What is the best way to fill in PDF forms?

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Posted on by drnemer

I keep running circles around this issue with our company's Sharepoint we are developing.

We have Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and Adobe Sign, and we have plenty of Word-based content control forms.

All I want is to build a power app and/or build a flow that would allow employees to fill in existing Adobe Acrobat Pro pdf form fields and save them. Or even send them for signing.

The issue we are trying to solve is that it seems that if we are saving our PDf forms in our Sharepoint Document library it will lead to a situation where employees need to download the file to their local drive to complete. This isn't ideal. I would like to develop a query or a wizard that would allow employees to fill out forms through Sharepoint or a hosted Powerapp that will fill in existing PDF forms.

I just am unsure how to do it. There are all these premium connectors, 3rd party ones like Plumsail, etc, etc. It feels overwhelming to figure out what solution best works for our company.

So my question is if you had all these adobe forms or word forms that you wanted your employees to be able to complete online and either save, email or send through adobe sign, what would the option you would take? how would you configure this?

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obadiahjohnson 106 on at

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I was surprised not to find a Power Automate solution from Adobe when I was researching this same issue.
From what I can tell, there are currently two connectors that can fill in forms, Plumsail & Encodian. I'm no expert of either of them but Plumsail appears to be a part of a larger service platform so it's likely not useful for your needs.
Encodian is free up to 50 transactions and then escalates pretty steeply in pricing https://www.encodian.com/products/flowr/#form
I still hope Adobe develops this connector as well as it would be logical but this might work in the mean time for you.

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Rebekah278 30 on at

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Hello,
I was wondering if anyone has seen an Power Automate Adobe solution for this or any other ideas? I too have been running in circles trying to figure out the best way to have users fill, sign, and send PDF's while in the SharePoint environment.

I'd prefer to make it as simple as possible for our employees, meaning they don't need to know the ins and outs of Acrobat or DocuSign to do this.

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Shakesbeer23 72 on at

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What did you find out there? Ive tried encodian and plumsail so far. Encodian was too expensive but seemed to work, and so far plumsail is great but it’s inconsistent. There’s also a product called Muhimbi but it’s $100 per month.

Adobe Services does everything else besides filling in a pdf for some reason. So disappointing!

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Rebekah278 30 on at

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Hi @Shakesbeer23
I haven't had much luck. We have a license with DocuSign so I've been focusing on that strategy at the moment.
I've given up on the fillable PDF functionality and assuming the user has already filled it out once they upload it to SharePoint. You say the Adobe services seems to do everything else... I'm curious if it would work for this scenario I've been trying but failing with DocuSign.

My vision: User uploads the completed PDF to the SharePoint library, this triggers the Flow to run and send that user an email to sign the document, then it is forwarded to their manager for an approval signature. Signed PDF is saved back to the same SharePoint library with updated status as Complete or Approved.

I’ve taken a fillable PDF and created a model using AI Builder. The signature fields are removed, and I’ve entered DocuSign anchor tags (embedded white text) to be used within the Power Automate flow. These anchor tags should guide both users on where to sign.
I start with the trigger, “When a file is created/modified”. The AI connector successfully transfers the data from the form to my SharePoint library/list. The DocuSign connector “Add tabs for recipient on an envelope” fails with the error: “Specified anchor tab string was not found in the document”.
Working with the DocuSign community, it appears that the Power Automate action, “Add documents to an envelope” must be dropping the anchor tags causing the flow to fail. I can try to add an Encodian action to flatten the PDF before the “Add document to envelope” action to see if that works.
However… I’m told that the data may not be preserved when uploaded via Power Automate regardless.

Do you think the Adobe services will accomplish this for me? Any idea what type of licensing I will need or everyone in our company?

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Shakesbeer23 72 on at

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Check out this video and let me know what you think. Word document generation to pdf

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