Adobe Sign for SharePoint Online - Installation Guide (v2.0)

The Adobe Sign integration for Microsoft SharePoint provides an integrated solution for creating, sending, tracking and managing electronic signatures.

This documentation, and the installation package it refers to, are developed for Microsoft SharePoint Online multi-tenant (generally referred to as “SharePoint” throughout this guide).

The solution is developed as an add-in application for SharePoint and provides:

• Send an agreement from any SharePoint document library, or list, for signature
• Ability to send documents to a single recipient or group of recipients from a document library or custom SharePoint lists
• Map data from SharePoint lists as well as from a document library into documents through merge mapping when the documents get sent for signature
• Map data from form fields of signed agreements into textual columns of SharePoint lists as well as a document library through data mapping when the document has been signed and its status has been either automatically or manually refreshed through the Agreement Status page
• Leverage Adobe Sign web forms to collect data and automatically push that data to designated fields in SharePoint lists.
• Archival of all signed agreements within SharePoint
• Ability to add the Adobe Sign Manage page as a SharePoint web part, which can be used by SharePoint users for tracking and updating Agreements

To configure the solution, you MUST be both a SharePoint site admin and an Adobe Sign account admin. If you are not Adobe Sign account admin, please work with him or her to configure the integration. 

The Adobe Sign solution can only be installed and configured by a Microsoft SharePoint site administrator. Please consult SharePoint documentation and your organization’s SharePoint site, or tenant administrator, for additional systems permissions that may be required to install SharePoint site solutions.

In the Microsoft Office 365 tenant, the first name, last name and work email address must be set for all SharePoint users who want to access the Adobe Sign add-in on their SharePoint sites.

All users of the Adobe Sign solution need to be present the SharePoint site's default site members or default site owners group. All Adobe Sign users need to have at least Edit permissions on the site.

Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers are all supported

In order for SharePoint add-ins to work, some configuration of Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer / Edge is required.  Internet Explorer 10 and older are not supported.

Additionally, IE 11 / Edge users need to explicitly edit their Trusted Sites settings to include the following URLs:

• https://*.microsoftonline.com
• https://*.sharepoint.com
• https://*.echosign.com

To edit your Trusted Sites:

1. Open IE 11

► Edge users press Windows + S

2. Click the Tools (gear) icon, and select Internet options from the drop-down menu

► Edge users type in Internet Options and press Enter

3. The Internet Options menu opens. Select the Security tab

4. Click on the Trusted Sites icon

5. Click the Sites button

6. Enter one of the URLs above, and click Add

7. Repeat for each URL above

8. Close the Internet Options menu when done.

Adobe Sign for SharePoint v2.0 requires additional permissions to be approved via OAuth (webhooks and web form permissions).

Customers that are upgrading from v1.x must update their OAuth credentials to gain access to these new permissions:

1. Update the Adobe Sign add-in to the 2.x package

2. Update the connection to Adobe Sign:

To install the online edition of the Adobe Sign for SharePoint package:

1. Authenticate to the site

2. Navigate to: Site Contents > New > App

3. Click SharePoint Store

4. Search for Adobe Sign in the Find an app search box (top right of the page)

5. Single click the Adobe Sign icon to select it from the search results.

6. Click the ADD IT button to start the automatic installation

The App installation takes few minutes.

Once the application is installed, there are only two steps required to start sending agreements:

1. Connect to Adobe Sign with OAuth
2. Grant SharePoint user permissions

Adobe Sign establishes an OAuth connection with your SharePoint environment to facilitate the seamless usage of the application for all users.

To establish the OAuth connection:

1. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings page 

2. Click the Connect Adobe Sign tab

3. Select the scope that you want to install Adobe Sign:

► Establish SharePoint site connection (Site level - for the SharePoint site administrator)

• This functionality connects the add-in to an Adobe Sign account at the current SharePoint site level

1. Authenticate to Adobe Sign using your admin user credentials

2. Click Allow Access to approve the trusted relationship between Adobe Sign and SharePoint

○ A success message will briefly display once the connection is established

When you are successfully authenticated at the Site level, you see the email and name of the user that has authenticated to Adobe Sign above the two links.

• To update this connection, you have two options: 
  • Update to a different Adobe Sign Account at the site level (for SharePoint site admin) 
  • Switch to O365 tenant level connection (for O365 admin, see details below).

