
Library Templates
A library template is a reusable object. Acrobat Sign supports two types of library templates: document templates and form field templates.
- Document Templates—A document template is a reusable document. Document templates can be shared with other users in your account, allowing multiple users to send out the same document without needing to make any changes.
- Form Field Templates—A form field template is a reusable field layer that can be applied to any document. Form field templates can also be shared with other users in your account. Form field templates are ideal in the following situations:
- You have one field layout that works for multiple documents.
- You have a document that can be sent in a number of different ways.
- You need to revise the document’s content, but the fields remain in the same place.
Instead of creating a new library document every time a document is updated, the same form field layer can be applied. Form field templates can be edited to facilitate changes in the arrangement of fields or field properties. Again, all the tools in the authoring environment are available when creating a form field template.
As a best practice, a single user (Document Administrator) should be responsible for creating and maintaining templates. Creating a Doc Admin user login eliminates confusion as to what templates to use and provides version control for your reusable documents.
We recommend using a distribution list or functional email for the Doc Admin user login. This allows you to control access to this Doc Admin login while at the same time allowing the responsibility to be shared as needed.
Additional information on using the authoring tools to create templates can be found here. |
Alternate workflows for signatures
There are a number of workflows you can use to send documents for signatures, collect signatures, and send a signed document including the following:
- Sending using "Fill & Sign"
- Sending using Send in Bulk
- Using web forms to collect signatures
The following sections discuss each of these processes in more detail.
Additional information on sending agreements can be found here. |
Mobile devices
Signing is one of the main functions of Acrobat Sign. Anyone can sign via an email link on any web browser on their computer or using their mobile device. If you have an Acrobat Sign account, you can also sign using the “Acrobat Sign manager” iOS or Android native app. You can also initiate signing from the Manage page. Signing is also built into the “Fill & Sign” process.
Additional information on the mobile app functionality can be found here. |
Acrobat Sign supports the latest web browsers on smartphones and tablets that run the iOS or Android operating systems.