Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions

Extend your business processes
With Adobe® LiveCycle™ Reader® Extensions software, you can extend business processes beyond the enterprise to include partners, customers, and suppliers. Your organization can capture information and feedback more quickly and accurately than ever before, and even automate the process of updating core applications with the new data. As a result, you can sidestep the costly and error-prone process of manual data entry, while ensuring that every respondent becomes a virtually seamless part of your document-based processes.


Product overview
How it works
Key features
Sample documents
System Requirements

• Extend processes to internal and external parties
  The ubiquity and flexibility of Adobe Reader software extends the reach of your processes beyond the enterprise, while LiveCycle Reader Extensions enables special functionality that empowers respondents to be an active part of your key business processes.
  
• Improve collaboration
  Internal and external parties can view, comment on, complete, and return documents and forms electronically — without requiring additional costly software.
  
• Reduce costs
  Eliminating paper-based processes cuts the time and expense your organization spends printing, distributing, processing, and archiving paper-based documents.
  
• Ensure cross-platform compatibility
  With the free and ubiquitous Adobe Reader, your organization no longer has to worry about maintaining compatible platforms with external parties or mandating that customers and partners purchase proprietary or expensive client software.
  
• Eliminate costly errors
  Completing forms electronically means there is no need for your employees to re-enter data manually, thus reducing errors and processing costs.
  
• Achieve secure data capture and delivery
  Respondents can sign, certify, and authenticate their documents before returning them, thus increasing their confidence and satisfaction while preserving sensitive information.
  
• Enable fast and easy form completion
  End users can complete and sign a form online or offline and save a copy locally for their own records.
  
• Enhance responsiveness and satisfaction
  Faster and more accurate data capture means customers and constituents receive better service.
  
• Improve return on IT investments
  Adobe PDF can be embedded with content and data from key applications and enhanced with calculations and validations to create powerful Intelligent Documents and forms. By offering an avenue for returning captured data to key applications via SOAP-based interfaces, LiveCycle Reader Extensions further leverages existing investments in critical applications and processes.
  
• Ensure compliance
  With its ability to retain the visual format of original paper documents, Adobe PDF allows regulated industries and government agencies to conduct business using electronic documents, while ensuring that all forms, contracts, and documents meet strict regulatory guidelines.
  
• Streamline storage and retrieval
  Adobe PDF allows for easy and low-cost indexing, archiving, and retrieval of important documents, including new data provided by respondents.
  
• Deliver competitive advantage
  Your organization can ensure that product and service designs efficiently and accurately incorporate input from all key parties — even vendors and customers — to speed time to market and optimize quality.
  
• Provide enhanced security
  LiveCycle Reader Extensions delivers the functionality to enable respondents to digitally sign completed documents and forms.
  
  

Datasheet (242 k)

Product overview

Key participants in your business processes are located inside and outside your organization. Whether internal or external, customer trading partners, suppliers, and employees are integral to your business processes. But not all of them can be counted on to use the same computing platform or to invest in the same software you use to create applications, CAD drawings, marketing collateral, purchase orders, or forms.

With Adobe® LiveCycle™ Reader® Extensions, no costly software is required to easily and efficiently equip third parties to participate in your business processes. LiveCycle Reader Extensions works with existing IT assets to create an automated environment for capturing information and feedback vital to helping your company or government agency cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, speed time to market, and extend the value of your investment in enterprise applications.

How it works

LiveCycle Reader Extensions allows you to embed one-time usage rights within an Adobe PDF document. These usage rights "turn on" hidden functionality within free Adobe Reader software, so end users can view and interact with intelligent Adobe PDF documents. To manually assign rights to a small number of documents or forms one at a time, LiveCycle Reader Extensions provides an intuitive Web browser interface. The Web interface enables any authorized user of LiveCycle Reader Extensions to assign functionality, with no special technical expertise required. Using a programmable Application Programming Interface (API), you can also assign functionality to a large batch of documents.

