Within this guide, you will find the recommended first steps for getting your Adobe Acrobat Sign account configured and ready to send transactions.
Below are two tabs, one for users of the system and another for account administrators. On each tab, you will find a list of features to configure, and just to the right of the feature name are the levels of service they apply to.
We recommend that all users configure their personal user ID first, and then if you happen to be the account admin also, proceed to the Admin tab and configure the account settings.
Individual accounts are single-license accounts, so by default the single user is also the account admin.
When you first log in to 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.
The profile page shows the specific values that Acrobat Sign will use when personalizing any of your transactions. Of particular interest are:
If you need to adjust any of the content, click the Edit Profile button, make the required changes, and then Save your edits.
Acrobat Sign allows for three signature styles, depending on your personal or business requirements:
If this option is your choice, no explicit configuration is required.
Create your unique signature by navigating to Personal Preferences > My Signature.
Click the Create button to open the signature panel and select the method to create your signature:
Click Apply when you have created an adequate signature.
For power users who really want to stay in touch with their transactions, you can time milestones that can trigger an email to your inbox, or an alert that can be delivered in a report.
To get to your notifications page, navigate to Personal Preferences > My Notifications
Some quick definitions:
Both events and alerts can be configured to notify in two ways. You have the option to select neither, one, or both by checking the configuration options. These options are:
Also notice that there are two tabs for these events/alerts.
Reporting can be configured at the bottom of the page to send you a summary of the events you have checked, and that report can be sent once a week, every work day, or every day of the week, as you like.
The business and enterprise service levels allow users to create a personal footer, like a signature file in e-mail.
If the option is enabled by your Account Admin, you can set it by navigating to: Personal Preferences > My Email Footer
This footer is placed near the bottom of your transaction e-mails, but above any account level footers:
There are two default language options to set:
Welcome, administrators!
Hopefully the configuration of your personal user ID has gone well and you are ready for the larger, account-wide decisions.
The below descriptions are relatively long, but getting your account set up properly will ensure that your senders and signers have the smoothest time adopting your process, and will reduce the questions that inevitably come with change after deployment.
Note: Not all the options available to you are fully covered, so contact Support if you have any questions.
Like backing up your computer or phone, it’s a good idea to keep copies of your signed agreements. Instead of downloading the agreements one by one from the Manage page, the External Archive can send a copy of signed agreements to an alternate email address, an Evernote account or a Box account.
Log in as an Account Admin, and navigate to: Account > Account Settings > External Archive
To have copies of your account’s agreements send to an alternate email address, enter that email address into the Send an extra copy… field and click the Save Changes button.
The External Archive field has a limit of 255 characters. If you need to send to more people than can fit, try using a distribution list!
To have a copy sent to either Evernote or Box, click the corresponding click here link and specific instructions will pop up in a new window.
Signature preferences!
There are many options to consider with these settings, so let’s dig in!
Navigate to Account > Signature Preferences
The first two settings control the automated formatting of the line that the signature sits on, and the signature data that is inserted under the line:
The next section controls how your recipients can apply their signature. In general, unless you have a specific business purpose to constrain the options, we recommend allowing recipients to apply their signature in the manner they prefer.
There are three options:
This section of options dictates if your recipients can use an existing saved signature (Biometric and Image-based signatures are saved). If you elect to disallow use of saved signatures, the recipient will have to explicitly type, draw or upload their signature, depending on the types of signature you allow.
The options are:
There is an additional check box in this section:
Adding your company branding is an excellent way to customize Acrobat Sign for the users in your account, as well as your signers.
Company name and URL hostname
In this section, you will set the company name and a hostname for your account. These may seem basic, but they will personalize your account.
These two settings are Account-wide and cannot be adjusted at the Group level.
Log in as an Account Admin and navigate to: Account > Account Settings > Account Setup
Company Name
The value you enter into this field is automatically populated into Company Name field for new users when they are created in the account.
By default, Acrobat Sign permits users to edit their personal settings, and this includes the Company Name value for their individual users.
If you would like to update the Company Name value in the profile of all users in your account:
All user profiles will adopt the value in the Company Name field as the Company value in their user profiles.
Checking Set company name for all users in account is a one-time replace action for all users in your account.
Once the page is saved, all of the users are updated, and the checkmark is cleared to allow the action to be triggered again if needed (as users still have the authority to change their Company Name values).
Hostname
Setting the hostname for your account changes the URL your users log in to and the URL where agreements are hosted for your signers.
The result is a customized URL with your hostname.
Branding is important! Your customers want to see your logo on the transactions you send out, and by uploading your logo, you will brand all the e-mails that Acrobat Sign sends for your transactions.
JPEG, GIF, and PNG images are supported, with PNG having the best results in general.
Log in as an Account Admin and navigate to: Account > Account Settings > Account Setup > Upload Logo.
Click the Upload button and navigate to the image you want to use. Keep in mind, images of the stated dimensions (60 pixels tall and 200 pixels wide) work the best.
