Beginning today (Wednesday, August 17^th ) and running until August 24^th, please join our Adobe SendNow Tweetaway! We’ll be publishing tweets accompanied by the #TrySendNow hashtag.  Just follow us and ReTweet any of them to become eligible for our random drawing.  A year’s worth of hassle free, zero cost file transfers can be yours just for the price of a ReTweet!  Stay tuned to our Twitter account, keep an eye out for the #TrySendNow hashtag, and thanks!

The contest opens at 10 a.m., Wednesday, August 17, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Wednesday August 24, 2011. The prize drawing for SendNow (no product prize exchanges available) will occur on or before 5 p.m., August 24th, 2011 with the winner announcement occurring that day well. The drawings are open to residents in North America only.

For example, Adobe FormsCentral provides Pomfret School a flexible platform to create and deliver registration and testing forms to students at the beginning of each school year. At the same time, skills-assessment forms for math and other subjects are made available online to incoming students, enabling Pomfret to place students in classes best-suited to their skill levels. The Adobe solution also streamlines sharing student assessments with teachers, who no longer have to wait for paper-based tests to arrive by mail or come back to campus to pick up assessments. To learn more about how Pomfret School is using Adobe FormsCentral, click here.

Todd Gerber, group product marketing manager, Acrobat Solutions

In case you missed our tweets, FormsCentral is one of the easiest ways to collect, analyze, and report on your data.

• Check out FormsCentral, powerful online form builder, for real time results and analysis
• With FormsCentral, you can easily create, distribute and analyze online forms
• FormsCentral makes the task of creating surveys and collecting and analyzing data simpler than ever!

Learn more about the latest new features such as Summary Reports, Rating Scales, Apply Skip Logic, Twitter integration by checking out the FormsCentral site!

If you didn’t get a chance to participate in our contest, don’t worry the next one is right around the corner!  Please stay tuned to Acrobat on Twitter for the latest news and updates!

New feature #1: Page Skip Logic

This addition was one of the features most often requested on the forum and through e-mail feedback to the team. Until now, respondents have had to go through all questions on a form, and in some cases, only a subset of respondents would need to respond to all of those. Thus, you may have been required to include apologies like “If you answered yes to the last question, go to question 3. If you answered no, go to question 4.”

No longer! Now, with either the Basic or the Plus plan, you can add rules to your page breaks that allow questions to be skipped altogether.

For the full post, click here.

New feature #2: Summary Reports

Summary reports. These beauties are now built into your forms once data starts flowing in; without exporting any data or fussing around with other spreadsheet programs, you can view your form’s responses graphically. Today, we’ll go through the details of what these summaries can do for you in FormsCentral.

For the full post, click here.

New feature #3: Form Templates

Now, born of your innovation (and your many requests for new ways to kick-start certain form types), we present 7 new form templates to support the various ways in which you’ve been using FormsCentral. We like to keep them organized by category, so here they are, according to the type of form they represent.

For the full post, click here.

Rebecca Staley, Acrobat.com marketing specialist, Acrobat Solutions

But something was bothering us: What if a clone vendor took some of that data and claimed that their cheap tool delivered the same benefits? We know that’s not entirely true, nor likely, but we want you to be as informed as possible about the unique ways Acrobat can help solve your document workflow challenges. So here are some of the key differentiators of Acrobat associated with the scenarios in the productivity study. You should review the study and built-in calculator for yourself to see what the workflow improvements and cost savings are with Acrobat X.

Electronic Forms Scenarios

Only Acrobat X allows knowledge workers to quickly and easily distribute, collect, track and export information through forms, all out-of-the-box. This part of the study certainly raised a few eyebrows, because it shows that using Acrobat X to aggregate and track responses from an electronic form results in a workflow productivity improvement of over 4000%. That’s right: over 4000%!  It’s simply because nothing else on the desktop can do what Acrobat X can do when it comes to forms and data collection. The key takeaway is that while some clone tools allow you to create a PDF form, edit it, and e-mail it around, they may also leave you to manually handle the process of importing, collecting, managing, analyzing and tracking those forms. And that manual workflow has a negative impact on productivity.

Comment Review and Comment Aggregation Scenarios

We have been able to add comments to a PDF document since the mid-90’s. Acrobat allows comments and markup to be added to be virtually any kind of PDF file (even embedded video, Flash Player-compatible content and 3D) and share those comments amongst reviewers using a central location. We call this Shared Reviews.  E-mail is still the most often used mechanism to exchange files and comments in a typical workflow. This is certainly the case when using clone tools to add comments and markup to a PDF file. Although Acrobat X Shared Reviews was not tested and measured in the Crimson Consulting study, the authors do note that this method of collecting comments does save time and can further increase savings.

