ADOBE® LIVECYCLE® ES4 OVERVIEW
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iii Contents Chapter 1: About This Document Who should read this document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Additional information ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Key LiveCycle components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iv LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Contents Chapter 9: Content Management Connectors for ECM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Chapter 10: Data Services Key features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 Chapter 1: About This Document Adobe® LiveCycle® Enterprise Suite 4 (ES4) software extends business processes to your mobile workforce and customers, increasing productivity while broadening service access to any user equipped with a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.. This document provides an overview of Adobe LiveCycle.
2 Chapter 2: About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 (ES4) is an enterprise document and form platform that helps you capture and process information, deliver personalized communications, and protect and track sensitive information. LiveCycle ES4 extends business processes to your mobile workforce and clients, increasing productivity while broadening service access to any user equipped with a desktop, smartphone, or tablet.
3 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Enterprise system integration LiveCycle uses service-oriented architecture principles to allow easy integration with enterprise systems. It allows LiveCycle to easily exchange information with core systems of an organization and extend processes, so that they are easier to use, more familiar, productive, and can go beyond the corporate firewall.
4 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 LiveCycle modules Modules provide the functional services that are required to build customer engagement applications that can be deployed to the LiveCycle Server.
5 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Mobile Forms Enable forms on mobile devices where PDF forms are not supported. Document and information security Rights Management Manage usage rights to protect sensitive documents in PDF, Microsoft Office, or CAD formats. LiveCycle Digital Signatures Automate the signing, certification, and validation of digital signatures in PDF documents.
6 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Note: Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES4 requires you to select Content Repository* module in addition to Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES4 module when running Configuration Manager. To take advantage of new Mobile Workspace capability in Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES4, you will need Adobe LiveCycle Forms Pro or Adobe LiveCycle Forms Pro add-on SKU.
7 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 This illustration provides a closer view of how the key product components fit together within the server architecture.
8 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 LiveCycle example scenarios Submit and approval using a Guide (deprecated) In this example, a bank client applies for a loan through a bank portal. The client fills, signs, and submits an HTML 5 form using iPad , and then HTML Workspace is used to review the loan application. When approved or rejected, the application is sent back to the client.
9 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Submit and approve a PDF form using HTML Workspace In this example, a loan application form is submitted, reviewed, and approved using HTML Workspace. Generate customer correspondence In this example, the Correspondence Management Solution Accelerator is used to create a correspondence workflow for a bank claim. The self-service claim-initiation process is done through the bank forms portal.
10 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Deployment Deployment possibilities for LiveCycle are flexible. You can deploy it as a single stand-alone server running single or multiple modules or as a volume production system running multiple modules on clustered servers. The following sections describe single-node deployment for a small production system, clustered deployment for volume production in an enterprise environment, and an example of deployment phases.
11 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW About Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 4 Deployment phases In an enterprise-wide deployment, the system is set up so that several people have different roles in the system. For example, an IT administrator installs and deploys the production system (and possibly the testing system), and sets up the security infrastructure. Form developers design forms; process developers design processes; administrators deploy services, manage server performance, and so on.
12 Chapter 3: Foundation Foundation provides the underlying server capabilities on which LiveCycle solutions can be built. Included in every LiveCycle installation, Foundation provides all the tools required for application development, invocation, management, and administration. It also integrates with your organization’s existing infrastructure of databases and LDAP systems, and works to assemble the services invoked by deployed processes.
13 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Foundation Using the Job Manager service API, developers can do these tasks: • Create a new asynchronous job using the specified invocation request. • Complete an existing job using the specified invocation response. • Terminate, suspend, or resume an existing job identified by the specified job ID. • Get the job ID that represents the status of a long-lived process. The job status indicates whether a job was queued, running, completed, terminated, suspended, or resumed.
14 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Foundation The application manager supports packaging the assets that are part of a LiveCycle application into a LiveCycle archive file. The archive file facilitates the transfer of an application from development to staging to production. When a LiveCycle application is deployed, all the assets within it are also deployed. The process of deploying some of those assets results in services being registered in the service registry, which can be invoked by the Invocation framework.
15 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Foundation Services can be programmatically invoked from client applications that are developed by using a Java integrated development environment (IDE). You can also invoke services from a Flex or Ajax RIA by using Data Services. To develop a client application in a Java development environment, use Java APIs.
16 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Foundation Administrators can create custom roles and associate them with existing permissions. They can also add new users to the database through the Administration Console. Dynamic groups You can create dynamic groups that automatically include all users who meet a specified set of rules. In a dynamic group, you do not individually select the users who belong to the group.
