Adobe Acrobat automation and document workflows

How are Acrobat enterprise offerings sold?

Acrobat enterprise offers a user-based licensing model where you purchase licenses equal to the number of users who need to use Acrobat.

Does Adobe permit automation of Acrobat, such as running automated scripts or Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Adobe does not permit automation of a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat enterprise offerings through automated scripts or RPA, except in cases where a customer is using Acrobat Pro’s Action Wizard (see more below). In all other instances, automation is prohibited. If you are interested in automating Acrobat or a document workflow, you will need to license a separate Document Cloud offering depending on your use case.

Does Adobe provide an on-premise offer for large-scale automation using Acrobat?

Adobe provides offers for enterprises seeking to run strictly large-scale on-premise automated document workflows. For automation not permitted under a user license, contact your Adobe representative.

What automation is allowed under an Acrobat user license?

You can automate the use of Acrobat if the following three conditions are met:

• Acrobat application is installed on a client machine (e.g. Windows or macOS);
• Automated tasks of Acrobat must be initiated by users. For example, tasks run using the Acrobat Action Wizard;
• The automated task in Acrobat must be executed on the same machine and must not interact with other third-party applications, for example, the generated output must not be sent to any third-party application for further operation.
  

What type of virtualization is supported in Acrobat?

You must purchase named-user licensing of Acrobat to deploy it in a virtualized environment like Windows Virtual Desktop or Citrix. For more information, see Acrobat Virtualization Guide. The supported types of virtualization are:

• Virtual Server: A simulated server environment built on an actual physical server. You can run multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. It operates in a multi-tenant environment.
  
• Virtual Machine: An emulation of an actual physical computer with its own CPU, memory, network interface, and storage, created on a physical hardware system.
  
• Virtualization: A simulated environment where a desktop is replaced with a server-based virtual machine.

How to automate PDF workflows using Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Adobe Document Services provide APIs to automate PDF creation, manipulation, content extraction, and document generation in any application to build document workflows for invoice and report creation, content processing and republishing, data analysis, and more. The following APIs are available:

• Adobe PDF Services API allows you to create PDFs from several different document formats such as Word, PowerPoint, and HTML. You can also convert PDFs to other formats, OCR documents for full-text search, add passwords, compress PDFs, and more. 
• Adobe Document Generation API provides dynamic PDF and MS-Word file generation with your data. Automate agreements, invoices, and sales proposals by injecting JSON data into Word templates with conditional logic and signatures.
• Adobe PDF Extract API allows you to unlock unstructured data stored in PDF documents. Leverage ML/AI technology to automatically parse text, complex tables, images, figures, and document structure - including reading order across columns and pages - from any PDF document, including scans. Text extraction goes beyond OCR to capture text style, fonts, and context. 
• Adobe PDF Embed API is a free client-side JavaScript API to help developers embed PDF documents in any web application and create consistent document viewing experiences for end-users. Includes APIs for collaboration and review workflows along with analytics integration for insights on end-user interactivity.