Document Comparison Scenario

Acrobat X Pro has document comparison capabilities that show text, formatting, placement and image changes across different types of PDF documents. While some of the clone tools include some document comparison tools, they are more similar to those in much older versions of Acrobat or are designed to compare specific types of documents only. Further, the Acrobat X user interface makes it easier to identify what the differences are as it synchronizes the view between the two versions of the document.

Document Security Scenarios

The list of Acrobat “onlys” is long here. Here is just a handful…

Unlike cheap clone tools, Acrobat X allows customers to digitally sign documents using Roaming ID’s and hardware tokens, with built-in support for trusted root certificates from many of the world’s leading Certificate Authorities. Numerous government agencies, military departments and regulated industries require this. Some nations are even distributing hardware tokens to their citizens. When it comes to digitally signing documents, the clone tools are reliant on Self-Sign signatures or the Windows Certificate Store, neither of which is appropriate for truly trusted or secure infrastructures (although Acrobat does support those methods too).

Today, only Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader conform to international standards for digital signatures, such as PAdES. Both of these applications support Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management, a powerful technology to not only protect documents, but also control access and revoke files too. Acrobat X now supports time-stamping documents from a trusted time source. Finally, Acrobat X is the only desktop application that can extend usage rights to Adobe Reader users so they too can sign and verify digitally-signed documents (and save forms and add comments and markup) at no additional cost.

When all is said and done, different capabilities are good to know about, but it’s important to remember that the savings in productivity far outweigh any savings you may gain in the purchase cost of cheap clone licenses. Check out the study to learn more about how the unique benefits of Acrobat X translate into savings for you and your organization.

Ali Hanyaloglu, senior marketing manager, Acrobat Solutions

Joel Geraci

I’m back at MAX this year as a speaker again presenting “Pushing the Envelope with Interactive PDF from InDesign”. I’ll be showing how I put together our interactive success stories using InDesign for the layout and Acrobat Actions to automatically add the interactivity. You can read an in depth article on what I’ll be showing in my article Actions in Action at Adobe and the follow on article Using the “Video Player Plus” with the “Insert VPP JavaScript” Action. I’ll take you through the process step by step and explain my logic behind it all.

For more on Joel’s MAX presentation, click here.

Thom Parker of Windjack Solutions is back at MAX this year and will be presenting “Automating Acrobat: Best Practices for using Actions and Scripting”. Thom has been involved with the Acrobat and PDF Community for quite a few years. In 2004, his company WindJack Solutions released its first Acrobat plug-in, PDF CanOpener, and followed that with two scripting related plug-ins AcroButtons and AcroDialogs in 2005. Thom is a prolific contributor in the user forums at acrobatusers.com, having answered thousands of questions since its inception. He has authored over 60 tutorials on a wide variety of Acrobat and PDF scripting topics for the site. Thom spends much of his time immersed in developing custom scripted solutions for clients spanning a broad spectrum of industries all over the globe, and providing custom on-line training in Acrobat and PDF scripting topics.

For more on Thom’s MAX presentation, click here.

Chris Converse and Patti Sokol, two MAX veterans will, be taking over for Lori DeFurio this year and presenting “I Didn’t Know Acrobat Could Do That!”

Chris Converse is a graphic designer and multimedia developer specializing in web design and development, interactive media, print, motion graphics, and CD-ROMs. Converse is co-founder of Codify Design Studio (codifydesign.com), which specializes in both graphic design and the technologies that make the design happen across media. Codify standardizes on many Adobe technologies, from developing rich-media PDF files that leverage dynamic Flash applications, to Ajax-based web solutions built on either Adobe Spry or jQuery framework.

Patti D. Sokol brings over 15 years of enthusiasm and experience in teaching Adobe products to her role as an Adobe Solutions Consultant. Her in-depth knowledge and facility for clear and concise explanations enable her to show clients how to solve problems using Adobe tools and products. A dynamic and interactive instructor and presenter, Patti is a Certified Technical Trainer and an Adobe Certified Instructor for Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, and Photoshop.

For more on Chris and Patti’s MAX presentation, click here.

