• Automate routine, multi-step tasks with new guided Actions that can be shared with coworkers.
• Change how users interact with content and its context with PDF Portfolios using new layouts, visual themes and color palettes.
• Microsoft SharePoint integration. Check-in, check-out PDF files for reviewing and editing shared documents.
• A streamlined process for large organizations to deploy, configure and manage updates and conform to ISO standards, including support for Microsoft SCCM and SCUP.
• Updated user interface: Display the most commonly used tools all in one pane.

Reader X will introduce support for PDF documents that contain a much wider range of content types, including drawings, email messages, spreadsheets, videos and other multimedia elements. It also has new collaboration features: Users can make notes and share feedback by marking up PDF documents using the Sticky Notes and Highlighter tools. Other new features in Reader will include:

• Choose reading mode to fit more content on the screen, or two-up mode to view page spreads.
• Directly access online services at Acrobat.com from within Reader X. Perform common tasks such as creating PDF files, securely sharing and storing documents and screen sharing.
• Availability on additional mobile platforms, with support added for Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry Tablet OS.

Acrobat X is available to pre-order now; Reader X will be made available for download next month.

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In my view, we all need a web conferencing platform with a light footprint that enables us to hop in and out of web conferences with ease, without having to fire up a complex client to initiate the session. Acrobat Connect Pro could certainly find a home in browser tab where it could be waiting, ready for you to jump into a new web conference.

Acrobat Connect Pro 7.5 includes the following new features:

Integrated Audio. Flexible audio integration is a must have in a web conferencing platform. Take a look at your own project team; it’s doubtful that every team member is using the same phone system. Acrobat Connect Pro’s integrated audio (which was recently covered by Simon) adds an important communications layer to this web conferencing platform, and means that it can support VoIP, landline and mobile telephones as well as a range of traditional teleconferencing systems. If needed, you can even have conference attendees in the web conference using their PC’s mic and speakers.

Native PDF Support. If you and your team use Adobe Acrobat PDFs as a standard working format then you should know that this version includes PDF support, with improved workflow and Adobe Acrobat integration. PDFs offer a secure publishing format especially if you, your team, and clients are having issues with document corruption, incompatibility and other problems that can sometimes ensue with passing Microsoft Office documents around via email.

Additionally, there are refinements to Acrobat Connect Pro’s secure desktop sharing and interface with whitelisting and more granular security controls, which could open up the prospect of secure desktop sharing to organizations that may have been wary of it in the past.

Acrobat Connect Pro Goes Mobile

This latest version of Acrobat Connect Pro is also promising an iPhone client to enable iPhone users to attend web conferences on the go. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to test this feature out as yet.

This latest release of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is definitely worth a look if you’re seeking a flexible web conferencing system for your project team.

Have you used Acrobat Connect Pro for web conferencing? Share your experience below.

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Here are some tips to help better manage document reviews at a distance:

Establish review guidelines. Truth be told, many organizations don’t know how to review and approve a document. As such, it is important to set out how you want your reviewers to check over each document. Your review guidelines should:

• Instruct the reviewers to follow procedures step-by-step. Tell them to point out incorrect steps and identify why the step is in error.
• Encourage the reviewers to look for better ways to present data, or identify if a different function or listing that would work better in the same situation.
• Instruct reviewers to check to see if the artwork (listings, figures, illustrations, tables) corresponds with the references in the text.
• Tell the reviewers to test  each line of program code and describe any problems.

Designate document stakeholders. Have a designated document stakeholder check over the document(s) undergoing review to help set review priorities and free up resources to ensure the document review happens on deadline. The stakeholders can also tie the document review into the overall project plan, if needed.

Identify primary and backup reviewers. This is a commonsense first step when project teams span multiple time zones, and even continents. If the primary reviewer is unavailable to resolve a question, then the team can always go to the backup reviewer.

Set a realistic review schedule. It is rare that a stressed and harried project team can make a full document review in just one pass. So depending on your project schedule, take the initiative to manage expectations and set a review schedule that ensures reviewers are going to add value to the documents they are reviewing.

Use online collaboration and version control. WebWorkerDaily regularly covers the latest in collaboration tools. Using one of these tools can help you better manage the review process with your team.

Use electronic document review tools. With Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat you can mark up and comment on electronic documents just as you can with pen and ink on a hardcopy document — there’s no need to fax documents any more. If your team is reviewing an XML-based document, look towards a solution like LiveTechDocs (I reviewed it for WWD).

LiveTechDocs Application

How do you manage document reviews?

Image credit: svilen001 from sxc.hu.

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Adobe Acrobat includes a number of electronic review tools. In this post, I’m going to show how you can use them to make online editorial comments.  While this post was based on Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, many of these review tools can also be found in Adobe Acrobat going back a couple of versions. Note that these tools are only available in the full version of Adobe Acrobat, not Acrobat Reader.

Comment & Markup Tools

Acrobat’s Comment & Markup tools offer a number of powerful tools for marking up PDF documents. Adobe has done a good job on the usability of these tools by including using many analogues of traditional paper-based review tools.

Comment & Markup Toolbar. You can think of the tools present on this toolbar as a substitute for a pencil, sticky notes and a highlighter. Launch the Comment & Markup toolbar by choosing it from the “Comments” menu. This toolbar includes Sticky Notes, the Text Editing tool (new in Acrobat 9), the Stamp menu (analogous to print stamps of old), the Text Highlighter, a Callout tool for drawing attention to graphics and text, and there also a number of shape tools for drawing arrows and other shapes.

Comment Menu. The Comment menu includes options for comment display. You can also choose “Attach for Email Review” to send the PDF out to other team members via email, or “Send for Shared Review,” which uses Acrobat.com or a corporate server for hosting shared document reviews.

