Adobe Sign for SharePoint (On-Premises): Installation Guide

The Adobe Sign integration for Microsoft SharePoint provides an integrated solution for creating, sending, tracking and managing electronic signatures. The integration is available for Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and 2016 On-Premise instance of SharePoint. The solution is developed as a farm solution for Microsoft SharePoint and provides:

• Ability to add the Adobe Sign Manage page as a SharePoint web part, which can be used by SharePoint users for tracking and updating Agreements
• Send any document from a SharePoint document library for signature
• Ability to send documents to a single recipient or group of recipients from a document library or custom SharePoint lists
• Map data from SharePoint lists as well as from a document library into documents through merge mapping when the documents get sent for signature
• Map data from form fields of signed agreement into textual columns of SharePoint lists as well as a document library through data mapping when the document has been signed and its status has been either automatically or manually refreshed through the Agreement Status page
• Archival of all signed agreements within SharePoint

Requirements

The Adobe Sign solution can only be installed and configured by a Microsoft SharePoint Farm administrator; you will also need administrative privileges on the SharePoint server to install the solution. Please consult SharePoint documentation and your organization’s SharePoint administrator for additional systems permissions that may be required to install SharePoint farm solutions. To configure the solution, you also need to be an account administrator on Adobe Sign and have access to your Adobe Sign account Integration Key. System requirements below encompass both the server and client components required to successfully install and run Adobe Sign for SharePoint.

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 On-Premise, SharePoint 2016 On-Premise, or SharePoint 2019 On-Premise
  

Known issues to be aware of

Private/Incognito browser sessions are not supported by the Adobe Sign package.

Sharepoint has character limitations that you want to keep in mind, specifically when naming files:

• URL paths must be 260 characters or less
• File names must be 128 characters or less

Administrators who are identified as “System Account” when they sign in at any site collection should enter their own information in the  AdobeSignUserInfo List as follows:

There is a situation that can occur with the previous solutions that can block normal SharePoint users from accessing the site collection.

The problem occurs if:

• The EchoSign solution (prior to version 4) is installed on the site collection
• The SharePoint Admin has embedded the solution as a web part on any SharePoint page
• The SharePoint user is a member of the site collection owner/visitor/member group
• The SharePoint user is not a member of the EchoSign admin or user group

To correct the problem, remove the web part from the SharePoint page. 

Installation

To install the on-premise edition of the Adobe Sign for SharePoint package:

1. Download the new Adobe Sign for SharePoint.zip file
   
2. Log in to your SharePoint server as an Administrator
3. Upload the Adobe Sign for SharePoint.zip to the server
4. Unzip the file to extract the executable
5. Click the Adobe Sign for SharePoint.exe
6. The setup wizard will open.  Click Next

  7. The script will run a system check. If all is well, click Next

  8. The End User License Agreement will be presented.

○ Check the I accept the terms in the License Agreement box

○ Click Next

  9. The Web App / Site Collections page will load.  Select the Site Collections you want to install the solution to

  10. Once the Setup completes, click Next

  11. Once the Details page for the deployment appears, you can click Close

Activate / Remove options

Re-running the Setup script will launch the same wizard and system check process. 

After the System check, instead of advancing to the EULA page, the script will prompt you to either:

○ Activate – Activate allows the Admin to activate the Adobe Sign solution on additional Sites in the SharePoint environment. When selected, the Web App / Site Collections page loads, displaying all sites where the Adobe Sign solution is not active (step 9 above).

○ Remove – This option will completely remove the solution from all site collections that Adobe Sign has been activated in. Completed document files will remain in SharePoint.

Agreements that are in process will still be active in Adobe Sign, and will complete normally. The completed documents will no longer be returned to SharePoint.

Post-Install Configuration

Once the package is installed, there are four additional configuration steps to complete:

• Install the Integration Key
• Decide how you want to add users
• Decide if you want to have Audit Trails attached with the signed documents
• Decide where signed Agreements should be stored

Install the Integration Key

New installations require an Integration Key to be generated in Adobe Sign and then entered into SharePoint. This key is the access token that authenticates the Adobe Sign and SharePoint environments to trust each other and share content.