17 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Foundation Event filtering Processes can look for events that contain specific data. For example, a process can send a document for signature to a customer and then wait for an event when the customer returns a signed document. Event filters can filter the event based on data such as the process ID or customer reference.
18 Chapter 4: LiveCycle Development Tools LiveCycle provides a set of tools that developers can use to define, design, and develop applications. Workbench includes prebuilt components and other application building blocks so that developers, designers, and business analysts can work together to create user interfaces and process flows. Designer is the graphical form design tool that simplifies the creation of forms.
19 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW LiveCycle Development Tools Developers use Workbench to manage the resources and services that processes and forms use. The forms can be rendered by using several client technologies such as PDF, HTML/HTML5, and Flash. Business analysts and process developers use Workbench to design and deploy business processes that leverage the LiveCycle modules. For file management in a distributed development environment, Workbench uses the concept of an application checkin and checkout.
20 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW LiveCycle Development Tools Build components and client applications The LiveCycle SDK provides developers with samples and tools for building components and client applications that programmatically interact with services in LiveCycle. Programmer tools include reference and task-based documentation to enable programmers to use Java APIs, WSDLs, and (Deprecated for AEM forms) LiveCycle Remoting to programmatically interact with services.
21 Chapter 5: Business Process Management Process Management Process Management lets users design, manage, monitor, and optimize human-centric processes. With Process Management, users can also manage automated business process applications that connect systems and people. Process Management enables the automation of human tasks and long-lived processes that involve asynchronous transactions.
22 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Business Process Management Email notifications Email notifications are a common mechanism for notifying users that a task is assigned, escalated, or must be completed. In LiveCycle, you can modify email notifications on a per-task basis, enabling more contextual content and flexibility. You can also create email templates on a per-task basis. Out of office A common problem occurs when tasks are assigned to users who are out of the office due to business travel or vacation.
23 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Business Process Management • Have custom searches and filters based on process variables. • View process categories and a list of tasks. • Select processes and place them in a Favorites folder for easy access. • Share tasks and consult with other users. • Track processes and look at the audit trail. • Initiate new processes from previously archived forms. • Receive a request for Workspace electronic signature by confirming the validity of the information when completing a task.
24 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Business Process Management Collection data and XPath functions The information that is submitted for each task of an Assign Multiple Tasks operation is saved in a collection variable called Task Result Collection. XPath functions can be used to evaluate the results. For example, you can determine how many people selected a specific action or the percentage of people who submitted the action.
25 Chapter 6: Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Adobe® LiveCycle® Forms Standard ES4 and Adobe® LiveCycle® Forms Pro ES4 make it easy to create, deploy, and manage user-friendly form templates, thereby improving operational efficiency and user experiences. Reduce development costs by using one template to render forms to paper, PDF, and high-fidelity paginated HTML5.
26 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Integrate forms data with back-end systems Support for XML lets you leverage existing enterprise applications to deploy forms rapidly and exchange data with core business systems. You can embed forms with content from key applications and add calculation and validation mechanisms that automatically verify information as a user completes a form.
27 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Multichannel publishing Form developers can use an XFA template to render both in PDF and HTML5 formats. It is specially beneficial in scenarios where you have a large set of XFA forms that require minimal changes to adapt to Mobile Forms design practices. You can render these existing XFA forms to HTML5 to target various devices, where XFA PDF is not yet supported.
28 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 The following illustration and the list below provide an example of how Forms processes a request from an end user. 1 The end user accesses a web page and requests a form. 2 The web application invokes Forms and requests the form. 3 Forms retrieves the form design from a repository and data, and then merges the form design with the data to prepopulate parts of the form.
29 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Customer communications Automating the batch creation and assembly of customer invoices, statements, letters, form packages, insurance policy statements, marketing materials, and loan packages. Regulatory filings Integrating document assembly into a regulatory document filing process. Archive preparation Automating batch document customization for archiving, such as adding watermarks, or inserting or extracting metadata.
30 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 With Reader Extensions, you can select usage rights for individual or batches of PDF documents by using the wizardlike, web-based application. Using the developer or programmer tools, you can assign usage rights to many documents in an automated batch process.
31 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 The following illustration and list below provide an example of how Reader Extensions works: 1 A developer selects the usage rights by using any of these methods and uploads the document to the LiveCycle server: • Accesses the web-based application provided with Reader Extensions • Adds the Reader Extensions service in a process created in Reader Extensions • Uses the APIs provided with the LiveCycle SDK 2 Reader Extensions adds the selecte
32 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Barcoded forms can eliminate the need for optical character recognition (OCR)-based forms processing and the attendant costs of manual data entry. Data captured from fill-and-print barcoded forms can be reinserted into your electronic process quickly and automatically with 100% accuracy. Furthermore, you can retain a digital image of the submitted signed form for archiving purposes.
