Collaborate

Initiating a shared review

In a shared review, all participants can view and respond to comments. It’s a great way to let reviewers resolve conflicting opinions, identify areas for research, and develop creative solutions during the review process. You can host a shared review on a network folder, WebDAV folder, SharePoint workspace, or on Acrobat.com, a new secure web-based service. All you need is Acrobat, a PDF, and a free Adobe ID to get started.

  1. Prepare the PDF.

    Save the PDF you want participants to review. If you want to call attention to particular questions or topics for discussion, add comments to the PDF.

  2. Send the PDF for a shared review.

    Choose Comments > Send For Shared Review. Acrobat opens the Send For Shared Review wizard. You can share any document that can be modified with comments. If a document has security settings that do not allow comments, Acrobat notifies you.

  3. Select a method for collecting comments.

    Choose how you want to post the PDF and collect comments from reviewers. Choose Automatically Download & Track Comments With Acrobat.com if you want to use Acrobat.com to share the review. Choose Automatically Collect Comments On My Own Internal Server to use a network server, a WebDAV server, or a SharePoint workspace.

    View full size graphic
    The Send For Shared Review wizard guides you through different ways to manage comments.

    If you’re hosting the PDF on your own server, select the type of server and enter its path. If you’re hosting the PDF on Acrobat.com, enter your Adobe ID. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, click Create Adobe ID to create one within Acrobat.

  4. Invite reviewers.

    Enter the email addresses for the people you want to invite to the review, or select the addresses from your email address book. Then, customize the message for reviewers. Set a review deadline. After the deadline, commenting tools will no longer be available on the shared review server. If you’re using Acrobat 9 Pro Extended or Acrobat 9 Pro, then Adobe Reader users can participate in the shared review.

    View full size graphic
    Preparing the review invitation

  5. Send the PDF.

    Click Send to post the PDF to the server and send email invitations to the review participants. Acrobat saves a copy of the shared review file in the same location, with the word “_review” appended to it.

    Once you’ve started a shared review, you can read and reply to comments on the shared review server. You can also read all the comments after the review is over. Use Tracker, within Acrobat, to see who has commented, send email reminders to reviewers, or change the deadline.

Enabling live collaboration

You can review a PDF live, online, with one or more colleagues using Acrobat.com. The live collaboration feature lets you share pages, so that all viewers are seeing the same thing at the same time. Use the live chat window to discuss the document you’re viewing. You can invite anyone with Acrobat 9 or Reader 9 to participate in live collaboration.

Note: The live collaboration feature is not available in all languages.

  1. Prepare the document.

    Create and save the document you want to discuss in live collaboration. If it’s not already a PDF, convert it to PDF using Adobe PDF printer, Acrobat PDFMaker (Windows), or the Create PDF commands in Acrobat.

    Open the PDF you want to discuss in Acrobat.

  2. Start collaboration.

    Choose File > Collaborate > Send & Collaborate Live. Log on to Acrobat.com, if prompted. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, create one.

    View full size graphic
    Use the Send and Collaborate Live wizard to start a live chat session.

  3. Invite participants.

    Enter the email addresses of the colleagues you want to collaborate with, placing a semicolon or return between addresses. You can also add email addresses from the address book of your email application, such as Microsoft Outlook.

    View full size graphic
    Preparing the collaboration invitation

    Edit the subject and message to customize the email invitation for your collaboration. To post the document to Acrobat.com, select Store File On Acrobat.com And Send A Link To Recipients. Select a level of access to determine who can access the document from Acrobat.com. If you don’t select Store File On Acrobat.com, Acrobat sends the document to participants as an attachment.

    The Collaborate Live navigation pane opens in the document.

  4. Wait for other participants.

    To share pages or chat online, at least one other person must join you. Using Acrobat 9 or Reader 9, participants can join by clicking the PDF attachment or clicking the URL in the invitation. After participants log in with their Adobe ID and password or join as a guest, they can double-click the PDF to open it.

    Watching participants join the session

  5. Share pages.

    After at least one other person joins the live collaboration session, you can synchronize page views so that everyone participating sees the same page view. To share pages, click the Start Page Sharing button. When you want to stop page sharing, click Stop Page Sharing.

  6. Chat online.

    To discuss the document, type chat messages in the box at the bottom of the Collaborate Live navigation pane. Click the color box to choose a color for your chat text. To save the chat history, choose Save Chat from the options menu in the navigation pane.

    View full size graphic
    Send instant messages to attendees.