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!

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.

This past month, we began polling you, our community, on our Facebook page. From the poll results, we opened with a question about the average size of the files you send with file transfer programs. It sounds as though most of you send files that are smaller than 25 GB, but almost a third of you need to send 100 GB files, and about 7% have 300 GB files to send! That got us wondering: what types of files are you sending with file transfer services or FTP sites? Here are our results:

Facebook poll on the Adobe Acrobat page:

So, it seems that 52% of you are sending graphic files or web design assets, and about a third are sending large PDF files. Other popular files include high resolution photos, application updates, business plans and family memories (personal files to family and friends).

Don’t worry, though; we’ve got a really simple suggestion that we think will make your lives a little easier. If you’re using file transfer services or FTP sites to send graphics or other assets (or if you have any large files to send, really), you’ll want to try Adobe SendNow. Not only can you send up to 100 MB for free, but you can send a broad range of files from CAD files to audio or video files to Microsoft Word documents. For a full list of files check out the Adobe SendNow FAQ.

William Lau, senior product marketing manager, Acrobat Solutions

Top 10 Ways to Celebrate the birth of a technology that helped change the world

On June 15, Adobe Acrobat and PDF celebrate their 18th birthdays. Turning 18 is pretty significant. There are lots of things you can do at 18 that you couldn’t before. Like all the great new features and capabilities Acrobat has acquired over the years. But that’s for another blog.

Today, we want to celebrate. It would be nice to take Acrobat and PDF out for an evening on the town, for instance, but that’s not likely, of course. Instead, we’ve come up with a few ways you can celebrate this important milestone on your own, or with colleagues and friends, perhaps. All in good fun, naturally.

1. Play PDF Scavenger Hunt – Pick a document, the bigger and more interesting the better. Convert it to a PDF if it’s not already. Then create a list of words and race to find them first using the search tool.

2. Host a Shared Wisdom Meeting – If you’re more inclined to celebrate quietly, we suggest a Shared Wisdom Meeting. This one is great for an interactive lunch setting. Here you and your friends share your best Acrobat tips and tricks gleaned over the past 18 years. Use audio and video, collect your wisdom in a PDF Portfolio and share with colleagues.

3. Rent an Inflatable Jumper – This may be a stretch, but if you’ve never bounced around in one of these inflatable “rooms” it’s worth it to try your best Acrobat-ics.

4. Movie Night – Did you know you can incorporate video, 3D, maps, full-color graphics, photos, and more into PDF files? Yes, that means you can enjoy a movie or your favorite YouTube videos in the comfort of your own PDF!

5. Hawaiian luau – Maybe there’s no official Acrobat or PDF connection, but why not design your invites in PDF?

6. Host a Costume Party – Be anyone you want to be! PDF files are viewable and printable on virtually any platform. Create PDF “masks” with redaction capabilities. Give your PDF Portfolios “costumes” by adding your own logos and image with customization capabilities.

7. Take a Weekend Road Trip – Take lots of photos and keep a journal, then create a PDF Portfolio of your road trip memories.

8. Office Challenge – If you’re the competitive sort, try the shared document reviews marathon (track participation, comments…); or an interactive PDF Forms Relay for tracking and managing responses.

9. Toga Party – These are always fun. Bring a bottle or two of Acrobat wine along to impress your friends. If you need tips watch National Lampoon’s “Animal House.”

10. PDF-a-Palooza – Host a digital marketing party by grabbing your cool artwork and ads and editing your favorite customer photos in Adobe Photoshop. Present your best work to senior management in PDF!

There you go: 10 ways to celebrate Acrobat and PDF with Acrobat and PDF. What will you do to celebrate? We’d love to hear from you! Share your favorite PDF feature or celebration idea with us on our Facebook wall.

Stephanie Baartz-Bowman, principal product marketing manager, Acrobat