Good day fellow Acrobat users!

I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to all of you. My name is David Kastendick and I am an Online/Social Customer Success Lead for Adobe. You’ll probably see me popping up on blogs, forums and Twitter as my focus is to find our Acrobat and Adobe’s Document Cloud users wherever they may be and to try to help them with the challenges they’re facing.

I joined Adobe Systems in March 2010 as a Support Engineer for the Technical Response Team. In this role I supported Acrobat, Acrobat.com, Captivate, RoboHelp, eLearning Suite, and Technical Communication Suite. I began to transition to my current role in April 2011 when I accepted the role of Acrobat Community Manager.

Prior to joining Adobe, I have worked as a project manager and as an Adobe trainer. I have been working with Adobe products since 2002 and was a member of the original nine support representatives for the Creative Suite 1.0 launch in September 2003.

I’m really looking forward to interacting with all of you across a variety of social channels.

Kind regards,
David

David Kastendick is an Online/Social Customer Success Engineer for both Acrobat and Adobe’s Document Cloud services. Since 2010 he has assisted desktop and enterprise users through a variety of channels with the goal of complete customer satisfaction at the forefront. Prior to joining Adobe, David worked with an Adobe partner in training, management, and support roles. When he isn’t working to resolve customer issues, he enjoys exploring the Pacific Northwest where he resides.

Raise your hand if you’ve used one of FormsCentral’s many templates. Good, it looks like a good number of you have tried them out. Some educators using the quiz template, I see; and a few of you are even using some of the registration templates to create forms for your events! Well done, you guys.

Now, raise your hand if you’ve seen FormsCentral’s all-new templates, released last week. What?! None of you?? Get with the program, people! These new templates have been created for you by professional designers who have a sincere interest in helping you create beautiful, functional forms. Check out the Emergency Information form:

Really good-looking, right? Even better, check out one of the new volunteer sign-up forms:

We added about 15 new templates, the complete list of which is below. The best way to get to know them is to get in there and splash around with them. If you want a little more information about how to get started using templates, check out this how-to video on Adobe TV.

New templates as of January 16, 2012:

Admissions Application
Emergency Information
Employee Referral
Event Registration
Event Survey
Event Survey (2)
Rental Application
Request for Leave
Request for Leave (2)
Sponsorship
Teacher Evaluation
Time Tracking
User Experience Survey
Volunteer Application
Volunteer Application (2)

We’re thrilled to announce that Adobe EchoSign has received the Contract Management AppExchange Best of 2011 award from salesforce.com customers. Salesforce.com annually recognizes top AppExchange partner solutions based on excellent user reviews in a specific calendar year, and for the fourth consecutive year, Adobe EchoSign was recognized by AppExchange customers for its ability to take customer success to new levels in satisfaction and application excellence.

Today, every business of every size is running on the web, ushering in the era of the social contract where the use of electronic signatures transforms the contracting process from painful and arduous into a positive, collaborative process. This customer choice award underscores our commitment to helping businesses leverage the web for all of its social capabilities – ultimately enabling them to increase productivity and close more deals in the cloud.

The Adobe EchoSign for Salesforce solution lets customers easily send contracts for signature directly from their salesforce.com account, and then track their real-time execution status. The moment the contract is digitally signed, all parties receive an emailed copy of the digitally signed contract, and a PDF version is also automatically attached to the relevant Opportunity or Contact for that contract.  With Adobe EchoSign for Salesforce, our customers have taken their entire time-to-signature process from days down to minutes.

You can find Adobe EchoSign for Salesforce on the AppExchange, the world’s most-popular marketplace for business apps at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange.

By Jason Lemkin

Companies across all industries are finding the switch from paper contracts to Web-based contracts greatly improves customer relationships. Customers are thrilled to adopt more efficient systems where contracts are delivered to them quickly through email. With the ability to sign contracts through mobile devices – further enhanced by our new iOS app – customers face no restrictions on the time and place of signing.

This is especially true for merchants dealing with managed services providers (MSPs). For merchants, especially those with limited resources, e-signatures are a valuable time saving tool. Using digital contracts for merchant card-processing agreements reduces the amount of paperwork and also curbs errors. As any business owner will attest to, these are all important factors in choosing an MSP.

Of course, the benefits of cloud contracting don’t end with customers; vendors reap the rewards, as well. TransNational Bankcard, a merchant processing company, recently started using e-signatures, and its leaders say they will never go back to the outdated ink-on-paper process. The TransNational sales team now uses the time it previously spent tracking down unsigned contracts to focus more on customer service, all while increasing sales. The company prides itself on being merchant-centric, and it is always looking to improve customer relations with its merchant clients.

Using EchoSign resulted in a best-of-both-worlds solution, as TransNational and its clients saw great improvements. After making the switch just two months ago in November 2011, an estimated 80 percent of TransNational’s clients are now using e-signatures to sign their merchant agreements.

In September, we announced EchoSign for Adobe Reader – a first step in the integration of Adobe EchoSign technology with Adobe’s document solutions and services. Today, we are proud to reveal another major milestone that will make it easier than ever for businesses to “seal the deal” and keep up with the demands of a growing mobile workforce.  Now, Adobe Reader users will be able to send PDF files to be signed from within the application as well as sign documents electronically themselves. The new update makes Adobe Reader a one-stop shop for electronic signatures.

With the new update, when you open a PDF document to be signed with Adobe Reader, you will have the option to place a scanned copy of your signature into the document. What if you don’t have the ability to scan an image of your signature? Don’t worry; we have that covered too. Using Adobe EchoSign, you can sign a document yourself by using the “Only I Sign” feature, which gives you the option to either draw in your own signature using a mouse or simply type it in.

When you need to get signatures on a PDF document, simply open it in the new version of Adobe Reader and use the “Send for Signature” button. Your document will automatically be uploaded to Adobe EchoSign, initiating the workflow to get a document signed using Adobe EchoSign. Through the EchoSign UI, you can drag and drop fields on the document for not only e-signatures, but also initials, contact information, company, title, or any other customized form field, before sending the document for signature. You also can get status updates and track the progress of your signature process through the EchoSign UI.

Documents signed using Adobe EchoSign are protected by the Federal E-SIGN Act, which makes online electronic signatures in a commercial transaction equivalent to a written signature so both you and your client can rest assured that signed document is 100 percent legal.

There are many use cases for electronic signatures. Tell us how Adobe EchoSign helps you get the job done faster.

By Jason Lemkin, vice president of Web business services at Adobe 

W3C provides new guidance on creating accessible PDF content This week, the W3C published techniques for complying with the WCAG 2.0 accessibility standard, which is broadly accepted in a growing number of countries worldwide. This is great news for members of the Acrobat community who are interested in accessibility and ensuring their PDF content is compliant. For more information on the WCAG 2.0 techniques, see Andrew Kirkpatrick’s latest post on the Adobe Accessibility blog.