Text Edits and Acrobat PDFs. The PDF format had gained a reputation for document security because users could not modify text — especially useful for important documents like contracts and invoices — but with Acrobat 9, you can make text edits to PDFs, including inserting, deleting and replacing text. However, the text editing tools in Adobe Acrobat aren’t as robust as those in, say, Microsoft Word, and are only really useful for making very minor edits.

Review Approvals. Depending on the formality of your project team, there should be some sort of review signoff. While you can take the easy road with a simple email signoff, recent versions of Adobe Acrobat include an electronic signature feature that you can use for this purpose. In Acrobat 9, choose “Sign,” and then “Sign Document.” A dialog box appears. Click “Sign” and follow the prompts that appear.

Manage the Document Review

Before embarking on your first Adobe Acrobat-based document review with your team, I recommend the following:

• Ensure that all team members have a full license for Adobe Acrobat. The review tools in this post are only available in the full version of Acrobat, not in Acrobat Reader.
• Discuss the need for standardization of how all the team members will use the review and comment tools (if you already use a standardized markup, it should be fairly easy to transfer this to a PDF review system).
• Document any standard document review procedures as an aid for reviewers, especially those who aren’t frequent Adobe Acrobat users. The procedure should have a provision for final document approval by the reviewer, whether by electronic signature or by email approval.
• Make the review process accessible to the team for future reference.

Do you use Acrobat for document reviews? Share your tips in the comments.

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Adobe is adding to options for working in the cloud with Acrobat.com. About a year ago, Acrobat.com went online, competing with Google Docs and Zoho with word processing, collaboration options and tools to work with PDFs. Since then, Adobe had also added Presentations to the mix.

The news at Acrobat.com is twofold. First of all, Adobe has added a new spreadsheet tool, bringing its suite of online tools in line with those offered by Google and making it far more useful to a web worker who wants to handle all of the basic office file types in the cloud. Second, Adobe has announced that Acrobat.com is leaving beta, which, in turn, has led to the announcement that business subscriptions for these tools are going live.

The new developments at Acrobat.com make for some changes that actually appeal to anyone who works online for a living. Google Docs has been a long-time favorite for managing personal files or even handling certain projects, but it has some shortfalls when it comes to managing business files over the long term. Even the simple ability to save a PDF can make a big difference for users that handle the majority of their daily work online. But Adobe will be taking the usefulness of its online tools a step further. It has already announced plans to launch a desktop AIR application that unifies its online tools and offers a way to work offline — and you’ll be able to share workspaces through the application. All these developments make it clear that Adobe is targeting professional web workers far more than Google Docs does.

While Acrobat.com is adding paid subscriptions to the site, there will still be free accounts available. The subscription choices — Basic for $14.99, and Plus for $39 — primarily offer the opportunity to share web meetings with more participants and other collaboration options, and offer more support. Proper support can make Acrobat.com’s tools more appealing to many businesses than its competitors. While Google Apps remains an alternative, tools like the desktop application may be more than enough to lead some users to make the switch.

The interfaces for each of Acrobat.com’s tools could be enough to convince a person to switch all on their own. The simple fact is that most online applications have interfaces that mimic their offline counterparts to some extent. More than a few word processing options have a definite similarity to Microsoft Word, for example. Acrobat.com’s options, however, offer interfaces that appeal to users that have long since tired of that appearance. The interface for Presentations, for instance, is slick and intuitive — there is a learning curve when you make the switch from another application, but it’s fairly shallow. It’s almost as if Adobe created Presentations with a few of its other users in mind, like those already using the company’s design software.

Acrobat.com reports that it already has 5 million accounts registered, and is picking up 100,000 users each week. With Adobe’s focus on professional users already working online, it’s likely that number will continue to grow. The tools offered on Acrobat.com are sturdy enough for business use, with an interface that is enjoyable to use.

Do you use Acrobat.com? Let us know your thoughts on the service in the comments.

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A buffer overflow exploit has been discovered that could render your computer vulnerable to attack; a malicious party could potentially use the exploit to take control of your machine. All versions of Acrobat and Reader from 7 onwards on all platforms are vulnerable to attack.  Patches to these products will not be available until March 11th. Until Adobe issue an update, it may be advisable to switch to an alternative PDF reader (Foxit works well for Windows), and, as always, it would be a good idea to make sure that your antivirus software is up-to-date and exercise extreme caution when opening files from untrusted sources.

(via DownloadSquad)

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When you create a YouSendIt account (1GB of monthly download and 100MB file size comes for free; $10 per month will get you substantially higher limits), you get access to a variety of YouSendIt applications. These applications allow you to work directly from your desktop or from other software. For example, YouSendIt Express sits on your desktop (OS X or Windows, while the YouSendIt Outlook application is implemented as a Microsoft Outlook add-in.

The latest release in this group of applications is YouSendIt for Acrobat Pro. After installing this on my Mac, “Send by YouSendIt” appeared on the File menu, right next to “Attach to Email”. Using this is as simple as filling in the recipient’s email address, along with a message; the current file is already selected. Using YouSendIt this way is literally as simple as using email for the file transfer, with the added benefit of handling huge files (as well as access to YouSendIt’s other features, such as delivery tracking and return receipts). The recipient gets a link in their email that they can click to download the file, just as you would if you shared it directly via YouSendIt’s web site.

The more of these integrations YouSendIt presents, the easier it becomes to use – and the more likely web workers will choose it instead of email. Other available integration options include Aperture, iPhoto, Photoshop, CorelDRAW, and (in beta) Microsoft Office for Windows.

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