Adobe Forms

Companies of all sizes depend on formal documents that reflect their corporate identities and contain critical business information from live systems. SAP and Adobe partnered with the goal of automating and streamlining forms-based communication to support customers who create reusable forms for their business processes. The result of this partnership is SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe.

Getting Started
The focus of new forms technology from SAP is interactive PDF-based forms that can be created in SAP systems as a result of the integration of Adobe technology with Web Dynpro and the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio.

With the integration of Adobe PDF technology into its solutions, SAP will be able to further extend its offerings of end-to-end business solutions by:

> Providing for the first time the capabilities of Adobe's interactive PDF-based forms.

> Integrating PDF documents into business processes that are driven by SAP applications.

> Automating the process of moving XML data from SAP applications into interactive forms and vice versa.

> Reducing time to design, manage, and maintain extended forms-based processes through easy-to-use forms design and deployment tools.

> Offering its customers enhanced printing capabilities, in particular for interactive Web applications.

Collaborative Business Scenarios
SAP and Adobe have combined their development efforts and expertise to provide their customers with new collaborative business solutions.

Business processes that use forms to communicate, for example in HR or the public sector, will provide visually accurate representations of forms on the desktop. With the Interactive Forms Solution, users can:

> Process forms both online with a connection to the system and offline on a local computer.

> Capture a form's appearance and data in one object.

> Fill in forms with specific data from SAP applications and transmit them securely to their intended recipients.

> Automatically check documents for consistency.

> Activate additional functions, such as inserting comments or digital signatures.

> Transmit completed forms back to the SAP application, updating the business data automatically.

> Create templates for interactive forms that include logos or images.

Protecting Customer Investment
Moving forms from existing solutions for forms-based processes such as SAP's Smart Forms or Adobe Output Pak for mySAP.com to the integrated Interactive Forms will be facilitated through migration assistance. Existing SAPscript and Smart Forms solutions will continue to be supported in the future. The strategic SAP/Adobe alliance protects investments made in current solutions

Interactive Forms - Use Cases
As forms are ever-present in business life, most business processes can involve forms-based input or output. The following are some real-life examples for employing Interactive Forms in your processes.

Online Interactive Forms
A user logs on to the company intranet to fill in a form required by the HR department (for example, a Non-Disclosure Agreement to be signed by a new employee). The form is displayed in the browser.

As the user is logged on in the background to the company's HR system, his master data is displayed in the form. The user enters the required information in the fillable fields of the interactive form, and sends the data back to the system by pushing a button. The system extracts the data from the form and saves it in the database.

Offline Interactive Forms
The purchasing department of a company creates a bid in its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and selects the potential vendors. Based upon this data, the system automatically creates interactive bidding forms with specific vendor information, such as the address or contact person.

The forms are transmitted to the vendors by email. The vendors can fill out the forms offline (without being connected to the system that created the forms) and transmit them back to the company. The company then processes the forms automatically, and the data provided by the vendors is written to the ERP system. The purchasing department uses the data to evaluate the quotation and then issues an order.

Forms for High-Volume Printing, Emailing, or FAXing
SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe provides all the features and functions you need to create form-based output, such as order confirmations, invoices, or pay slips. You can either print such documents or send them by email or FAX.