To generate an Integration Key in Adobe Sign:

• Log in to your administrative user for your Adobe Sign account
• Navigate to Account > Adobe Sign API > API Information
• Click the Integration Key link in the middle of the page

The Create Integration Key interface loads:

Provide an intuitive name for your key (e.g. SharePoint)

The Integration Key must have the following elements enabled:

• user_write
• user_login
• agreement_read
• agreement_write
• agreement_send
• library_read
• library_write

Click Save once the key is configured.

The Access Tokens page is exposed showing the keys defined in your account.

• Click the key definition created for SharePoint

○ The Integration Key link is exposed at the top of the definition.

• Click the Integration Key link

The Integration key is exposed:

• Copy this key and save in a secure place for the next step
• Click OK

To install the integration key into SharePoint:

• Log in to your administrative user for your SharePoint site
• Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings icon to expose the Settings page

1. Once on the settings page, click the Account Settings tab
2. Paste your Integration Key into the provided field
3. Click Save

Adding Users

The first step in adding users is granting them access to the Adobe Sign solution. To do this you need to:

1. Navigate to Site Settings > Users and Permissions > People and groups
2. Edit the Adobe Sign groups as needed:

○ Adobe Sign Admin: Users who are allowed to configure the Adobe Sign Solution (i.e. complete the settings page and fill the AdobeSignUserInfo list). Only corresponding site collection or web application administrators are allowed to configure this group. Users belonging to his group can access Personal Settings, Account Settings, Agreement Storage, and Template Mappings tabs under Settings page.

○ Adobe Sign User: Users who are supposed to use the Solution configured by site collection administrators. Users belonging to his group can access only the Personal Settings tab under Settings page.

Auto Provision Users in Adobe Sign

Adobe Sign requires all users that send Agreements have a license to do so in the Adobe Sign system. Upon first use, a user is automatically provisioned in Adobe Sign if they don't already exist. By default, that user is provisioned using the information found in the users SharePoint profile.

Fetch user info from the AdobeSignUserInfo list

Enabling this feature will inform SharePoint to use the values in the AdobeSignUserInfo list for the purpose of creating new users, and understanding existing user sessions to Adobe Sign.

If the feature is not enabled, then SharePoint will use the values associated to the SharePointUser as defined by SharePoint.

Worth noting is that you can associate email addresses (and thus Adobe Sign access) to SharePoint Users that either don’t have a public email or need to use a different email address than their SharePoint email value. (e.g.: Bob@MyDomain.dom is a SharePoint User, but needs to send agreements using the email value HumanResources@MyDomain.dom)

To use list values for auto provisioning, there are two steps to complete:

1. Update the AdobeSignUserInfo list
2. Enable the Fetch user info from the AdobeSignUserInfo list feature

To update the AdobeSignUserInfo list

1. Navigate to Site Contents > AdobeSignUserInfo
2. Edit the list to contain the user values you want

To enable User generation from the AdobeSignUserInfo list:

1. Log in to your SharePoint account as an Administrator
2. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings interface
3. Click the Account Settings tab
4. Check the box Fetch user info from the AdobeSignUserInfo list
5. Click Save

Fetch audit trail for signed agreements

If this option is enabled, an Audit Trail PDF will be returned with the finalized document when any Agreement is completed. The Audit Trail is a summary document of all major events for the agreement (Sent, Viewed, Signed), including user metadata associated with those events (time/date, IP address)

To enable Audit Trail delivery:

1. Log in to your SharePoint account as an Administrator
2. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings interface
3. Click the Account Settings tab
4. Check the box Fetch audit trail for signed agreements
5. Click Save

Define the destination folder for signed agreement

Completed documentation can be configured to be deposited in one specific folder for the whole (global) site collection.

If no global folder is designated, the final signed document will be returned to a Signed Agreements sub-folder that will be created in the document library from which the document was sent.

To configure the global signed Agreements folder:

1. Log in to your SharePoint account as an Administrator
2. Create the destination folder wherever you need it
3. Navigate to the Adobe Sign Settings page
4. Click the Agreement Storage tab
5. Find the folder on the list of available folders and single click it to select it
6. Click the Save button

Template Mapping

Adobe Sign supports the idea of relating data between SharePoint Lists and the Agreement form fields.

By using workflows and mapping the list fields to the form fields, you can automatically pre-fill documents before sending, reducing the time for senders and/or signers to complete the form, and reducing the chance for miskeying the data.

Conversely, you can also create a mapping that will extract the form field data from a signed Agreement, and populate a SharePoint list.

The full guide for configuring template mappings can be found here.