Adobe and Microsoft announce new, deeper integrations to turbocharge the modern workplace

Image credit: Adobe Stock/Paul Bradbury/Caia Image.

These days, if you’re running a modern workplace — one that is wading through challenges and opportunities hybrid work presents — it is about creating a holistic experience that modernizes how everyone connects regardless of the environment.

Today at Microsoft Build, Adobe is excited to announce the latest milestone in our partnership with Microsoft to improve how work gets done today. Through new advances in business processes and intelligent automation, we continue to give our joint customers the most modern work experience, centered on technology that enhances teamwork, collaboration, and efficiencies. Our goal is to help you do your best work wherever you are. That means bringing all-in-one, digital experiences to where people already work, like Microsoft.

Expanding our shared vision for the digital-first workplace

Here's a bit more about the new capabilities that deliver on our common vision for end users, developers, administrators, and IT decision makers:

• New advances for Acrobat and Acrobat Sign for Teams: We continue to build on the Microsoft Teams platform to make the experience of editing, commenting, converting, signing, and collaborating on PDFs richer, more efficient, and more personal without moving between different apps, user interfaces or separate log-ins. In Acrobat for Teams, we recently added the convenience of Single Sign-On (SSO) and introduced the personal tab — a home page for curating all your recent documents, tools, and collaboration into one view. These new features are also available in Acrobat Sign for Teams, in addition to enabling signing from a Teams notification. You can now sign-off on a document instantly, without breaking stride to open a browser or app.

• Technology Preview of Live Share with Frame.io: Frame.io, now an Adobe company, will preview a Live Share integration with Frame.io at Build. This integration will show how the combination of Frame.io and Microsoft Teams could be used to enable synchronized, interactive reviews of work in progress. Future products could allow multiple participants to meet via Teams while simultaneously reviewing content from Frame.io with synchronized video playback on everybody’s system.

• Acrobat and Microsoft Purview Information Protection: Users will soon be able to apply Purview Information Protection labels and policies to their most important documents within the desktop version of Acrobat. It’s critical for business leaders to add Purview Information Protection to standard business contracts traditionally shared as PDFs like purchase orders, partnership agreements, and service contracts, ensuring that only critical stakeholders can view, manage, and approve those documents. Sign up for the preview program here.

• Acrobat Sign and Power Automate embed: We’re making it easier for customers to streamline repetitive tasks as well as connect data and apps by bringing Power Automate directly into the Acrobat Sign experience. This means that organizations will be able to quickly automate the workflow and audit of e-signatures across hundreds of business processes like field service requests, sales contracts, new hire forms, and IT requests. Sign up for the preview program here.

• Adobe Experience Manager Forms connector for Power Automate: Adobe Experience Manager Forms offers an end-to-end solution for creating, managing, and delivering mobile-responsive, dynamic forms, and documents that integrate natively with Acrobat Sign. Now, users may easily connect this powerful tool with Power Automate, and kick-off a business workflow, after a form is submitted through Adobe Experience Manager Forms. Action items such as review, approve, and trigger notifications are seamlessly integrated within Power Automate to drive higher efficiency and collaboration.

• Acrobat Sign Graph Connector: New tasks on active agreements will be indexed alongside data from Microsoft 365 and the broader Microsoft ecosystem. Acrobat Sign users will be able to search for and find agreement tasks right within their Microsoft search results. Reducing the time to check on signature status, and being actively prompted with newly completed agreements, reduces the cycle time for everything from sales contract closures to employee onboarding.

• Acrobat & Acrobat Sign for Microsoft 365 Unified Install: IT admins can deploy and manage Acrobat & Acrobat Sign add-ins across Microsoft Teams, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint, reducing the time spent deploying these add-ins to end-users.

• Adobe Acrobat Sign for Government FedRAMP Moderate authorization coming soon: Hosted on Microsoft Azure Government Cloud, Acrobat Sign has achieved a new government authorization level, FedRAMP Moderate, that extends e-signatures to highly sensitive processes like collecting personal info. The FedRAMP Program is a U.S. federal government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.

“No two companies are better positioned to meet the business imperative of today’s hybrid world — easy and secure digital-first experiences with PDF and e-signatures at the core,” said Ashley Still, SVP/GM of Digital Media, Adobe. “Through the deeper integrations between Adobe and Microsoft that we’ve announced today, we continue to innovate to elevate today’s agile and rapidly evolving workforce.”

“The number one priority for every industry leader is streamlining how business is done with their customers, employees, and partners — wherever they are,” said Charles Lamanna, Corporate VP, Business Apps & Platform, Microsoft. “Together, Adobe and Microsoft are delivering advanced workflow capabilities through Power Automate and Acrobat Sign that will give our joint customers a better way to get things done.”

Modern work in practice

According to the 2022 Forrester Total Economic Impact Study, commissioned by Adobe, when organizations use Adobe Document Cloud and Microsoft tools, everything gets done faster and more efficiently. In fact, businesses report a 30 percent increase in transaction speed and a 40 percent decrease in customer complaints about signature processes.

Norfolk County Council (UK) already uses the seamless integration between Acrobat Sign and Microsoft 365 to automate requests and paperwork, saving them significant time and resources and strengthening compliance with audit trails and real-time visibility. Norfolk County Council saved 4.5 days a month automating signature workflows and even reduced the time to prepare legal documents from 45 to 12 minutes.

“E-signatures were always a part of our plans, but the COVID-19 pandemic meant that we needed to move much faster than expected,” says Kurt Frary, CTO and deputy director of Information Management & Technology for Norfolk County Council. “Adobe Acrobat Sign stood out for its integrations, ease of use, and fantastic support. With help from Adobe, we went from nothing to fully operational digital signatures integrated with Microsoft solutions in just under four weeks.”

Our new hybrid work reality has turbocharged the shift from paper-to-digital, and no one can afford to be left behind. More than 180 million Microsoft commercial active users including Hitachi, TSB Bank, Clark County, City of Seattle, Sanofi, and Iowa State University have access to Acrobat Sign as part of their Microsoft workflows. Microsoft has also moved internally to Acrobat Sign, which is the preferred e-signature solution across its entire portfolio.

What’s next

Our news at Microsoft Build is an important milestone for our work together, but there is much more to come. It is our mission to continue to innovate together to truly make the lives of our joint customers more productive and efficient. Delivering modern experiences is the way, and it will continue to be at the center of how we work.

Learn more about how Adobe and Microsoft are transforming the future of work here.