LiveCycle Reader Extensions software works hand in hand with the ubiquitous Adobe Reader universal client, which is available free of charge and already has been distributed to more than 500 million desktops. Normally dormant end-user capabilities are automatically activated when the rights-enabled Adobe PDF document is launched within Adobe Reader. When the respondent is finished working with the document, those functions are once again disabled until the user receives another rights-enabled PDF file. All of this functionality comes at no additional cost to your customers, constituents, partners, or colleagues.

Key features

Add collaborative functionality to Adobe Reader

• Enable users to save a copy of PDF documents including any data or comments they have added.
  
  
• Allow users to interact with PDF documents offline, while retaining their data and comments for submittal when they reconnect.
  
  
• Provide users with intuitive tools that make it easy to highlight or underline text, create sticky notes, add stamps, and add attachments to documents.
  
  
• Equip users to sign, certify, and authenticate documents with support for digital signatures (VeriSign, Entrust, and other PKIs).
  
  
• Empower users to electronically submit PDF documents and forms online or via e-mail.
  
  

Streamline process administration

• Apply rights via an intuitive Web browser interface.
  
  
• Automate processes further using an API.
  
  
• Take advantage of the free, ubiquitous Adobe Reader to ensure compatibility with any respondent.
  
  
• Extend the reach of critical processes to any Web browser.
  
  

Leverage existing IT investments

• Integrate with other enterprise applications that have SOAP-based interfaces.
  
  
• Deploy on a scalable, high-performance server architecture.
  
  

In government

• Streamline the processing of tax forms, license and passport renewals, vehicle registrations, and other documents that require information and approvals from constituents.
  
  
• Enable end users to easily and intuitively interact online with agencies, promoting faster service and enhanced constituent satisfaction.
  
  

In financial services

• Easily establish paperless processes for applications, account changes, balance transfers, deposits, and purchase or sell orders.
  
  
• Create new efficiencies in loan processing by distributing digital applications that include customized data specific to the applicant, and enabling fast and easy completion, signing, and submittal online or offline.
  
  

In manufacturing

• Enable collaborative product design by giving customers and suppliers the ability to review and mark up drawings early in the design process.
  
  
• Aggregate content from multiple sources to create RFQs that can be distributed, completed, and submitted electronically — with no additional software required for respondents.
  
  

Sample documents

Income tax form (PDF: 74k)
Mortgage application (PDF: 176k)
Advertising copy (PDF: 663k)
Contract (PDF: 623k)

System Requirements

Windows
Intel® Xeon or equivalent 2.8GHz or faster processor
1GB of RAM/1 CPU
Swap disk space: 30GB minimum, 7600 RPM drives
350MB of available hard-disk space for installation
CD-ROM drive

AIX
IBM® Power4 or equivalent, 1.7GHz or faster processor
1GB of RAM/1 CPU
Swap disk space: 30GB minimum, 7600 RPM drives
CD-ROM drive

Solaris
Sun™ UltraSPARC® III, 1.2GHz or faster processor
1GB of RAM/1 CPU
Swap disk space: 30GB minimum, 7600 RPM drives
350MB of available hard-disk space for installation
CD-ROM drive

Supported Platforms
IBM WebSphere 5.1.0.3 with fix pack PQ88973 and SUSE Linux 8
IBM WebSphere 5.1.0.3 with fix pack PQ88973 and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux 2.1
IBM WebSphere 5.1.0.3 with fix pack PQ88973and Microsoft Windows 2003
IBM WebSphere 5.1.0.3 with fix pack PQ88973 and Sun Solaris 9
IBM WebSphere 5.1.0.3 with fix pack PQ88973 and AIX 5L
SAP Web AS Version 6.40
JBoss 3.2.2 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 2.1
JBoss 3.2.2 and Microsoft Windows 2003

Related products

Adobe LiveCycle Designer
Adobe LiveCycle Document Security
Adobe LiveCycle Reader® Extensions
Adobe LiveCycle Forms