Adobe Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Dynamics Online: User Guide

Acrobat Sign integration to Dynamics offers a plug-and-play solution to obtain signatures for any form/contract documentation needed. This integration provides the following benefits:

• Acrobat Sign is built into CRM records such as Contacts, Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, Orders, Invoices, Quotes, Contracts, and any custom CRM entity developed by your Admin.
• Accelerates the quote-to-cash process by sending agreements—such as contracts and sales documents—from Dynamics with one click.
• Admin configurable data mapping that merges data from Dynamics entities—such as accounts and contacts— into agreements and pushes data gathered from signers during the signing process back into Dynamics.
• Enabled on mobile devices through the Sales Hub (available in Dynamics 365 9.x and later)
• Makes it easy for recipients to sign anywhere, anytime, on any device.
• Makes it possible to track documents sent out for signature from within Dynamics.
• Eliminates manual steps across the entire process.

This documentation is expressly for Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM 9.0 Online and beyond.                                           

Access Acrobat Sign

Acrobat Sign is installed by the Dynamics administrator, and access is granted via security roles.  If you require access and don't view the Acrobat Sign option on your main page, contact your Dynamics administrator to request user access.

Home/Landing page

When you first load Acrobat Sign, you land on the Home page. This page contains several quick links to the most commonly sought features for users.

The Welcome banner contains a Learn More link that opens the User Guide (this document) and is available until the user starts generating agreements.

As soon as the user creates an agreement, the welcome paragraph and Learn More link are replaced by links to two agreement filters:

• Agreements in progress - A listing of all agreements created by the user that is currently in progress
  
• Waiting for you - A listing of agreements currently waiting for your attention as a recipient

Recent Agreements

Just under the Welcome banner is a listing of the recent agreements sent by the user, showing the:

• Title of the agreement
• current Status of the agreement
• Sender of the agreement
• last Modified date for the agreement

Learn & Support

• Installation guide
  
• User guide
  
• Dynamics processes (Workflow) guide
  
• Current release notes - The release notes for Dynamics CRM
  
• Ask the community - A quick link to the Acrobat  Sign forums
  
• Contact us - A quick link to the Support resource center
  

In-Product messaging

News, warnings, and errors will be reported at the top of the Home page, and can be dismissed by the user:

Request Signatures

The Request Signatures option is available from the More … menu.

You can use the Request Signatures option to send agreements for signature from a Dynamics Entity or from the Agreements page.

To send an agreement from an entity:

• Navigate to an entity record (e.g., Opportunity, Account) within CRM and select to open it
• Select the More Commands (…) menu
• Select Request Signatures from the menu
  • A list of available templates replaces the menu
  • At the bottom of the template, list is New Agreement, for agreements that aren’t predicated on a template

A new Agreement page opens, and if an Agreement Template is being used, the pre-defined fields automatically populate.

To define and send an agreement you need only a few things:

• A Recipient – The person or list of people that you need to sign or approve the document
• An Agreement Name – How the Agreement is highlighted in the subject line of the signer’s email as well as internal reporting
• A document that needs to be signed – This can be one or more form, contract or any other document that requires a legal signature

The Recipients section

One or more signers need to be defined in the Recipients section.  Enter the recipients in the order you want them to sign the document. If you make a mistake, you can edit the Sign Order field on the left side of the recipient list.

To define a recipient:

• Click Add recipient on the upper-right corner of the Recipients panel:

This drops down an overlay where you can select the type of signer/approver:

1. Select the proper value from the Recipient Type picklist

• New – When the recipient isn’t a known value in Dynamics
• Contact – For recipients that are defined Contact entities in Dynamics
• Lead – For recipients that are defined as Leads in Dynamics
• User – This describes internal users of your Dynamics environment

2(a). Selecting New changes the overlay to allow you to enter a Full Name and an Email Address.

This action will not save a new Contact/Lead to Dynamics, it only uses the name and email for the purpose of this transaction.

2(b). Selecting Contact, Lead, or User changes the overlay to search for the specific entity you chose. Type in the name (or part of it) and then click the search icon to pick the specific recipient you want to include.

