An Introduction to Adobe® LiveCycle® By Vlad Ghelesel, VP of Business Development, Ensemble Systems Adobe® LiveCycle® software is a technology platform comprised of document services that can help enterprises streamline and automate business processes by enabling more efficient capture, processing and archiving of information. There are eleven products in the platform, each specializing in a different service. Whether using all of the LiveCycle software or just a certain few, LiveCycle software provides a mechanism of interacting with information and automating business processes for easier coordination of information within an enterprise and with customers. A detailed list of products can be found on the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/products/livecycle. Adobe® LiveCycle® software solutions capitalize on the ubiquity of the Adobe Reader and PDF and XML standards to allow organizations to exchange information with their users and integrate with existing enterprise infrastructures. The entry point into the LiveCycle software technologies is Adobe® LiveCycle® Designer , a desktop tool for creating interactive and dynamic forms based on Adobe XML forms. Designer is a WSIWYG tool allowing you to drag and drop various fields onto a form. Form designer also provides the ability to bind form fields into data sources such as XML Schema, web services, and ODBC data providers. This step allows the highly visual designing process to integrate seamlessly into existing enterprise technologies and data infrastructures. Additional support for logic can be achieved through scripting via JavaScript. Once your template is created, Adobe LiveCycle Forms can generate the output form as PDF or HTML. Data from other applications, and existing enterprise data sources, can be merged into the document prior to presenting to the user. In addition to form creation and data merging capabilities, it provides support for data extraction from the submitted PDF, and also allows for server side processing of the data. LiveCycle Forms functionality is accessible via a JAVA API as well as Web Services, which facilitates integration into your other Enterprise Applications. Some benefits of LiveCycle Forms are: Capture data intelligently for both internal and external users, Deliver to any browser running on a desktop rendering your form to either a browser or Adobe Reader, Remove delay of manual processing and routing, Reduce the high cost of paper-based information gathering, Improve Data Consistency, and accuracy, Ease of Enterprise Integration, Zero footprint - enterprise wide form deployment without physically touching a single desktop. Some practical applications of LiveCycle Forms include: application for services and benefits, travel request and approval, and expense management. You can also create customized solutions for online insurance, loan applications that communicate with back end systems, as well as delivering a portal based solution for delivering surveys to your audience. With Adobe Reader being the de facto viewer for PDF documents, Adobe LiveCycle software is well positioned to allow enterprises the maximum reach to its users and customers. Given this wide spread acceptance and install-base of Reader, enterprises need to have an ability for end users to fill in data, save the data, sign the document electronically, and engage in review sessions through the free Reader's user interface. Adobe® LiveCycle® Reader Extensions enables these rights for a PDF document. Documents which have been reader extended, will be able to perform the abilities mentioned above using Adobe Reader. These abilities already exist inside a PDF and LiveCycle Reader Extensions provides an interface into turning these abilities on and leveraging them for your business. Some benefits of LiveCycle Reader Extensions are: Streamline data capture and collaboration, Enhance security by signing, certifying, and providing authentication mechanism for PDFs, Allow for collaborative environment, such as commenting and mark-up, Provide support for offline XML data transfer capabilities to submit data electronically directly within acrobat reader One major challenge many businesses face is ensuring business sensitive information stays with the intended audience. Most security options provided by different vendors use a secure pipe approach, such that the transmission of information is secured between the author and recipient. However, once the document is received by the recipient, it could be readily redistributed. For example, a highly confidential document is sent out to selected parties for review, however, one day you find a printed copy of the document in plain sight in the lunchroom. How do you ensure this does not happen? Adobe® LiveCycle® Policy Server has a persistent document security model that stays for the life of the document. LiveCycle Policy Server provides dynamic, persistent document control. It is dynamic because the policy can be altered after redistribution, expiration dates can be set on a document for a certain period of time it is available. LiveCycle Policy Server ensures accountability on the document by tracking whether a document has been opened or printed. It ensures policy management is applied both internally and externally by integrating with LDAP for internal user authentication, as well as adding external user accounts to the system such that your customers and partners can also participate in the document lifecycle. Another important LiveCycle software document service is Adobe® LiveCycle® Security Server, which allows you to generate signed and certified PDF documents, encrypt and decrypt PDFs and validate digital signatures programmatically. When generating a certified PDF using LiveCycle Security Server you can rely on Adobe Documents for many one-way and round-trip business tasks. For example, using certified documents, you can monitor document integrity throughout complex online processes that require multiple participants and signatures. Some examples of this include prospectus preparation, loan rate setting, HR processes, and claim approval. You can also use LiveCycle Security Server to validate digital signatures from third-party vendors in batch on the server, further reducing the turn around time for mission critical business processes. Also, before a transaction, you can check whether a document has been altered, and the identity of the signing party before proceeding. The ability to programmatically sign PDF documents eliminates the need for individuals to physically open each file and add signatures. When an organization has a need to streamline, integrate and secure human-centric business processes, Adobe® LiveCycle® Workflow is a natural fit. LiveCycle Workflow allows organizations to visualize end-to-end workflows that reduce time, cost and risk of automating document-centric processes. The workflows are easily maintainable and can be kept inline with your business/organization flows with very little effort. Adding additional business processes takes days versus weeks or months if you were to programmatically create the workflow. LiveCycle Workflow also acts as the orchestration tool for the other LiveCycle services and existing Enterprise Applications. Using reusable components, called Quick Process Action Components (QPACS), you can rapidly assemble complex workflows. Adobe Days Learn how easily Adobe LiveCycle solutions and the NEW Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional enable you to create intelligent documents, collect information more efficiently, combine multiple documents, collaborate with colleagues and control sensitive information. In this seminar, you will learn how LiveCycle, Acrobat 8 Professional and other Adobe technologies can quickly and reliably help your agency to: Streamline anytime, anywhere self-service processes using rich Internet applications and intelligent forms Increase operational efficiencies and constituent satisfaction Accelerate approval processes, correspondence and case management with intelligent documents and digital signatures Provide real-time and just-in-time training online Facilitate team collaboration in disparate regions Create and publish visually rich, dynamic, accessible content while improving agency communications and decision-making Help ensure compliance with mandated standards, including security, accessibility, archiving and enterprise architecture. Monday, Nov 6 - Vancouver, Sheraton Wall Centre, 9am-12pm Tuesday, Nov 7 - Edmonton, Fairmont Hotel MacDonald, 9am-12pm Register now About Ensemble Ensemble (www.ensemble.com) is an Adobe partner with expertise in requirements analysis, architecture, implementation, and deployment involving all Adobe technologies, in particular, solutions incorporating Adobe® LiveCycle®, Flex, and Acrobat. We have extensive experience in developing industry-specific Adobe solutions-for telecom, the government, financial services, and manufacturing, among others. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, we field people where they are required, anywhere in the world.