►Connect your SharePoint tenant to an Adobe Sign account (Tenant scope - for the O365 tenant admin only)

• No repetitive OAuth login is required at Adobe Sign for add-in instances connected in tenant scope

• Adobe Sign OAuth performed on any single add-in instance in the global scope sets the Sign linkage to all other installed instances linked in the tenant scope

                                    ○ OAuth must be performed on at least one tenant scoped add-in

• Any newly installed add-in instance is automatically connected to the Adobe Sign account available at the tenant scope

A confirmation box pops up indicating that you are about to link your tenant to your Adobe Sign account. This requires Microsoft Office 365 administrator login.

• Click Continue.

1. Authenticate to SharePoint using your admin user credentials

2. Click Accept to approve access to the SharePoint resources

3. Authenticate to Adobe Sign using your admin user credentials

4. Click Allow Access to approve the trusted relationship between Adobe Sign and SharePoint

○ A success message will briefly display once the connection is established

When you are successfully authenticated at the Tenant level, you see the email and name of the user that has authenticated to Adobe Sign above the two links, along with an assertion that the account is "configured for your SharePoint tenant by your Office 365 tenant administrator."

• To update this connection, you have two options: update to a different Adobe Sign Account at the tenant level or switch to site level connection.

There are two mechanisims to grant SharePoint users access to the Adobe Sign integration:

• Users with Edit permission 
• Users in the default members/owners group
  

This is the simplest configuration. Any user assigned the default Edit permission level for your SharePoint site automatically has permission to access and use the Adobe Sign integration. 

• If you used the admin.microsoft.com utilities to create your SharePoint site and assigned Owners, Members, and Visitors to the group, you are done

If you require more control over who may use the Adobe Sign for SharePoint integration, this option grants access to only those users who are direct members of the <site name> Members SharePoint group.

• If you set up your SharePoint site using the modern experience, an Office365 group was created to manage your site's permissions
  • That Office365 group is added as a member to the SharePoint group of the same name allowing access to be controlled from a central place. 
  • Adding users to the SharePoint site using the modern experience adds members to the Office365 group, not to the SharePoint group. 

To add members to the SharePoint site using the modern experience:

• Open the settings panel from the gear menu on the top bar
• Select Site permissions 
  • This opens a new right-hand Permissions panel
• Click the Advanced permissions link

• Click on the name link for the <site name> Members group to see the members of the SharePoint Site Members group.
  

• Click the New button to get the dialog to add new members to the SharePoint group

When you are done the new member of the SharePoint group will be displayed in the list of members.

The following optional configurations, while not required, can greatly improve the value that Adobe Sign brings.

As an administrator, you can define a global target folder where all completed agreements will be deposited for the whole site. This is configured on the Signed File Settings page.

When a global storage folder is defined, all signed agreement and audit trail PDF files are saved automatically in that global storage folder. This includes agreements sent from document libraries as well as lists.

If no global storage folder is set on the Adobe Sign Signed Files Settings page, a new folder called Signed Agreements is automatically created in the document library from which the Agreement was created/sent. All completed Agreements sent from the same library have the completed PDFs returned to the same Signed Agreements folder.

Agreements sent from lists are attached to the list item (as attachments) if no global default file is identified.

If you are using web forms to collect data, a similar storage process can be employed for the signed web form agreements.

The admin can define a global storage folder for all signed web forms.

If a global repository is not defined, the signed web form is stored in an automatically created folder called Signed Web Forms.

By default, Adobe Sign returns only the signed agreement PDF.  However, if you enable Store audit trail with signed agreement, a second PDF is returned that contains the full Audit Trail for the agreement.

Adobe Sign supports the idea of relating data between SharePoint Lists and the Agreement form fields.

By using workflows and mapping the list fields to the form fields, you can automatically pre-fill documents before sending, reducing the time for senders and/or signers to complete the form, and reducing the chance for miskeying the data.

Conversely, you can also create a mapping that extracts the form field data from a signed Agreement, to populate a SharePoint list.

The full guide for configuring template mappings can be found here.

Similar to Template Mapping, Adobe Sign supports the idea of relating data between Adobe Sign web form agreements and SharePoint lists.

By mapping the web forms’ form fields to the SharePoint list columns, you can automatically route data to SharePoint, reducing the time and errors for miskeying the data.

The full guide for configuring web forms mappings can be found here.