Because Dynamics understands these types of entities, the email address is imported from the database.

3. A Recipient Role must be defined for each recipient.  The roles are:

• Signer (default) – Signers are required to apply at least one signature to the agreement.
• Approver – Approvers are not required to sign the agreement (although they can if signature fields are placed), but they have to actively “Approve” the agreement, which is a logged event.
• CC – Carbon Copied (CC’d) parties are included in the notification process of the agreement but have no interaction with the agreement or signature cycle.

4. Identity Verification must be defined for each recipient. The options available to you'll be determined by the authentications enabled by the admin.

• Email is the default value and only requires that the recipient access the agreement via their email link.
• Adobe Acrobat  Sign verification requires the recipient to authenticate to the Adobe identity system.
  
  • The agreements only signed by the sender must set Identity Verification to Adobe Acrobat Sign.
  • It's not recommended to use Acrobat Sign as a verification method for external recipients unless you're confident they already have an Adobe account to authenticate.
• Phone verification sends a message to the recipient with a code they must enter.
  • The sender must provide the recipient's phone number at the time the recipient is configured
    
• Password verification requires that the sender notify the recipient (out of band) about the password so they can verify their identity
  
• Knowledge base verification uses a recipient's public information (and optionally their US Social Security Number) to ask a series of questions. 
  
  • Knowledge base verification is only useful for US-based recipients

5. Once you have the recipient defined, select Save.

6. Repeat 1-5 for all of the signers or approvers.

Signing order

There are two workflows for the signing order: Sequential, and Parallel. This option is governed by the Sign in order checkbox at the bottom of the Recipients panel.

When Sign in order is checked, the recipients will receive the agreement in the order the recipients are listed in the Recipients section. The first recipient is notified of the agreement, and no other parties are notified until the first recipient completes their action.  Then the second recipient is notified, and so on until the agreement is completed.

When Sign in order is unchecked, the agreement is sent for parallel signature, so all recipients are notified immediately, and the agreement is completed when all have completed their action.

Changing the recipient order

Single-click the number to the left of the recipient's name. The number value becomes editable. Change it to the number you want the recipient to be in the signature process. The other recipients will adjust accordingly.

Edit the recipient values

To edit any recipient value that isn't locked (as indicated by the lock icon):

1. Select the field. It opens the field in edit mode.
2. Select a new picklist value.
3. Once done, select the Save icon.

To add a document to your agreement:

1. From the upper-right corner, select Add files.
2. From the dialog that appears, select one of the following sources to upload files:

• My Computer – Allows searching and uploading a file from your local system or a networked drive, such as SharePoint.
  
• Templates – The Templates option provides access to the templates uploaded to your Acrobat Sign account.

The Attach file from Adobe Sign library option is only available when creating a new agreement document and isn't available when creating a template.

Only your administrator can add documents to the library.

Message section

The Message section contains the agreement subject (also used as the agreement name) and global message to the recipients.

• Subject – The Subject is prominent in the notification process, surfacing in the email subject line, in bold font in the email body, and in smaller font throughout the boilerplate description (seen in the yellow highlight below).
• Message – The Message field is an open plain text field where you can insert any message or instructions to the signer (seen in the green highlight below).

Options section

The Options section contains several configuration options that apply only to this transaction:

• Preview and position signatures before sending – When checked, the agreement automatically opens the authoring environment so the sender can place form fields
• Completion deadline– If checked, the agreement defines a termination date when the agreement expires
• Days until the agreement expires – This defines the number of days the agreement remains signable when the Agreement expires feature is enabled
• Require In-person signing – If you need to have the signer sign on the sender’s local system or tablet without involving email, senders can host the signature using this option
• Add post-signing landing page – When enabled, you can dictate what URL the recipient is routed to after they complete their interaction with the agreement
• Post-signing landing page – This field contains the URL for the page you want to direct recipients to when Add post-signing landing page is enabled
• Delay in seconds for redirect – Required when a Post-signing landing page is defined, this setting dictates how much delay should be observed after the signature is applied and before the recipient is re-directed to the designated landing page
• Recipient reminder - Defines a reminder cycle for the transaction.  Reminders can be configured to be sent to the current recipient on a daily or weekly cycle
  
• Signature type - Dictates the signature type that is expected on the agreement:
  
  • Electronic - Requests the recipients to apply an electronic signature.
    
