Reader Extensions: How does it work??

[Former Community Member]

I've been reading through a lot of these posts and am still unclear how it works.



Is it software or a service?



I have a simple PDF created using Acrobat 6.0 Pro. I have added areas for our customers to fill in their details and a submit button so they can e-mail it back. This is easy. However, when they fill in the form in whatever version of Reader they have they can't submit it or save it with changes.



I presume I need to run it through the Extensions Server? There is no information here on how to do this. Do I download some software to do it? Will it work if I buy LifeCycle Designer 7 and create the form with this?



I only have one form so don't want to spend a lot of $.



Any help with how I obtain this software/service will be much apprciated.

[Former Community Member]

Basically this is a software product that you buy from Adobe that you install on your local hardware. Once installed, Reader Extensions provides you with a service that "extends" PDF documents.



The interface is very easy to use. Basically you select the file you wish to extend, then the features you wish to provide in the free Reader and it gives you back the extended version of the same PDF.



If you speak to your sales rep I am sure they could arrange an evaluation of the product and the sales engineer can describe and demo the product in detail.



There's a good overview located at: http://www.adobe.com/products/server/readerextensions/overview.html



There are also two good white papers that provide the full overview, download them from:

http://www.adobe.com/products/server/readerextensions/indepth.html



And if all else fails, email me, I'll talk you through it (lsutton@adobe.com).

[Former Community Member]

how do i know if i have a reader extension included in my software?

[Former Community Member]

It does not get installed with Designer or anything like that. You would specifically have to have installed it or have it installed alone or part of a Sandbox type of installation. Try checking http://localhost:8080/ReaderExtensions/ in case it was installed on your Desktop.



For the paper-trail, check your licensing documentation, it would be clearly marked.

[Former Community Member]

Check out http://adobe.breezecentral.com/barcodedformsares/ for a quick walk through on how to install and use ARES (in this case related to bar-coded forms).

[Former Community Member]

If you only have 1 form, you should look at FormRouter's hosted Form Server solution.

http://www.formrouter.com/



Mike

[Former Community Member]

I have a PDF designed in Adobe Lfecycle designer v7, the form has the basic capabilities of Save locally,enable comments,attachments and submit the data to the database. For which iam aware that the PDF need to be Reader enabled. I read Mike's comments which says a something about the FormRouter. I would want to know more about it as i only have 1 PDF file.



Your help is appreciated.

[Former Community Member]

Can someone throw some light on the relevance of Adobe Reader Enable and Sandbox?

[Former Community Member]

The "Sandbox" is a "suite" that is installed on your system as a development environment that basically includes all of the LiveCycle server based products. A very quick and easy turn-key install.

[Former Community Member]

"Reader Enabled" basically refers to a PDF that has been passed through the "Reader Extended" process. The PDF can then be marked-up, form data saved locally, and all kinds of other features that are usually not available in the free Reader.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Lee

[Former Community Member]

Where and how do i install the sandbox? i aready have the adobe designer v7 installed in the machine.

[Former Community Member]

If you have already downloaded the Sandbox, then you simply double-click the EXE. The guys who put this together have made it childs-play to install. It will install all the applications, the database, and the application server for you.

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Lee,but from where do i download the Sandbox. I tried looking for it in the Adobe downloads,could not see it there. need your help again.

[Former Community Member]

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/toolbox/



Mike

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Mike

[Former Community Member]

I have dowloaded the Sandbox to my local drive and ran the EXE which extracted all the files, then it ran "Sandbox-setup.bat" file, it opened the command prompt and asked to press any key to continue, once i did that, it said creating Shortcuts and Shortcuts folder and then closed the window. Please help me with this problem, could not fnd a log file. What are all the prerequisites for this install.



I already have Lifecycle designer v7 installed in the system.



Any help with how to go about with this is greatly appreciated.

[Former Community Member]

You're right about having to run the document through Extension Server which costs about $50. For each form, you run it once and it extends the form. That is, it makes the form fillable and the form and its contents locally savable using Reader alone (for free), otherwise you would need Acrobat (about $400+ per copy). Designing the form with Livecycle Designer 7 has nothing to do with it.



That's only half the story though. You have to obtain a license for every form you want to extend. I was recently quoted $10,000 for a single form! I think the next price break is for 10 or more forms, but still very expensive. The justification I heard was that extending forms means less need and fewer sales of Acrobat, which is the only way to fill and save a from that is not extended. Adobe has a lock on this and they're playing it for all its worth.



You may wish to look at the Form Router service mentioned below. I think this was created to save poor guys like us. Keep me posted.

[Former Community Member]

Lee, I have installed the simple turnkey version of Sandbox (LiveCycle7Sandbox-V5.11-Base-External.exe) according to all instructions I can find. The Sandbox will not start correctly. It is throwing the error:

11:16:07,125 ERROR [URLDeploymentScanner] Incomplete Deployment listing:

MBeans waiting for other MBeans:

ObjectName: user:service=QuartzService,name=QuartzService

state: CONFIGURED

I Depend On: jboss.jca:service=LocalTxCM,name=QuartzDS



Depends On Me:



MBEANS THAT ARE THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM:

ObjectName: jboss.jca:service=LocalTxCM,name=QuartzDS

state: NOTYETINSTALLED

I Depend On:

Depends On Me: user:service=QuartzService,name=QuartzService





What configuration changes do I need and how/where do I make those changes?

[Former Community Member]

Another issue I am facing is that when I tried to sign-in into tech support to address this issue, my userid/password (the same one that just got me to this area) would not work. Is Adobe aware of this and are you working on correcting it?