33 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 6 a) For a paper submission, when the completed form is received, your organization scans the form into an electronic image. The Barcoded Forms service locates the barcode on the scanned image, decodes it, and extracts the data into your specified format. b) For an electronic submission through the Submit by Email button, the data, other than the barcode data, is directly submitted to the processing center as XML.
34 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Forms Standard ES4 and Forms Pro ES4 Updating barcodes during form completion When a user fills a barcoded form electronically using Adobe Reader or Acrobat, the barcode is automatically updated with the user-supplied information. Note: If a user fills a barcoded form using an earlier version of Acrobat or Adobe Reader that does not support barcodes, a gray rectangle replaces the barcode. A gray rectangle indicates that the barcode cannot be updated.
35 Chapter 7: Document information and security Rights Management Rights Management ensures that the business-critical information you distribute is exposed only to the intended people. You control how people can use the information to prevent it from circulating too far. Your control over the use of information continues even after you distribute the information. Key features Using Rights Management, you can protect PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents by using confidentiality policies.
36 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security • Define dynamic watermarks that are applied to documents protected with the policy. These watermarks can contain multiple elements, each consisting of text or PDF. You can specify their positioning and appearance on documents applied with the policy. With the use of variables, you can have dynamically created watermark content that includes the user name, applied policy, and timestamp. • Enable or disable Extended Usage Tracking.
37 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security Here is an example of how Rights Management works: 1 The document owner or administrator creates policies by using the Rights Management web application accessible through Administration Console. Document owners can create user policies accessible only to them. Administrators can create organizational policies within policy sets that are accessible to permitted users, and can also designate policy set coordinators.
38 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security Authentication All users are required to log in to interact with Rights Management. Users can log in through Acrobat or through the Rights Management web application. Rights Management supports four methods of authentication: • Username/Password. Users are prompted for their user name and password. • Kerberos (from Acrobat on Windows only). Users of Acrobat or Adobe Reader for Windows can be transparently authenticated.
39 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security Digital Signatures Digital Signatures lets you use digital signatures to preserve and verify the integrity and authenticity of a document in these situations: • When it is transferred among users within and beyond the firewall • When it is downloaded offline • When it is submitted back to your organization. With Digital Signatures, you can automate the process of certifying and signing documents.
40 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security The following illustration shows an example of a typical Digital Signatures process. 1 PDF files are created using any type of PDF production method: • Automatically from a server using Forms, • Manually on a desktop using Acrobat • Using the PDF creation capabilities of third-party applications. 2 A client application retrieves a PDF document from a specified repository. The PDF is passed to Digital Signatures.
41 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Document information and security Encryption You can encrypt a PDF document with a password or a certificate that renders the document unreadable to anyone who does not have the password or a private key to open the file. The private key needed to open a certificate-encrypted file, must correspond to the public key used to encrypt the document. XML Encryption and Decryption You can use the encryption service to protect XML data in XFA forms.
42 Chapter 8: Communications management Output Output provides support for a variety of output formats and supports the output design features provided in the Form Design perspective in Workbench or Designer. Key features Using Output, you can create applications with the following functionality: • Generate final form documents by populating Designer files with XML data. • Output forms in a range of formats, including non-interactive PDF, PDF/A, PostScript, PCL, and label printer print streams.
43 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management • Spell-check documents and generate sample test data while designing forms. Using the sample test data, you can then generate a PDF preview or print directly to a target printer. These features were designed for use with Output. Forms and documents created with these layout features can be rendered or printed in a variety of formats without compromising the design intent.
44 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management With Output, you can also produce companion metadata files for document integration and statistics. For example, metadata from incoming XML such as submitted fax numbers or account numbers can be integrated into forms for output. Output also supports metadata that is used for generating documents, such as page numbering and the specific documents included in a batch.
45 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management How Output works Here is an example of how Output works. X M L PDF X M L XDP Form Design (Input) XML Form Data (Input) LiveCycle ES3 Output PDF (PDF/A) PostScript PCL Destinations Disk File Email Attachment Label Formats 3 Network Printer A form author creates the form in Designer. The form conforms to the XML schema that the Output service uses as the XML data input file to create the output.
46 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management 4 The output is sent to the designated destination as an email attachment (using the Email service as part of a process). It is then sent to a network printer, or is saved as a file on disk.
47 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management • Supports assembling documents, attachments, and groups of documents into PDF packages by using the workflow and job ticketing language. • Supports creation of industry standard PDF/X-1A, PDF/A-1b, and PDF/A-2b from native file formats and PostScript. • APIs that provide the ability to add file formats to existing conversion support. • Multi-threaded conversion of Word, PowerPoint, and OpenOffice file formats.
