Adobe Acrobat Sign release schedule and prerelease documentation
Adobe Acrobat Sign rolls out at least three updates per year, categorized as major or minor releases. Additional minor updates may be introduced as needed to address system or customer issues.
- Major Releases bring significant updates, new features, and multiple enhancements.
- Minor Releases focus on smaller improvements and user experience tweaks. These occur between major updates, typically one to two times per cycle.
To prevent disruptions, new features are disabled by default and must be manually enabled by an account or group admin.
For Health and Life Sciences customers requiring compliance validation, Acrobat Sign partners with a third-party vendor to provide a validation package for every major release containing features to minimize your risk factor.
This Prerelease Notes page is regularly updated as new information becomes available, so its content is relatively dynamic.
While this page is localized, the process takes time, which may result in localized versions differing slightly from the authoritative US English version.
For the most accurate and up-to-date information, we recommend referring only to the US English page.
Adobe Acrobat Sign follows a structured schedule for publishing release notes and documentation updates:
8 Weeks Before Production Release
- The prerelease page publishes a summary of expected features and updates, typically four weeks before the Sandbox launch.
- Any feature changes after this point are noted in the Errata section.
- Resolved issues are not included at this stage.
4 Weeks Before Production Release (Sandbox Launch)
- The prerelease page is updated with detailed documentation on new and updated features.
- Links to prerelease support documentation (available in US English only) are added as needed.
- The initial Resolved issues section is published, with ongoing updates over the next four weeks.
Launch Day
- The official release notes are updated with final feature details and links to production support documentation.
- The prerelease page is refreshed to highlight the next release cycle.
- Documentation is published after release verification in the live system, typically after 7 pm PT, though complex updates may take longer.
- The final Resolved issues list is added to the US English release notes, with localized versions updated later.
Government Cloud Release
- The Government Cloud environment typically updates between two days and several weeks after the production release, as some features may require additional evaluation before deployment.
Sandbox documentation is designed for the production environment. Links found in the prerelease content target production URLs, meaning those links may lead to older existing documentation or 404 results if the target page is new and hasn't been published yet (e.g., when the link is pointing to a new feature in the same release).
The new pages will be published when the release is published, and links will properly resolve to their production URLs.
Sandbox availability
Customers accessing the Acrobat Sign Sandbox environment can typically access the new release functionality four weeks before launch.
- The Sandbox environment must pass all production quality assurance procedures at the same quality level as the regular production environment.
- Adobe strives to have 99.9% availability in the Sandbox environment, but customers should note that the Adobe Unified SLA does not formally cover the Sandbox.
- The Sandbox environment uses the same status page and outage procedures as the regular Production environment.
This article contains prerelease information. Release dates, features, and other information are subject to change without notice.
Adobe Acrobat Sign release v17.2.1
Sandbox deployment: September 8, 2026
Production deployment: October 6, 2026
GovCloud deployment: October 8, 2026
Improved Functionality
- Phased rollout of form field authoring improvements
Adobe Acrobat Sign is introducing an updated form field authoring experience as part of the 17.2 release. The changes are being deployed gradually by customer segment rather than enabled for all accounts at the same time.
What is changing- The modern authoring experience is being updated with improvements to field placement, navigation, assignment, validation, and first-use guidance.
- Notable changes include:
- A new Fields panel for reviewing and navigating placed form fields.
- Updated controls for working with suggested fields.
- More descriptive names for automatically detected fields.
- Improved detection of common field types and validation rules.
- Inline, field-specific validation messages.
- A recipient-assignment prompt when uploaded PDFs contain existing AcroForm fields.
- Contextual guidance for common authoring tasks.
These changes affect the user interface and workflow used when preparing agreements and library templates.
Refer to the Technical notification for the rollout schedule.
Available environments: Commercial | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Sign Solutions (ETLA and Trial account customers) | Configuration scope: Enabled by default per rollout schedule
- Inline Document Editing During Library Template Authoring – Edit document text when authoring fields onto the template
Senders can edit document text during the process of creating a library template without downloading and re-uploading the file. The Edit Document option preserves existing fields and agreement configuration, reducing disruption during pre-send updates.
In-line document editing is to be released on a rolling schedule, as referenced in the technical notification.
This feature is enabled by default for all users in supported accounts, allowing senders to edit documents as they create the library template. Account and group admins can disable document editing through the Send Settings.
In-line document editing is not available in Acrobat Sign for Government or for accounts using the legacy user management system.
