Now that you’ve had a couple weeks to check out the new features to Adobe FormsCentral we’d like to know how you are using it. Over the next couple weeks we will be posting poll questions to our Facebook Page. Later, we’ll share the results with you on the blog. Our first question for you is: What do you use forms for the most?

Make sure to check out the Acrobat Facebook page for the latest poll questions and don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to let your voice be heard. You never know… your suggestion could be included in the next FormsCentral update!

Mark Grilli, Director of Acrobat Solutions, offers his thoughts on the new direction of collaboration.  Be sure to click over to his extended blog post!

There’s been a dramatic shift in how we exchange information and collaborate in the workplace. We’re officially in the “social media era,” where working with each other means IM, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As these technologies transition into the traditional enterprise, even the most customary and mundane tasks are expected to live up to the new standard they set. Let’s face it: the way we work today is different from how we worked just five years ago, and we must conform.

For this post, I’m going to use the digital document as my example because of the critical role it plays in everyday business processes. Once you turn a dull process like document creation and review, into a more intuitive social practice, you can make the leap from a “traditional enterprise” to a “collaborative enterprise.” In a study of enterprise collaboration techniques, the Gilbane Group said, “The document is becoming a parallel collaboration channel to the Web, a channel in which people not only create and consume ideas, but also interact around them, creating innovation and value.” By including links, buttons, and rich content, such as drawings, images, videos, and embedded web pages, document consumers and creators have endless options to improve productivity, quality of work and their overall experience.

For more from Mark Grilli, be sure to check out this extended blog post from Enterprise Features!

We are excited to announce that Adobe CreatePDF application is now available on iOS. With this, Adobe brings rich, high-fidelity and Acrobat-like PDF creation to the iOS devices.  You can now convert all your documents on iPad, iPhone & iPod touch devices to PDF for reliable, secure sharing and viewing across PCs, tablets & Smartphones.

The application uses Adobe’s online PDF Creation service for conversion of files to PDF thereby ensuring no compromise on quality and performance.

CreatePDF on iOS Feature Highlights:

• High Quality PDF Creation – Convert all your documents to PDF files that look exactly as original using the same technology as Adobe Acrobat.
• Intuitive Interface for PDF Conversion – Convert email attachments or files stored on the cloud or any application by sending them to the Adobe CreatePDF app using ‘Open In.’
• Share  – You can open the converted PDF files in  other applications and also send as email attachments

Catch a glimpse of how the application works here:

Supported File Formats include:

• MS Word (docx, doc), Excel(xlsx, xls), PowerPoint (pptx, ppt)
• Adobe Illustrator (ai), Photoshop (psd) and InDesign (indd)
• Images – JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• RTF, Text and WordPerfect
• OpenOffice and StarOffice documents

We’re eager to hear your feedback. Do let us know what you think about the application and what more you would want to see in it in future. You can post your thoughts here, on the Adobe user forums, or on the iTunes Market.

Adobe CreatePDF for iOS is available for purchase at the iTunes App Store for $9.99.  iOS device users can download it from here. Please note this link is for downloading the app directly to your iOS device.

Joydeep Majumder, product manager, Acrobat Solutions

We’ve all seen the old movies: The scene opens on the protagonist, sitting next to the telephone. Just staring. At the phone. Waiting for it to ring. When it rings, the hero or heroine will have an Important Conversation, in which Important Information will be imparted. However, no one – not the audience, not the hero – knows just when that phone might ring. For all we know, our hero might spend the whole night just waiting by the phone and never hear it ring once. He can’t leave the house for fear he’ll miss the call.

Well, don’t wait by the phone any longer. Everyone, you’re hearing it here first: Email notifications have arrived to FormsCentral. Let’s say that again, a bit differently: When new responses are submitted to your form, you’ll get an email notification. No more waiting in the browser, refreshing your screen every two minutes.