48 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management How PDF Generator works Here is an example of how PDF Generator works. 1 An administrator accesses Administration Console to customize the default PDF settings, security settings, and file type settings that control how PDF Generator converts documents. The administrator also configures PDF Generator to periodically scan a folder, called a watched folder, for files to be converted.
49 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management Document types suitable for conversion to PDF The following file types are suitable for conversion to PDF: • PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files • Native file types • PDF files Using PDF Generator, workgroups can convert PostScript files to compact, reliable, and more secure PDF files over a network.
50 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management • HTML 4.01 with CSS 1.0 • PDF/A-1a that uses only the DeviceRGB colorspace • PDF/A-1b that uses only the DeviceRGB colorspace • DOC, RTF, TXT, DOCX,PPTX,XLSX • PDF/E-1 that uses only the DeviceRGB colorspace • XML (1.
51 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Communications management Correspondence Management The Correspondence Management Solution provides the following benefits: Efficient and Productive It streamlines processing, enabling you to: • Deploy and manage templates and content in an intuitive interface designed for business users • Quickly assemble correspondence from both pre-approved and custom-authored content Managed It provides higher quality communications, enabling you to: • Manage business rules and approved c
52 Chapter 9: Content Management Connectors for ECM The Connectors for enterprise content management (ECM) provide these modules: • LiveCycle Connector for EMC® Documentum® • LiveCycle Connector for IBM ® FileNet • LiveCycle Connector for IBM ® Content Manager • LiveCycle Connector for Microsoft®SharePoint® (2007 and 2010) Connectors for ECM provide an efficient development environment.
53 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Content Management Workbench developers can easily map values from other LiveCycle modules, such as Forms, Reader Extensions, or PDF Generator, to the attributes of an ECM object. Connectors for ECM make it possible to reuse and scale the same LiveCycle process to handle forms in different folders of the ECM system. In addition, the connectors include service components to support ECM run-time integration.
54 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Content Management The following example shows a mortgage application that retrieves a form from an ECM repository and stores the final document in the ECM repository.
55 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Content Management • Connector for Microsoft SharePoint For more information about the services included in each ECM solution component, see Services Reference for LiveCycle.
56 Chapter 10: Data Services Data Services provides a comprehensive set of data-enabling features, which are deployed in a Java web application. Data Services also provides a separate set of features specifically for working with data in Foundation. These features are installed and deployed in Foundation. With Data Services, you can build data-rich Flex and Ajax applications that securely and cooperatively interact with a variety of data sources.
57 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Data Services How Data Services works Data Services is a J2EE web application that you can deploy on a variety of J2EE application servers and servlet containers. Data Management Service, Message Service, and the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services are all built on a core messaging infrastructure. Data Services uses the messaging infrastructure and the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol to ensure optimum performance.
58 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Data Services Using Data Services With Data Services, developers define a set of destinations using XML configuration files. These definitions are used by the built-in service adapters provided as part of the application.
59 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Data Services In JavaScript, you can use FABridge to make your ActionScript classes available without any additional coding. This method is used instead of defining new, simplified APIs to expose a graph of ActionScript objects to JavaScript. After you insert the library, you can do anything with JavaScript that you can do with ActionScript.
60 Chapter 11: Services for LiveCycle Modules This document lists the services that developers can use to create processes in Workbench. Modules are groupings of services that are part of LiveCycle. When a service is deployed on the LiveCycle server, the service appears below a specific group known as a category in the Services view in Workbench.
61 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Services for LiveCycle Modules Service Licensed for modules Form Data Integration Forms Process Management Reader Extensions PDF Utilities Content Services (deprecated) Digital Signatures Forms Output PDF Generator Process Management Reader Extensions Rights Management XMP Utilities Digital Signatures Forms Output PDF Generator Process Management Reader Extensions Rights Management Connector for EMC Documentum category Service Licensed for modules Content Repository Con
62 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Services for LiveCycle Modules Connector for SharePoint category Service Licensed for modules Connector for Microsoft SharePoint Connector for Microsoft SharePoint Content Services category Service Licensed for modules Document Management Content Services (deprecated) Digital Signatures category Service Licensed for modules Signature Digital Signatures Forms category Service Licensed for modules Forms Forms Last updated 1/15/2015
63 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Services for LiveCycle Modules Foundation category Service Licensed for modules Decision Point All modules. Email Content Services is deprecated.
64 LIVECYCLE ES4 OVERVIEW Services for LiveCycle Modules Rights Management category Service Licensed for modules Rights Management Rights Management The following processes are implemented as services and appear in Workbench based on the module deployed. Modification of the processes associated with the service is not supported.
