Adobe Acrobat recognized as a finalist for the 2023 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award

We are pleased to share that Adobe Acrobat has been recognized as a finalist for 2023 Microsoft Partner of the Year in category of Apps & Solutions for Microsoft Teams — Modern Work. This award recognizes Adobe’s outstanding commitment and dedication to drive digital transformation for customers through implementation of solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Acrobat for Teams allows you to view, share, and review PDF content right where you already communicate, without needing to switch between apps. It brings Acrobat to every Teams user, enabling a better reading experience in the subtlest way, such as, being able to rotate a page while also ensuring the document is rendered exactly as the author intended. All too often, work is interrupted or critical information missed because an element like a comment or sticky note is not rendered by a PDF alternative. As inventors and pioneers of the PDF format, Adobe ensures a high fidelity experience.

We are democratizing tools such as highlighting, annotating, and commenting available for free to Teams users. Acrobat for Teams is not a PDF Reader — the same app is also made for users with Acrobat Pro/Std entitlements for the final mile actions of protecting, compressing, and converting documents for publication. With these tools organizations can effectively collaborate across boundaries in today’s hybrid world of work - all without compromising on security as the shared PDFs remain encrypted.

“Seamless experiences are delivered through seamless partnerships.” said Álvaro Celis, vice president Global ISV Commercial Solutions, Microsoft. “Together with Adobe, we continue to unite data, content, and processes, to create, share, and collaborate all in one place. We want to empower businesses through world class tools that help drive collaboration, efficiency and productivity.”

“This best-in-class PDF experience is resonating with users in organizations large and small, with over a million users now using Acrobat for Teams every month.” said Simon Williams, vice president, Digital Media Strategic Development & Partner Marketing, Adobe. “Adobe recognizes the challenges of modern work — the proliferation of apps in everyday tasks, global round-the-clock collaboration, context switching across multiple UIs, logins, and devices. All the advancements in empowering employees with new capabilities are coupled with complexity and the risk of overloading users. Our approach has been to meet users where they are working, studying, or browsing. This results in a more mobile workforce, no learning curves for employees, no difficult deployments, and more value from your Microsoft and Acrobat investments.”

Acrobat for All

Back in November, we announced that Acrobat can now be set as the default app for working on PDFs in Teams across your entire organization. With a few quick steps, Teams Administrators can bring the Acrobat PDF experience to all users. If you already have an Acrobat license, you can start using your credentials to sign into Acrobat for Teams.

Exciting updates for users

Adobe is focused on ensuring Acrobat is the all-in-one-app that simplifies the way you work and communicate through PDFs. With our Acrobat and Microsoft integrations, the goal remains the same. We have been hyper-focused on listening to our enterprise customers and making changes based on their feedback. Some of the recent updates include:

• Clean new “Modern Viewer” experience, consistent with Acrobat on the web and desktop.
• @mentions allow you to tag others while commenting, and automatically notify the tagged user by the app bot/email right away.
• Open in Acrobat Desktop lets you seamlessly jump to the Acrobat app from personal files, shared files in OneDrive, SharePoint and channels.
• The Acrobat app’s Home screen now does not require you to sign-in to see your Recent files

Making deployment easier

We also have updates that make it easier for Admins to install, assign and manage the app. You can learn more on how to get started here.

• Acrobat is one of the apps that is part of the Auto install Approved Apps (AAA). Acrobat installed through AAA respects all app admin governance controls and allows users to open their PDFs in Teams with Acrobat. This is especially useful for organizations that already use Acrobat desktop or web and have users who may not know that the Acrobat app is also available as a Teams app. Learn more on AAA here.
• Hide Premium Features. To avoid sign-in prompts triggered by users clicking on premium tools, we have now greyed out the paid tools for a free user. A free Acrobat account provides access to annotating, highlighting and commenting tools on signing-in. The premium tools, however, will only appear for users that sign into their Acrobat Standard or pro account. This helps to avoid the creation of unnecessary IT tickets for Admins.

Better together

Adobe Document Cloud and Microsoft have worked together on integrating Acrobat, Acrobat Sign and Acrobat services with Microsoft Edge, OneDrive/SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Power Automate, amongst others. Through these comprehensive integrations, the partnership helps businesses automate document processes, increase productivity, and enhance collaboration without compromising on security.

Recently, for our focus on trust, identity, & compliance and integration of Microsoft Purview Information Protection into Acrobat, Adobe was named as the Microsoft 2023 Security ISV of the Year. Furthermore, last month at Microsoft Build, Adobe launched Acrobat Sign Workflow Automation integrated with Power Automate. This integration brings access to all Power Automate functionality directly into Acrobat Sign web at no additional cost.

Our team is looking forward to continuing to deliver exciting updates and being at the Partner of the Year award celebrations at Microsoft Inspire. Until then, happy collaborating!