Document automation with Acrobat Sign for Microsoft Power Platform
Learn how to activate and use the Acrobat Sign and Adobe PDF Tools connectors for Microsoft Power Apps. Build workflows that automate business approval and signature processes quickly and securely without any code. There are four parts to this hands-on tutorial outlined in the links below:
Prerequisites
- Microsoft 365 and Power Automate familiarity
- Acrobat Sign knowledge
- Microsoft 365 account with access to SharePoint and Power Automate (Basic for Acrobat Sign, Premium for Adobe PDF Tools)
- Acrobat Sign for enterprise or Acrobat Sign developer account
Exercises 1 and 2
- Acrobat Sign account with access to the API. A developer account or an Enterprise account.
- SharePoint site accessible by Power Automate that you have edit permissions to. Full admin access is recommended.
- Sample document for the Signature approval request and signing.
Exercises 3 and 4
Download materials here
Part 1: Store signed agreement in SharePoint with Acrobat Sign
In part one, you’ll use a Power Automate Flow template to set up an automated workflow that will save all signed agreements to your SharePoint Site.
-
Navigate to Power Automate.
-
Search for Acrobat Sign.
-
Choose Save an Acrobat Sign completed agreement to SharePoint library.
-
Review the screen and configure any needed connections. Enable the Acrobat Sign connection.
-
Click the blue
+symbol.
-
Enter your Acrobat Sign account email and click the password field in the new window.
Wait a moment for Adobe to check your account.
note note NOTE This check will route you to the appropriate login if you are using an Adobe ID or our corporate SSO. -
Complete login.
-
Click Continue to go to the Flow editing screen.
-
Name the trigger.
-
Configure your SharePoint settings.
Site Address: Your SharePoint Site
Folder Path: Path to the Shared Documents you want to use
File Name: Accept the default
File Content: Accept the default -
Save the flow.
-
Navigate to the flow overview screen with the blue back arrow. You will test this flow in part 2.
You will test this flow in the next part.
Part 2: Automated approval process to get e-signature with Acrobat Sign
In part two, we build off the first part with a more robust Flow and test both Flows to see them in action.
-
Select Templates on the left side from the Power Automate interface.
-
Search for “manager approval.”
-
Select Request manager approval for a selected file.
Review the connections and add any you are missing.
note note NOTE If this is the first flow you are doing with approvals, they will be fully configured when the flow runs. -
Click Continue to go to the flow editing screen.
This flow has a lot of pre-configured steps including error checking and nested conditional steps.
-
Configure For a selected file as follows:
Site Address: Your SharePoint site
Library Name: Your Documents repository -
Add an input as follows:
Type: Email
Name: Signer Email
-
Configure Get File Properties: as follows:
Site Address: Your SharePoint site
Library Name: Your Documents repository -
Scroll down and look for If yes.
-
Click Add an action in the If yes box (not the bottom most one) to add the steps to send for signature.
-
Search for SharePoint get file content and choose Get file content.
-
Configure the Get file content as follows:
Site Address: Your SharePoint site.
File Identifier: Search for “identifier,” and choose Identifier from the Get file properties step. -
Search for “Adobe” and choose Acrobat Sign to add another action.
-
Enter “upload” into the search box for Acrobat Sign and select Upload a document and get a document ID.
-
Search for the dynamic variable Name to get the name of the item/document selected in the trigger under File Name.
-
Click Expression in the variable assistant under File Content.
-
Add a single apostrophe, then click back to Dynamic Content, delete your apostrophe, select File Content and then click OK.
Make sure there are no additional apostrophes and it looks like the sample below.
-
Search for “create” in the Acrobat Sign search area to add another Acrobat Sign action.
-
Select Create and agreement from an uploaded document and send for signature.
-
Configure the required information:
Choose Name from the dynamic variable assistant in Agreement Name.
Choose Document ID from the dynamic variable assistant in Document ID.
Choose Signer Email from the dynamic variable assistant in Participant Email.
Enter “1” in Participant Order.
Choose Signer from dropdown in Participant Role.
-
Save the Flow.
Test the flow
Go to your SharePoint site’s document repository to test it out.
-
Select the document and choose Automate and the Flow you just created.
-
Start the flow to validate the connections (first run of flow only).
-
Enter a nice message to the approver in Message.
-
Enter email for the document Signer in Signer Email.
-
Click Run flow.
The configured approver for the user starting the flow will get an approval request. You can approve through email or through the Power Automate Action Items menu.
Once approved, sign your document. Depending on your user and if they are logged into Sign, you may need to open the signing windows in a private browser window.
Complete the signing, and then look back in your SharePoint folder.
Part 3: Automated document OCR with Adobe PDF Tools
In part three, you’ll learn how to automate OCR in PDFs when they are imported into Microsoft SharePoint. This addresses an issue that occurs with scanned PDF documents that are not searchable in SharePoint.
Setup a folder in SharePoint
Go to Microsoft SharePoint where you would like to store documents.
-
Click + New to create a new folder called “Processed Contracts.”
-
Click + New to create a new folder called “Old Contracts.”
These folders are now referenced as part of your Power Automate flow.
Create a flow from a template
-
Log in to https://flow.microsoft.com.
-
Click Templates in the sidebar.
-
Select Convert newly added files to text searchable PDF in SharePoint.
-
Click the + symbol next to Adobe PDF Tools.
-
Navigate to https://www.adobe.com/go/powerautomate_getstarted in a new tab.