Once you’ve chosen an image, the logo will be displayed to the right of the Upload button:
If you need to change the logo at any time, click the Clear button and the logo will be removed.
The Global Settings section of the Account tab is one of the more feature-rich sections, and all the settings are use-case specific.
Below we briefly describe each option and explain our recommendation, but it’s entirely likely that your use case will vary from "most common usage."
Navigate to Account > Account Settings > Global Settings.
This setting applies only to the copy attached to the Signed and Filed e-mail. Copies downloaded from Acrobat Sign later will always be one inclusive PDF.
It’s the External Archive again, but this setting can be configured at the group level (for business and enterprise-level customers), which allows you to route completed Sales contracts to Accounting, or completed NDAs to the Legal team (for example).
Keep in mind that the setting refers to users in your Acrobat Sign account (not everyone at your company). It’s possible that your signers will not have Acrobat Sign user IDs in your account, and those parties would not be covered by this setting.
Acrobat Sign works on a parent-child relationship model, and groups are the child objects of the account. This means that a new group will inherit the account properties. It also means that changes at the group level will override the account-level settings.
Send settings are the features that are exposed to your sending agents on the Send tab. This section is dedicated to all the configurations that are available on that page.
Much like the Global settings, these are very use-case specific.
It’s also a bit long, so grab a beverage and navigate to Account > Account Settings > Send Settings.
Forms can be designed to require an approver to fill in field information and still not sign the document.
Any or all can be selected, but if you want to enable Phone Authentication, you will first need to enable Allow senders to set signer identity verification options per recipient.
More branding!
Navigate to Account > Email Settings and you will find:
Email Footer — This is the account-wide setting that places a text message at the bottom of your e-mails. This is a great place include some marketing information or legal notices.
Allow users to have their own email footer — This setting allows discrete users to set up their personal signature content
Header & Footer Images — E-mail headers and footers are much like logos, but larger. This really makes your branding prominent on your e-mails and lets your customers know who the e-mails are from.
Just as with logos, JPEG, GIF, and PNG images are supported.
Use an image that is 200 pixels tall and up to 600 pixels wide.
You will see a link for each option to Upload a new image. This allows you to browse for your image on your local system. Click Save.
Acrobat Sign security settings match the general password security setting you will find for any application that you may have managed — with a couple of oddball document settings.
To set up your security, navigate to Account > Account Settings > Security Settings.
Are you going to use the API? If you have a developer and want to integrate Acrobat Sign into your existing CRM system (or anything else API enabled), then you may want to consider the option.
Acrobat Sign supports a REST API:
Navigate to Account > Acrobat Sign API.
Using Adobe Document Cloud APIs to access user data requires OAuth Tokens.
You can create an integration key if you have a legacy application that does not support OAuth.
If you do not see the link to create an integration key, contact Support.
Also on this page, you will find
Additionally, once the API is enabled, you will see a new link to the left for the API Request Log. This log will show you the inbound XML from your API calls and can be invaluable in troubleshooting if you have any code-based issues.
The REST API is available through the API Applications option.
Once on the page, click the Create a new application link, give your application a name, and click the Create Application button.
Your new Application ID and Secret will generate and display immediately.
Breaking up your users into functional groups can be hugely helpful, especially if you have different signature requirements or reporting structures that need to be observed.
Luckily, creating a group in Acrobat Sign is amazingly simple. Just navigate to
Account > Users or Account > Groups.
Once on the Group page, click the + button at the upper-right corner of the page and enter the new group name into the field.
There is also a link to configure the settings for the group - click the row to see the Group Settings link. These settings are nearly identical to the Global settings you configured at the account level, but because groups are the child object of the account, the group settings will override the account settings.
You will also notice that the group name is always updateable, so if you have to change group names, it's no problem at all.
If you have purchased an Acrobat Sign for a small business plan, use the Admin Console to manage users and entitlements associated with them. You can also assign multiple administrators to help manage your team or the functional behavior of Acrobat Sign
Finally, it's time to add users!
There are two methods for creating new users in Acrobat Sign:
One at a time
or
Bulk creation via CSV
The single-user process is pretty simple. Just navigate to
Go to Account > Users, and then click the + button in the toolbar displayed next to the search box. The Create dialog box is displayed.
Fill in the Email Address, First Name, and Last Name fields, and then select a group to assign the user to (if needed).
You will also see a check box that says View Their Agreements. This option will create an account share from the new user to your Admin user. If you need to monitor your new agent’s transactions, then check this box.
If you do not, you can still create a share, you just have to use the Account Sharing feature.
Once you create the user, an e-mail will be sent to the address you provided requesting passwords to be set, and once that is done, the user is active and ready to send their first document!
The bulk creation method is here: go to Account > Users, and then click the + button in the toolbar displayed next to the search box. In the Create dialog box, click Create users in bulk.
The process is to create a CSV with at least an e-mail address and first / last name columns. For exact format, see the sample CSV file - click the download sample CSV file link. Prepare your file in the specified format. Once the file is ready, click Browse and select the file.
The one drawback to this process is that you cannot create the share from the user to your admin account.
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