We’re always eager to gain the perspective of our users, and the FormsCentral polls were no exception.  The information gained through these Facebook questions will be passed on to our development teams as we continue to tailor Acrobat Solutions to our customer’s expectations.  If you’re interested in the results of these polls, please find some of our favorite insights below.

• We were thrilled to see so many different answers in our ‘What do you use Forms for the most?’ question!  Collecting contact information and business feedback was the most popular choice, but job appications, educational uses, and event registration were also choices
• Over 1/3 of our Facebook participants create and distribute more than 5 forms annually, and often over 10
• 43% of you valued ‘Ease of Use’ as the number 1 factor in choosing a forms service
• Security and Accessibility, with slightly over 20% of the vote each, were the other largest contributors to this decision
• Finally, we asked our Facebook community their favorite new feature of FormsCentral: so far, the newly available form templates are the most popular choice

Thanks again for your input, and keep an eye out for future chances to participate in the Acrobat community!  You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or reach out via this blog’s comment section anytime you’d like to share your perspective. Check out FormsCentral for yourself and let us know what you think!

Monday, October 3

12:45 PM – I Didn’t Know Acrobat Could Do That!

Speakers: Chris Converse & Patti Sokol

Roll up your sleeves and join us for a fun, interactive session about Adobe Acrobat. We’ll take you on a whirlwind tour of functionality guaranteed to open your mind to new ways to work with PDF and SWF or FLV together. You’ll leave with samples and templates and a better understanding of the potential of Acrobat.

3:30 PM – Automating Acrobat: Best Practices for using Actions and Scripting

Speaker: Thom Parker

Learn about the two mechanisms in Adobe Acrobat for automating tasks: JavaScript to enable hidden functionality and Actions for grouping multiple tasks into a single step. These two features can greatly improve workflow efficiency, reduce human error, and cut down on training time for employees who need to use these workflows. This session will cover the details of using JavaScript for Acrobat automation and creating guided Actions. We’ll include practical working examples.

5 PM – I Didn’t Know Acrobat Could Do That!

8-10 PM - Meet the Teams

Swing by Monday night, 8-10 p.m. and catch up with the Acrobat team!

All-day – Win a Tablet!

See how fast you can sign a document using EchoSign and enter for a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Tablet at the Adobe EchoSign Pod.

Tuesday, October 4

8:30 AM – Acrobat for the Web Designer

Speaker: Donna Baker

Learn how to get PDF files to behave the way you and your readers want on the web. We’ll share best practices for helping to ensure that PDF files are easy to read, navigate, and access, as well as for making PDF files as streamlined as possible without losing quality.

12:30 PM – I Didn’t Know Acrobat Could Do That!

2:45 PM – Accelerate Business Results with Adobe Document Exchange Services

Speakers: William Lau & Mangesh Bhandarkar

Learn how Adobe Document Exchange Services can save you time and money. See how Adobe customers are using cloud-based solutions to accelerate business results, including: Adobe EchoSign, FormsCentral, SendNow, CreatePDF, ExportPDF and Acrobat.com.

All-day – Win a Tablet!

See how fast you can sign a document using EchoSign and enter for a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Tablet at the Adobe EchoSign Pod.

Wednesday, October 5

8 AM – Pushing the Envelope with Interactive PDF from InDesign

Speaker: Chris Converse

Learn how to expand the possibilities for creating interactive PDF files using InDesign and a few special tricks with Acrobat X Actions. Standardize your InDesign templates and let the new guided Actions in Acrobat X do the heavy lifting by automating the addition of JavaScript and button actions to take your interactive documents to new levels.

11 AM – I Didn’t Know Acrobat Could Do That!

Ongoing Events and Giveaways

“Try out” Acrobat X

Find your inner cowboy! Get hands on experience with Acrobat X. Stop by the AcrobatUsers.com booth (#325) to “Try Out” and audition for a role in an Acrobat activity! We’ll be giving away prizes each day to participants, watch @Acrobat for more details.

Vote for Your Favorite Feature

Stop by the AcrobatUsers.com booth to vote for your favorite Acrobat feature and you’ll be entered to win a copy of Acrobat X!

Daily Giveaways

Follow @Acrobat for giveaways each day at the Acrobat and EchoSign pods in the Adobe booth and at the AcrobatUsers.com booth.

Cloud Services

Come by Adobe booth to receive an Acrobat Service of your choice FREE for 6 months.

CreatePDF Mobile App

Follow @Acrobat on Twitter to find out when we’ll be giving away CreatePDF mobile app codes.  The first five stop by the Adobe booth will get to test out the new CreatePDF app.

MAXme Points

We’ve got codes! Be on the lookout for a QR code at our pods to increase your points!

Make sure to download the Acrobat at MAX cheat sheet and follow @Acrobat on Twitter to hear the latest info and giveaway updates.  We look forward to seeing you there!

1. Speed: E-signing takes minutes, whereas chasing ink-on-paper signatures can waste days or weeks.
2. Savings: Paper is expensive. So is printing out multiple copies of documents, shipping them, driving to meetings to retrieve them and devoting human resources to those activities.
3. Sustainability: Customers respect companies that make smart choices that benefit the environment while improving service.

Two of our customers in very different industries exemplify the benefits that come from greening contract work. The first is Aetna, one of the nation’s leading providers of health care insurance. The company was the first in its market to deploy electronic contract processing for physicians, hospitals and other health care facilities. Not only did Aetna cut its contract processing time from as much as three weeks to as few as two days, it also decreased its paper usage by 1 million pieces per year.

