Acrobat for Legal Professionals

March 25, 2009

Acrobat Deployment Tips, Links and Techniques

Adobe recently released security updates to Acrobat and Adobe Reader 7, 8 and 9.

Large law firms and corporations centrally distribute software to users on the Windows platform.

In this article, I'll discuss the tools and techniques that are available to help IT personnel deploy and update versions of Acrobat 7, 8 and 9, including the free Adobe Reader.

First, I'll show you where you can download the apps and our tools for deployment. In the full article, I'll discuss how to "chain" installs, expand Adobe Reader, and use the Adobe Customization Wizard to streamline installation.

Get the Updates and the Deployment Tools

Various updates are available depending on the version of Acrobat and/or Reader you have installed. To make it easier to customize Acrobat, Adobe offers installation tools which help you remove earlier versions of Acrobat, serialize the product, and set a wide variety of program options.

The links below are for Windows versions. Mac Acrobat users can find updates here.

Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9.1 Acrobat 9.1 Acrobat Standard and Pro 9.1 Update (Windows) Acrobat Pro Extended 9.1 Update (Windows) Adobe Reader 9.1 Adobe Reader Enterprise Edition (Windows) The enterprise edition of Reader does include Adobe AIR or Acrobat.com installations. Many firms don't want to install these anyway. Installation Tool for Acrobat 9 Adobe Acrobat 9 Customization Wizard (Windows, FREE) Use this tool to remove Acrobat/Reader 7 or 8 and above and to customize program options. The result is a custom transform file to use with the deployment tool of your choice.

 

Acrobat and Adobe Reader 8.1.4 Acrobat 8.1.4 Update for Acrobat 8.13 Standard and Professional Previous Acrobat 8.x Updates available here. Adobe Reader 8.1.4 Adobe Reader 8.1.4 Update (Windows) Adobe Reader 8.1.3 Full Installation (Windows) is available from the Reader Download Center Installation Tool for Acrobat 8 Adobe Acrobat 8 Customization Wizard (Windows, FREE)

 

Acrobat 7.1.1 and Adobe Reader 7.1.1 Acrobat 7.1.1 Standard and Pro Update (Windows) This will update an Acrobat 7.1.0 installation. Previous Acrobat 7.x updates available here. Adobe Reader 7.11 Update This will update an Adobe Reader 7.10 installation. Installation Tool for Acrobat 7 InstallShield Tuner for Acrobat 7.0 (Windows, FREE) This product allows you to install and deploy Acrobat 7 and Adobe Reader 7.

Adobe generally does not issue complete, new packages for dot releases, so it's important to properly "chain" these installs. I'll also discuss how to expand the Adobe Reader to make it installable, and discuss the Acrobat Customization Wizard and other resources available. Read on for this information.

NOTE: If you receive my blog via email, make sure you click on the article title to read it on my blog.

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September 25, 2007

Free DMS Integration Plug-in for Acrobat

Acrobat integration with Document Management Systems (DMS) is a key requirement of large law firms.

Unfortunately, many firms have been frustrated getting Acrobat to work with their DMS.

While the DMS vendors generally supply Acrobat integration, there are issues which affect customer deployment:

• Integration for the latest version of Acrobat may not be available until a new release of the DMS becomes available, which could take many months.
• Support for newer versions of Acrobat running on legend (older) versions of DMS software is seldom available.

Acrobat integration—while expected by large firms—isn’t a revenue generating activity for DMS vendors.

I shared this customer issue with Thaddeus Bouchard, the CTO of Omtool. Omtool offers AccuRoute, a document routing solution which I see at many large firms. This company has lots of expertise in DMS integration because AccuRoute works with just about every DMS available.

When Thaddeus said, “Hey, maybe we can work together on this problem . . .” I knew something good could happen!

Sometime before the end of October 2007, Omtool will offer a free download of the Swiftwriter plug-in for Acrobat.

Swiftwriter offers integration with the following DMS products:

• Interwoven/iManage FileSite/Desksite (versions 5.x through 8.2)
• OpenText/Hummingbird DOCSOpen (3.9.6 through 4.0)
• OpenText/Hummingbird DM5 through DM6
• World Software Worlddox GX
• Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and 2007

Read on to learn more about the Swiftwriter plug-in and some background information that you may find helpful.

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January 25, 2007

Enterprise Deployment of the Adobe Acrobat 8 Family

Adobe Acrobat 8 poses new opportunities—and some new challenges—for the IT staff of large organizations which need to deploy Acrobat to many users.

Adobe offers a new, completely re-written installation tool called the Adobe Customization Wizard for Acrobat 8.0. This tool allows you to create a Windows Installer Transform file (.MST) to modify Microsoft Installer files (.MSI).

On March 9, 2007, Adobe announced that we are discontinuing the Adobe License Manager . I consider this a win for customers!

This article covers two issues:

• I've already deployed Acrobat with ALM or I need non-ALM licenses to install. What do I do?
• How do I customize the installation of Adobe Acrobat?

I’ve included several links throughout this article which offer a deeper dive.

For the record, I’m not a deployment expert, so I cannot respond to technical questions about this topic.

Read on to learn more about common deployment questions…

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