Barnaby James

October 03, 2006

Acrobat Shared Review

Shared Review

Acrobat 8.0 introduces a new method for document reviews called Shared Review. In previous versions, Acrobat has supported two types of reviews - email reviews and online (or browser-based) reviews. Email reviews require the initiator to distribute the document by email and reviewers send their comments back - it works fairly well for small groups of people because there are no configuration issues (for the most part) but the only reviewer that sees my comments is the initiator.

Online reviewing, by contrast, uses a central comment store (usually some kind of WebDAV server or Network Folder) for comments and the document is viewed in the browser. The review is tracked by the URL of the document which sometimes caused problems and configuration was difficult but all of the reviewers can see each others comments as they are made.

For Acrobat 8.0, we looked into the problems that customers were encountering with the existing reviewing options and the type of network infrastructure that is commonly available. Shared Review is designed to take the best aspects of email and online reviewing and improve the whole experience - the idea was to make the whole review process robust.

• Reviewing works independently of how the file is distributed - you can open a review in the browser, save it locally and email it to someone else and it will just work.
• Setting up a shared review location and initiating a review is much easier than for online reviewing.
• Reviewing a document can be easily used when disconnected from the network.
• Review files can be enabled to allow Reader 8.0 users to participate (this requires Acrobat 8.0 Professional).
• Changes in the review since the last time the review was opened are tracked - for example, new reviewers and new comments.
• When reviewers cannot connect to the review location (for example, a reviewer outside your firewall) are automatically routed into an email workflow.
• Reviewer comments are stored as an RSS 2.0 file (a common XML format) with some extensions to make it easy to extract information (for example, to integrate the comment workflow with a server side application).

When you initiate a shared review, you specify a location for your comments (either a Network Folder, a WebDAV server or a Sharepoint Workspace) which is baked into the PDF so that whenever the document is opened, it will know where to locate the comments. Because of this, you can distribute the file anyway you want - through email, upload it to a content management system or put on a server (possibly to be distributed as a PDFCast). As with email reviews, Acrobat 8.0 Professional is able to Reader enable a shared review document so that anyone with Adobe Reader 8.0 will be able to participate.

When a participant receives a shared review document, the first thing they see is an opt-in dialog - a shared review needs to be able to talk to a commenting server and we need permission from the user to do this. If the user agrees to participate, the welcome dialog is shown which indicates the current state of the review since the last time the document was opened - how many new reviewers have joined, how many new comments have been made.

Participating in a shared review creates a subscription relationship between Acrobat / Reader and the comment server so comments are synchronized as changes are made. A utility called the Adobe Synchronizer copies new comments from the review location and publishes your comments in the background. The Synchronizer handles network disconnection by keeping a local copy of the review data so you can always work with the most recent version. This allows you to seamlessly participate in a review while disconnected, for example on a long airline flight. When you reconnect to the network, any comments that have been published and new comments from other reviewers will automatically be synchronized with your client.

Connected to the review location	Disconnected from the review location

The review tracker allows you to keep track of the review state for all of the reviews that you are participating in.

• ≪ PDFCasting with Acrobat / Reader 8.0
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• More details about Shared Review ≫