Available environments: Sandbox, Commercial | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Sign Solutions ETLA customer accounts | Configuration scope: Account and Group; Enabled by default
Enable or disable in-line document editing >
How to edit text during field authoring >
- Sort and export reporting chart data - Reporting users can now sort supported Agreement and Transaction report charts by activity and export the aggregated chart data to CSV. The exported file respects the report’s active filters and time interval.
The enhancement is available for charts showing agreements or transactions by sender, group, or workflow.
Available environments: Sandbox, Commercial, Government | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Sign Solutions | Configuration scope: Account and Group
- Notes quick action restored on the Manage page - The Notes quick action is again available directly from the Manage page. Users can select the Notes icon from an agreement row to quickly view or add notes without opening the agreement's Actions menu.
Available environments: Sandbox, Commercial, Government | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Sign Solutions | Configuration scope: Enabled by default
- Cloud Signatures supported in the modern recipient experience - Recipients can now apply cloud-based digital signatures using the modern recipient experience. The updated experience supports the Cloud Signature provider selection, authentication, certificate selection, signature appearance, and signing process while providing the accessibility and usability improvements of the modern signing experience.
Digital signatures that require Download and Sign with Acrobat continue to use the classic recipient experience.
Available environments: Sandbox, Commercial, Government | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Standard, Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Sign Solutions | Configuration scope: Account and Group
Experience Changes
- Improved library template experience - The modern library template creation and authoring experience has been streamlined with fewer upfront choices, clearer first-use guidance, a dedicated save action, and improved validation and error messages.
Template-management actions are also easier to access after creation.
Available environments: Commercial | Available tiers of service: Acrobat Sign Solutions | Configuration scope: Enabled by default.
REST API/Webhook Updates
The below updates are presented in the prerelease notes for disclosure purposes. Full documentation for API and Webhook updates can be found in the Acrobat Sign developer documentation when the version update is delivered to the production servers.
Release errata - Elements removed
Below are the line items that previously were announced as part of this release, but have since slipped to a later release date.
Resolved Issues
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| 4576609 | Summary: In custom workflows, senders could encounter an invalid library document error when previewing an agreement after adding reusable templates shared with their group. This occurred due to inconsistent access validation when the template owner belonged to a different group. Returning to the workflow after preview could also remove a previously added document. |
| Fix: Updated reusable template access handling so custom workflows consistently recognize group-shared templates during repeated previews and preserve previously added documents when senders return from the authoring environment. | |
| 4580052 | Summary: Completed agreements could fail accessibility checks because checkbox and radio button characters used a font without proper character encoding, and signature images in tagged PDFs did not include alternate text. |
| Fix: Updated PDF generation to use an embeddable font with character encoding for checkbox and radio button symbols and to add alternate text to signature images in tagged PDFs. | |
| 4580923 | Summary: Custom workflows could assign fields to the wrong recipients when a sender selected Preview & Add Signature Fields after skipping an optional recipient. This occurred due to Preview reindexing the remaining recipients instead of preserving the participant positions defined by the workflow. |
| Fix: Updated recipient and field mapping during Preview so skipped optional recipients no longer shift field assignments to other participants. | |
| 4582909 | Summary: Recipients using phone authentication could encounter an error after successfully entering their verification code, preventing them from continuing to sign the agreement. This occurred when enhanced audit timestamp processing encountered an unexpected null value for certain recipient records. |
| Fix: Updated recipient processing to safely handle the affected user-status value so recipients can continue signing after successful phone authentication. | |
| 4583756 | Summary: The v5 agreement event search API could omit recent agreement events when returning paginated results, including events indicating that an agreement had been completed. This could prevent integrations that rely on the search results from detecting agreement status changes. |
| Fix: Updated agreement event retrieval and pagination so qualifying events are returned consistently across result pages without omitting the most recent events. | |
| 4586018 | Summary: Digitally signed agreements could show more than one selected option in a radio-button group when the fields were created using legacy text-tag syntax in a Word document. |
| Fix: Updated radio-button processing for digitally signed agreements so completed PDFs preserve only the option selected by the signer. | |
| 4586646 | Summary: Digitally signed documents containing multiple signatures could fail validation with some strict third-party signature validators because temporary internal data was incorrectly retained in a digital signature field. |
| Fix: Updated digital signature processing to prevent temporary internal data from being written to signature fields, allowing completed documents to validate correctly with strict signature validators. | |
| 4586710 | Summary: Agreements containing cloned or linked text fields could encounter a server error during sending due to incorrectly generated font references in the fields' PDF appearance data. |
| Fix: Corrected font handling for cloned and linked text fields and improved PDF processing so individual form-field rendering failures no longer prevent the agreement from being prepared and sent. |
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