-
Click Get Started.
-
Sign in with your Adobe ID.
-
Enter Credentials Name and Credentials Description and click Create Credentials.
Keep the window with the credentials open. You will need to enter them into Microsoft Power Automate.
-
Enter the credentials and click Create in Microsoft Power Automate.
-
Click Continue.
Now you can see a view of the workflow, and you’ll need to configure it for your environment.
-
Select Site Address field and choose which SharePoint site you are using under the trigger called When a file is created in a folder.
-
Click the folder icon to navigate to the Old Contracts folder located under Folder ID.
-
Edit the Create file action at the bottom of the flow:
Change Site Address to your site address.
Specify the location of the Processed Contracts folder in the Folder Path. -
Click Save in the top right corner.
-
Click Test.
-
Select Manually.
-
Click Test.
Try your new flow
-
Navigate to the Old Contracts folder in SharePoint.
-
Navigate into E03/Old Contracts in the exercise files you downloaded.
-
Copy the ReleaseFormXX.pdf files into the Old Contracts folder in SharePoint.
Now if you navigate to the Processed Contracts folder, you can see your PDFs available after the flow is given a few moments to run. If you open the PDFs, you can see that the text is selectable.
In addition, SharePoint indexes the document, allowing you to search the content of your documents from the search bar in SharePoint.
Part 4: Automated document assembly with Adobe PDF Tools
In part four, you’ll learn how to merge many documents together based on information provided while selecting and starting a flow from Microsoft SharePoint. In this scenario, the flow will:
- Ask for information to choose what to include in a package for a customer.
- Based on the information provided, it merges many documents together. These documents include a cover page and optional whitepapers.
- The merged document is saved to SharePoint.
Import exercise files into SharePoint
-
Open the E04 folder in the Exercise files.
-
Import the Proposal, Templates, and Generated Docs folders into SharePoint.
These folders will be used for reference. In particular, you will use the Proposal.docx file for your proposal.
In the Templates folder, there is a Covers folder that includes cover page designs for different cities. There is also a Whitepapers folder that contains optional additional whitepapers that will be attached to the end if selected.
Import the flow into Microsoft Power Automate
-
Log in to Microsoft Power Automate (https://flow.microsoft.com).
-
Click My Flows.
-
Click Import.
-
Click Upload and choose the GenerateProposal_20210311231623.zip folder in E04/Flows/.
-
Click Import.
-
Click the Wrench icon under Action next to Send Proposal to Customer.
-
Select Create as new under Setup.
-
Set the name of the flow under Resource Name.
-
Click Save.
Repeat this for the other Related resources and select your connection.
-
Click Import after you have made all your connections.
Set For a selected file
Now that the flow is created, do the following:
-
Click Edit.
-
Select the trigger For a selected file.
Add your SharePoint site in the Site Address.
Add your Library in Library.
Set templateFolderPath
- Click the templateFolderPath variable.
- Set the path to where the Templates folder is located inside the SharePoint site that you imported.
Set Cover Get File Content
-
Click Cover action, which expands the Scope.
-
Expand Cover: Get File Content.
Set Site Address to your SharePoint site.
Set Selected File
-
Expand the Selected File scope action.
Change the Site Address and Library Name to your SharePoint site and Library respectively under Get file properties.
Change the Site Address to your SharePoint site under Get file content.
Set Whitepapers
-
Click Whitepapers action.
-
Expand Condition: Add Whitepaper.
-
Expand Whitepaper 1: Get file content using path.
Edit the Site Address to your specified SharePoint site.
Repeat the same steps for Condition: Add Whitepaper 2.
Set Create File
-
Expand Create File.
Edit Site Address and Folder Path to the SharePoint site and path where the Generated Docs folder is located.
-
Click Save.
Test your flow
-
Navigate to the Proposal folder in SharePoint.
-
Select Proposal.docx folder.
-
Select your flow under the Automate menu.
-
Click Continue to begin the flow.
-
Choose your Cover and the whitepapers you want to append.
-
Click Run flow.
Navigate to the Generate Docs folder. You should now see your generated PDF file.
Adding Protect and other actions to flow
Now that you have successfully created a flow, you are going to edit your flow to encrypt the PDF document with a password. This also walks through how you can utilize other actions.
-
Navigate back to the end of your flow.
-
Click the + symbol between Merge PDFs and Create file.
-
Select Add an action.
-
Search for “Adobe PDF Tools”.
-
Select Protect PDF from Viewing.
-
Use Dynamic Content to set the File Name field to PDF File Name from Merge PDF.
In the trigger, there is a Password field that is part of the initiation form. We can use that here.
-
Search for Password field using Dynamic content, and place it in the Password field.
-
Use Dynamic content to set it to PDF File Content from Merge PDFs in the File Content field.
-
Change the Create file to get the file content from Protect PDF rather than Merge PDFs.
-
Expand Create file.
-
Clear the File Content field.
-
Use Dynamic Content to place PDF File Content from Protect PDF from Viewing.
Test your flow
-
Navigate to the Proposal folder in SharePoint.
-
Select Proposal.docx.
-
Select Automate to choose your flow.
-
Click Continue to begin the flow.
-
Choose the Cover and the whitepapers you want to append.
-
Set the Password field to the Password you would like to set.
-
Click Run flow.
-
Navigate to the Generate Docs folder.
You should see your generated PDF file. Open the PDF file and it prompts you to enter your PDF password.