    • This option can allow the recipient to alter the workflow to a Written signature if enabled by your admin.
      
  • Written - The recipient must download the document, physically sign it, and then upload a scanned image of that signed document.
    
    • Written signatures may not be converted to electronic signatures.
      
• Recipient's language - This option dictates the language used in the email and web interface for the recipient
  
• Password protect - Enable this if you would like to apply a password to the final document to prevent un-authenticated access

Once the recipients are defined, the files are attached, and any other field manipulation is completed, click Send Agreement from the top menu ribbon:

Request Signatures from any entity using a template

Dynamics administrators have the ability to create one or more templates for any Dynamics entity (Contact, Opportunity, Account) that will pre-configure the agreement, reducing the amount of manual configuration for the Sender.

Templates are accessed through the More Commands (…) icon in the ribbon

Quick Create Agreements from the New (+) menu

If you know the Entity type that a template is built around, you can launch a new Agreement from the New menu:

1. From the top menu, select the + (New) icon.
2. Select Agreement from the options in the Records section. It opens the Quick Create: Agreement panel.
3. Select the Entity that is associated with the template you want to use.
   Once selected, two lookups are exposed, allowing you to select the specific object that you want to relate the agreement to and the template you want to use. The Choose {Entity} field gives you a list of objects in the appropriate Entity type. Select your object.
   Entering a portion of the entity name limits the menu to objects that match your string
4. Select Choose a Template field and select a template from the list of associated templates. 
5. Select Save.

It creates the agreement based on the template values:

• If the template does not have a Recipient or File attached, the Agreement is created in Draft status.
• If the template has a Recipient and a File attached, but the template does not have One-Click Send enabled, the agreement is created in Draft status.
• If the template has a Recipient and a File attached, and One-Click Send is enabled, the agreement is automatically sent for signature.

Check Agreement Status

The status of an agreement indicates its current legal status, and is updated in Dynamics on a regular polling interval. The status values are:

• Draft – An Agreement that has been created, but not yet sent
• Out for Signature – Actively in the process of being signed
• Signed/Approved – Fully completed by all parties
• Cancelled – The signature process was canceled before all signatures could be obtained
• Expired - An agreement that was not completed before the configured expiration date

The best way to find an agreement is to check the entities related to the primary entity you used to create the agreement.

For example, if you created an agreement using a Contact, you can check what entities are related by navigation to the Contact, and then clicking the Related tab and selecting Agreements from the menu:

Opening the relationship window shows the Agreements object, and clicking that option opens the full list of agreements associated with the entity.

To view the status of an agreement, you can navigate to Adobe Acrobat Sign > Agreements.

All agreements, regardless of entity, are listed in the agreements list on the Agreements page.

• Signed agreements display the Name, Agreement Status, and dates of the agreements.
• Declined, Out for Signature, and Draft agreements don't contain a Signed On date as they have not been completed.
• The Signed On reflects when the agreement is completed and legally signed. Incremental signatures during the signature process are not reflected.

Update Status, Send Reminders and Cancel Agreements

You can take any of the following actions for unsigned Agreements:

• Update Status – Actively poll the Acrobat Sign server to get the current status.
• Send Reminder – Immediately sends an email reminder to the current signer of the agreement.
• Cancel Agreement – Terminates the agreement in the system and sends a cancellation notice to the signer.

Using Acrobat Sign on the Sales Hub, Customer Service Hub, and Field Service apps

If your company has deployed Adobe Acrobat Sign for Dynamics version 9.2 or later, you can access the Acrobat Sign functionality on the Dynamics Field Service, Sales Hub, and Customer Service Hub apps.

These apps offer the same functionality with improved formatting, allowing direct access to phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.