Donna Baker, of Baker Communications, is a freelance graphic designer, and author of a couple dozen books about design software, and Web design. About half of the books she’s written are on Adobe Acrobat. Donna has also written a monthly article for Acrobatusers.com since the early days of the site. In the last year or so, she’s started to narrow her focus to all things Acrobat. She’s an Adobe Community Expert, an Adobe Certified Expert, and in her spare time she’s one of the online Adobe Acrobat Help system moderators.

For more on Donna’s MAX presentation, click here.

From Wednesday, August 3^rd through the 10^th, any Acrobat follower who ReTweets our #FormsCentral posts will be eligible for a yearlong FormsCentral subscription!  Help us spread the word on the latest updates and features to be added to FormsCentral!

FormsCentral is designed to provide the most up to date, intuitive and useful services for your business, so don’t miss a chance to win a yearlong subscription for free!  Check the Acrobat Twitter account for the latest updates and information. Be sure to pay attention to the Acrobat account for your chances to RT, and follow us for more information and of course winner announcements.

The contest opens 9 a.m., Wednesday, August 3^rd, 2011, and closes 2 p.m., Thursday, August 11^th, 2011. The prize drawing will occur on or before 5 p.m., August 11^th, 2011, with the winner announcement occurring that day as well. The drawings are open to residents in North America only.

So here we are to write an open letter to our dear old favorite SendNow Basic plan: Dear friend, no, you won’t manage our finances or do our dry cleaning. But you need not be fancy to require proof of delivery and download, or to require sign-in for each file you send. Security, as far as we’re concerned, should be expected of any vanilla cake; you shouldn’t have to add chocolate chips and lemon custard just to protect your own documents.

Though you may be simple, we can still dress you up: you’re happy to don that professional look by allowing for personal branding, which is an amazing feat for such an easy-to-use service. For those who run a small business, the ability to apply a logo to your clean appearance makes you a worthy choice for sending files to clients and customers.

Check out the rest of Rebecca Staley’s post on SendNow here!

Since we introduced our online forms service, FormsCentral, we’ve seen all sorts of organizations – from businesses and educational institutions to nonprofits – take advantage of the simplicity and speed our service provides to design, distribute, collect, and analyze data from HTML forms and surveys. Customers have been using FormsCentral for everything from grant applications and satisfaction surveys to class and event registration, as well as research. With the help of FormsCentral, they are moving their organizations forward, maintaining brand integrity, and creating worthwhile experiences for their constituencies. What’s more, they did all this without having to call the IT department.

While FormsCentral has made the task of creating surveys and collecting and analyzing data simpler than ever, there were a few loose ends.  We took a look at the wish lists and the pain points of both forms creators and forms fillers and have added several new features, including the following that we are announcing today:

• Create Summary Reports – Automatically generate a summary report for each form or survey you create. For each chart in the report, decide whether to display the caption, absolute count, or percentage of the total. Export the summary report to PDF or as a zip file of all the images to place directly in a presentation.
• Add Rating Scales – Get quick insights into customer opinions regarding your product or services – are they satisfied or unsatisfied with our level of support, ease of use?
• Apply Page Skip Logic – Tailor the form path with your respondent’s answers. With the easy-to-use interface you can define which page of your form respondents go to next based on their answer(s) to a previous question or even a combination of questions. (Paid-only feature)
• Redirect after submit – After respondents submit the form, redirect them to your website from the confirmation page or send them back to an empty form so they can fill it out again. (Paid-only feature)
• Embed your form – Cut-and-paste provided HTML code into your website or wiki and the form you created appears directly within your site. As always, responses are collected and stored within FormsCentral where you can analyze and share results easily.
• Integrate with Twitter – Sign into Twitter and post a message with a link to your form or survey from within FormsCentral.

We created FormsCentral to save you time and allow you to respond faster to customer and business needs. We think we’ve made FormsCentral even easier to use and more customizable with these new capabilities. For small and medium sized businesses that need an easy platform to create professional, branded forms, FormsCentral is the answer.

And it’s affordable! A free account gives you one form and up to 50 responses, and you can begin collecting and reviewing responses immediately. For $14.99 per month, you can create up to five forms and collect 500 responses per form. For $199 a year, you can create any unlimited number of forms or surveys and get up to 5,000 responses each.

If you haven’t yet tried FormsCentral, now is a great time to get all the details and go for a free test drive. When you see how it can add a new dimension to your business, we’ll think you’ll be sold.

Randy Swineford, group product manager, Acrobat Solutions