Can you hear the cheers? We sure can. This has been the most-requested feature from day one of FormsCentral’s existence; you’ve written us emails, called us, tweeted at us, and commented here on the blog, wondering when notifications would be included in the service. Today is the day, people! Now, if you’ve got a Basic or Plus subscription, you (and anyone you’ve shared your form with) can individually elect to be sent email notifications whenever the form has a new response.

Not only can you request an email notification for a new response; you can also ask that the response data be included in the body of the email so you can take a quick first look at the submission before diving into the full response table. You can also forward these notifications along if the submission contains data you want to share immediately. What if, for example, your sales team uses FormsCentral to collect leads? Maybe the Sales Manager is the one who gets the notifications, and she can simply forward the notification email (complete with the lead form’s information) to the relevant account manager. Nothing could be more convenient.

We’re sure that this new inclusion of email notifications will do a great deal to improve your workflow with FormsCentral. Welcome to a simpler, quicker, and more fluid way to collect and respond to data.

Check in later this week to hear some more about what we’ve added to FormsCentral this month – there are more treats to come, and we can’t wait to share the new features with you. For now, head over to FormsCentral and enable your notifications in any paid account! http://formscentral.adobe.com

Rebecca Staley, Acrobat.com marketing specialist, Acrobat Solutions

By Jason Lemkin, vice president of web business services at Adobe and former CEO of EchoSign

Welcome to our new Adobe eSign Success series, where we are highlighting some of the great work our EchoSign customers do on a daily basis. Helping our customers make it easier to do business online is the cornerstone of the Adobe EchoSign e-signature solution, so we are excited to feature some of our customer success stories.

If you were to ask almost any person on the street to name the most successful social Web businesses of the last few years, the answers would likely center on a handful of companies. Groupon. Facebook. Pandora. All three have grown faster in a matter of years than most businesses grow in decades, and all three have defined the social nature of the Web and, as a result, have built it into their business models. At the Salesforce Dreamforce conference on August 31, all three will discuss how the social contract fuels their success.

Groupon, Facebook and Pandora are among the thousands of businesses using Adobe EchoSign’s e-signature solution to automate contracting processes in the cloud and in person. Today, the social contract is immediate, regardless of whether customers sign from their laptops, mobile devices or on a tablet screen proffered by an in-person sales rep. Adding this social aspect to the age-old process of signing contracts is changing the way sales teams and mobile warriors interact with their customers. Instead of handing over a piece of paper, they are giving customers a tablet or smartphone to sign. For instance, instead of paper contracts, Pandora uses e-signatures to close contracts with its vendors.

The multi-billion dollar social Web companies joining us for a panel at Dreamforce in San Francisco recognized the social, collaborative nature of the Web and capitalized on it quickly. That is apparent in their services, as well as in their business processes. If you want to know how:

• To get sales reps. off the road and selling more;
• To turn contracts into collaborative documents;
• To apply the principles of the social Web to your business processes;
• To compress and accelerate growth;
• To automate the entire contract process, from creation to signature, to management and tracking; and
• To learn what the social enterprise is all about,

Then check out our dream panel later this month at Dreamforce.

At Adobe, we value our user’s opinions and take into account your suggestions for upcoming product and services updates. In fact, the brand new FormsCentral features (Page skip logic, Summary reports and Form templates) came directly from our user community!

2011 has been an exciting year for us. We kicked off our year with our first Twitteview (#Acroview) with senior product managers Chris French and Dave Stromfeld. Then in March we launched our Facebook page and shortly after the Acrobat Solutions Group on LinkedIn.  Most recently we’ve introduced the Acrobat YouTube channel to share the latest cool tricks, tutorials and insider perspectives from our developers and managers.

We’ve certainly grown our social reach in the past couple months and want to hear from you, our customers, to find out how we are doing. Similar to our products and services, we welcome your feedback and invite you to participate in the following FormsCentral survey below. We are looking forward to hearing what you think and thank you for your time in taking this quick survey.