PDF Form with Workflow and Digital Signatures

[#1]

Hello All,

I am very new to AEM space, so please excuse if question sounds very basic to you. But please help me understand the dos and don'ts.

Here is the situation. At our organization, we had been using paper based forms. The users could go online, download the form, print it, fill it (by hand), sign it, scan it and send to appropriate personeel for approval signature. In the end, the form will end up in HR or payables with all required signatures. 

We purchased Adobe's AEM solution to cut down the manual processes. With the purchase, I have installed Adobe's experience manager (6.2) on weblogic server, Forms designer tool and Acrobat Pro on my desktop. With Acrobat Pro, we converted flat PDF forms to fillable PDF forms. As a user I can open the fillable PDF form on my desktop and put my digital signature, but cannot send it to next person for his/her signature. I could also, deploy filable PDFs on AEM's forms portal. From the forms portal I can open the fillable PDF in a new tab in my web browser, but that's it. How can I invoke a workflow or process to move the filled form in the approval chain? Can I use workflow within AEM OR Do we need additional software like livecycle server? I am stuck at this roadblock, the Adobe documentations are humongous and I always loose the track when livecycle and workflow come in picture. I hope this is not something out of the world we are trying to achieve, there must be many of you who have implemented this type of solution. I would really appreciate if someone can (please) list out the tasks that we should follow to achieve this?

Thanks in advance!

Naresh

[#2]

nareshp9284939 wrote...

Hello All,

I am very new to AEM space, so please excuse if question sounds very basic to you. But please help me understand the dos and don'ts.

Here is the situation. At our organization, we had been using paper based forms. The users could go online, download the form, print it, fill it (by hand), sign it, scan it and send to appropriate personeel for approval signature. In the end, the form will end up in HR or payables with all required signatures. 

We purchased Adobe's AEM solution to cut down the manual processes. With the purchase, I have installed Adobe's experience manager (6.2) on weblogic server, Forms designer tool and Acrobat Pro on my desktop. With Acrobat Pro, we converted flat PDF forms to fillable PDF forms. As a user I can open the fillable PDF form on my desktop and put my digital signature, but cannot send it to next person for his/her signature. I could also, deploy filable PDFs on AEM's forms portal. From the forms portal I can open the fillable PDF in a new tab in my web browser, but that's it. How can I invoke a workflow or process to move the filled form in the approval chain? Can I use workflow within AEM OR Do we need additional software like livecycle server? I am stuck at this roadblock, the Adobe documentations are humongous and I always loose the track when livecycle and workflow come in picture. I hope this is not something out of the world we are trying to achieve, there must be many of you who have implemented this type of solution. I would really appreciate if someone can (please) list out the tasks that we should follow to achieve this?

Thanks in advance!

Naresh

Are you using AEM Forms JEE? Assuming you are - you need to deal with 2 components (1) Form (2) Workflow. 

1) Form: For the form, I suggest you use Adaptive Forms instead of PDF Forms. Most of the new browsers (chrome, firefox) come with their own PDF reader plugins. Those plug-ins do not support PDF Forms. I know many organization does not provide permissions to users to change default PDF Reader/Viewer for their Browsers.Adaptive Forms are HTML5 based so there shouldn't be a problem with browsers and there can be multiple digital signatures solution possible with Adaptive Forms too, depending on what 'signature' requirements you have. 

2) Workflow: Workflow implementation usually depends on the use case.  Assuming that this is an internal use case, you can create Long Lived processes using AEM Workbench tool.  Long lived processes allow you to create approval workflow. You could also invoke a Long lived process when the Adaptive Form is submitted. 

Priyank P

[#3]

Hi Priyank,

Thanks for responding to my concerns!! We want to sign with "Digital ID". For the internal forms, the users should be able to sign with their local Digital ID and for contractual and outside the organization forms, we intend to go through certificate authority. Can we use Digital ID signatures with adaptive forms? We are also open to use any other signature except the scribble one as most of our internal users use laptop or desktop within organization (no touch screen), it's difficult to make a scribble signature with a mouse.

Thanks and regards.

Naresh