Primavera Conference Report
The answer is that we have not integrated any of our technology into Primavera products. Based on the over whelming response and the candid conversations of what we should do, there is definitely a need. What we recognized and the reason we attended was that during the normal work process in Primavera products, several output to pdf to share their documents with others. Our focus at this time was how you can expand the active use and leverage Acrobat for more than "print to pdf".
There are three features that I would like to highlight that were very relevant to a "Primavera" workflow. The first is the ability to leverage the Free Adobe Reader. As most told us, their current workflow is "print to pdf" and email to the respective parties. This is a great first step and it also gives you your engagement platform with your colleagues, customers, engineers, suppliers, etc. The Free Adobe Reader is on 89% of desktops so this gives you the ability to collaborate with confidence. What was surprising, is that most did not know that you could enable a pdf file so that users with the Free Adobe Reader can have "Acrobat" functionality. For instance, you may be solicitating comments on the schedule. You could go to your Comment Menu in Acrobat and choose "Enable for Commenting in the Adobe Reader" before you send the file. What this does is it turns on the Review and Commenting tools for the users with the Free Adobe Reader to make comments directly on the pdf and send those back to you. If you wanted to solicit feedback as part of a workflow you could use our "Send By Email For Review" and "Shared Review".
The next feature that I would like to point out is our Forms capabilities. Our industry revolves around capturing information from multiple sources and parties. A new feature in Acrobat 8 is the ability to create pdf forms from those that you have in place today or from scratch. You can even take a non-fillable form and turn it into a fillable form with the press of a button. The feature you want to explore to do this is the "Forms - Run Form Field Recognition". If you have fields that do not convert, you can use the Adobe Designer to correct them. On top of this you can also use the new "Distribute Form" feature which will again enable the form for users to fill out the information with the Free Adobe Reader as well as SAVE and Digitally Sign. When you collect the forms they will automatically build a pdf package which you can import, as well as export the data to other applications.
The last feature I wanted to highlight is our 3D capabilities. A lot of attendee's talked about 4D as it relates to 3D models tied to the schedule and progress. Acrobat 3D is not going to tie your schedule to your 3D asset but what it will do is extend the reach of your 3D assets. Too many times today the 3D model is not extended outside the areas of the company that use it for design or construction. Acrobat 3D will enable you to share your designs via a pdf document and anyone with the Free Adobe Reader can consume that content.
My parting thought of what Adobe does for the Primavera community is it helps to solve interoperability issues as it relates to extending information outside Primavera applications to a wider audience. PDF is a format in which you can communicate and collaborate with confidence with others. What we hoped to illustrate at the conference and were very successful is how you can really use Acrobat for many other workflow's other than "print to pdf".
Have fun,
Jonathan