Meanwhile, one of our customers in the transportation industry is also proving that going green is good for business. Celadon Trucking, one of North America’s largest truckload carriers, uses e-signatures to turn contracts over faster and reduce dependency on paper. The company processes scores of contracts each week, and getting those contracts signed online gives its sales staff more time for selling, while improving the experience for customers. And the environmental benefits of e-signing help Celadon fulfill its mission as a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay program.

As it turns out, it is easy being green – as easy as e-signing a cloud-based contract.

Headed to Adobe MAX? Don’t forget to stop by the EchoSign pod in the Adobe booth and see how much time you can shave off your next contract.

Jason Lemkin, vice president of web business services at Adobe 

If you missed an earlier poll, visit the Facebook questions page where you’ll find a list of all poll questions and results. Thanks for sharing your answers and stay tuned for a results summary on the blog!

To help achieve that goal, the innovative firm adopted Adobe Acrobat software to accelerate assembling case documents, more securely redact information, improve collaboration across legal teams, and support completing and processing business forms. In just assembling case documents alone, the firm is using Acrobat to cut the time needed to build and repaginate case books from hours to minutes.

An added advantage of using Acrobat is the ability to more securely share information across legal teams, inside and outside the firm. In addition to reliably redacting sensitive content from case documents, the firm’s staff can encrypt and password protect PDF files that are delivered to outside teams, helping better safeguard sensitive case details. For Herbert Smith, Acrobat is becoming an integral tool to support many everyday operations at the firm—to learn more about the time and efficiency gains the busy legal teams at Herbert Smith have achieved click here: http://adobe.ly/mPRhPl

Each Wednesday, we’ll be tweeting a question about one of Acrobat’s online questions from the Acrobat handle (@Acrobat); you’ll have until that Friday to tweet back your answer. Just reply to our tweet and include the tag #AcrobatFeatureFind. From all of the correct answers that make it in on time, we’ll select a random lucky winner to receive a one year subscription to the service of his or her choice! That means that each week until the end of our scavenger hunt, you’ll have the chance to win an annual subscription (a value of up to $390) to one of Acrobat’s online services.

And the best part? It’ll be super fun every Wednesday! Keep an eye out for our questions, and answer them correctly for a chance to win big. Here are all the specs for the feature find contest:

Questions will be posted at: Wednesdays at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET

Answers must be in by: Fridays at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET

Winners will be announced: Tuesdays at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET

Where to find us: twitter.com/acrobat

Where to tweet your answers: @Acrobat #AcrobatFeatureFind

Okay, ready for your first assignment? Here we go! Remember to tweet the answer at us by Friday evening.

Question 1: On the forms authoring palette (where you add questions to your form), what’s the 5th item from the left?

Now – get tweeting!

The contest opens 9 a.m. PT, Wednesday, September 21st, 2011. The weekly prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m. PT each Friday, with the winner announcement occurring the following Tuesday. The prize will be the winner’s choice of ONE of the following services: Adobe FormsCentral, Adobe SendNow, Adobe ExportPDF, or Adobe CreatePDF. The drawings are open to residents in North America only.

Rebecca Staley, marketing specialist, Acrobat Solutions

In today’s video post, you can get a closer look at how PDF has increased efficiency and productivity for McGladrey, providing secure collaboration with clients and streamlining document management and processes, such as e-filing with the IRS.

Check out the video, here:

If you missed the session, or want to check on a few details, you can find the full recording here.

Don’t forget to check back in here at the Acrobat blog, our Facebook page, and the Acrobat Twitter account for more info and updates on AdobeMAX.  The event runs October 1-5, and there’s still time to register.  See you there!

The beauty of the EchoSign signature service is that there’s nothing to download and install and with just one click, the entire signature process from the request for signature to the distribution and execution of the form or agreement is done. Now that you can get access to the service via the seemingly omnipresent Adobe Reader, it’s even simpler. All you need is the latest version of Adobe Reader X via the automatic update. Click on the EchoSign link in Reader and you’ll be taken straight to the EchoSign page where you can start signing, sending and tracking. For more on today’s update, 10.1.1 and direct download links, check out today’s Security bulletin, here. 

The EchoSign signature service provides a secure subscription-based service to individuals, SMBs and enterprise customers. It enables real-time visibility into the signature process and automatically storing and managing all signed documents. We expect it will make electronic signatures the common way for people to sign documents.

As I said, we’re just starting to integrate the EchoSign capability into our various document services, stay tuned for more to come. Our aim is to enable customers to significantly accelerate sales cycles, improve tracking and centralize the management of signed agreements through this simple to use cloud service.

Mangesh Bhandarkar, group product manager, EchoSign 

Thankfully, processing building permits at the City of Barcelona doesn’t take as long! Miquel Garcia, director of Urban Action Services at the City of Barcelona, recently talked to us about how Barcelona city architects, engineers, and municipal engineers rely on Adobe Acrobat software to review permit requests electronically and reduce processing time. The City of Barcelona created eObras, a fully digital system for managing and maintaining electronic records of building permits. By adopting Adobe Acrobat software as part of eObras, the pioneering city has virtually eliminated the use of paper and manual creation of permit requests.

With Adobe Acrobat, city staff can quickly add electronic notes on permit documents in PDF and verify measurements on technical drawings, bringing much greater efficiency and enhanced collaboration to the permitting process. Reviewed documents can be stored in PDF for reliable access now and in the future. The advantages of the more automated permit processes are clear to busy municipal staff, as well as to the businesses and citizens who benefit from clearer communications and faster reviews. To learn more about how the City of Barcelona is using Adobe Acrobat to transform building permit processes, click here.

And if you have not been to Barcelona yet, I highly recommend doing so. It will be well worth it.

Ali Hanyaloglu, senior marketing manager, Acrobat Solutions