Can LiveCycle create an editable PDF which when filled out can be SFTP'd to a secure server?

[mtalebi2]

Hello all. I work for a community college. Our financial aid department has a couple of editable PDF's which they would like to post to our website for students to fill out. Once a student fills out the PDF, there should be a Submit button which is used to SFTP the document to one of our secure servers which can then import the PDF to our document management system. Since these files are for financial aid, they must be secure. This process is supposed to eliminate a lot of paper usage. Is Adobe LiveCycle Designer the tool that can help me do this? What else would I need? Thank you.

[Former Community Member · Accepted solution]

Designer cna help you build the form but it will not allow the transfering of the form. If you want to automate the the transfering of the PDF from within the form (click on a submit button) then there are only certain protocols that are supported. Secure FTP is not one of them. You can submit using HTTPs to a server program and have that update your system, or email it otherwise you will have to use another program to transfer the finished file for you.

Hope that helps

Paul

[mtalebi2]

Thanks. So lets say I use the Designer to create a pdf form that has a submit button using one of the supported transmission methods. Would I need some special "LifeCycle" web server or software on our web server for this functionality to work? The form has to be in PDF format because it has to exactly match the way a federal form looks.

[Former Community Member]

Nope, Adobe has tools to make it easier but you do not have to use their tools. Typically for submitting a PDF you only need a program on the server side (a servlet, an ASP page, a Pearl script or simething like that) to recieve the transmission and then do something with what was sent in. If you decide to email the form in then you will need to Reader Extend the form to allow Reader users to do a local save. If you simply submit the form you will not have to Reader Extend it.

Make sure that you test the form inside and outside of the browser (served up from the server and saved on the local hard drive). Different HTML engines are used for submitting and you want to make sure that everything works the same for you in both environments (especially the message that you return that indicates that the submission has been recieved). 

Hope that helps

Paul