Adobe Sign for SharePoint Online - Installation Guide

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
• 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.

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:

• Grant SharePoint user permissions
• Link to Adobe Sign with OAuth

Users of the Adobe Sign Solution must be added to either the default Owners or default Members group of site, and they must have at least Edit level permissions.

Visibility to the Adobe Sign UI is predicated on user authority:

• The Adobe Sign Admin UI is exposed to the user when: 
  • The user is present in the AssociatedOwnerGroup
• The Adobe Sign standard user UI is exposed when: 
  • The user is present in the AssociatedMemberGroup

The solution does not work for users only in the Visitors group.

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

To establish the relationship, you must be an account admin in the Adobe Sign application as well as on SharePoint.  It is recommended that a functional email address be used (e.g.: AdobeSignAdmin@MyDomain.com) if possible to reduce the risk of the admin account being inactivated for any reason.

To establish the OAuth connection:

1. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings page 

2. Click the Login To Adobe Sign link

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

► Link this SharePoint site to an Adobe Sign Account (Local scope - for the SharePoint site administrator)

• This functionality links 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.

• The text of the link changes to indicate that you can link your SharePoint site to a different Adobe Sign Account

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

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

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

• Any newly installed add-in instance is automatically linked to the Adobe Sign account available at the global 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."

• The text of the link changes to indicate that you can link your SharePoint tenant to a different Adobe Sign Account

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 Adobe Sign Account 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 Account 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.

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.

Successful mapping requires that you have pre-built forms with defined field names so you can logically relate the List field to the Adobe Sign form field. 

A simple form is illustrated below.  The fields are defined by the curly bracket pairs on either side (defining the width of the field) and the field name (the string of characters between the curly brackets). This text based syntax is collectively known as “text tags”.

Text tags can include additional arguments beyond the name value, including validations, calculations and regular expressions. An in-depth understanding of form building can be found here, and can dramatically improve the quality of data you capture during the signature process.

PDF forms can also be built using Acrobat.

The Adobe Sign Authoring environment can also be used to build forms if you allow users to attach documents stored in the Adobe Sign library.

Relating List and Form field names is a quick and easy operation once you have the List and Form defined.  

To build a mapping list:

1. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings page

2. Click the Template Mappings tab

3. Select which mapping you want to define:

► SharePoint to Agreement mapping – Prefill fields from a List

► Agreement to SharePoint mapping – Collect field information from completed Agreements

Note: Each mapping is discrete. If you want to create a process where you load a form with list information, and want to allow updated content to be pushed back to the list once the agreement is complete, you need to build both templates.

4. Select the List you want to use for the mapping

The page refreshes to show the selected list in the drop-down field, a Plus icon to insert new rows of pairings, and two new field headers:

○ SharePoint Field – The List field name

○ Agreement Field – The form field name

5. Click the Plus icon at the bottom of the field pairs to open a new field pairing

Once clicked, two new fields appear. One drop down containing all the SharePoint List fields, and one text field to type in the name of the Agreement form field.

6. Select the field name for the SharePoint field from the drop down

7. Type in the Agreement form field name you want to create the mapping relationship with.

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for all the fields that need to be paired

Each field name pairing must be configured explicitly.  If a pair needs to be deleted, click the garbage can icon on the far right of the row.

9. Once all the field pairings have been defined, click the Save button

Mapping templates are persistent, and apply to all Agreements sent using the document or list that the mapping is related to. At any time after creating the template, an admin can return to the Template Mappings feature, select a document or list, and see the existing mapped relationships. The admin is also free to edit, add or delete individual relationship pairs as needed.

If an admin wants to clear all the template mapping rows defined on a library document or SharePoint list in a single click, they can do so by selecting the desired document or list, and clicking the Clear Previous Mapping button.  Deleted mapping rows cannot be recovered, and would instead need to be recreated.