When Document Locator v5.2 is made available, some new bells and whistles are included that existing and prospective customers have requested. I could certainly go into endless detail about the various product enhancements that have been added or mention the notably increased performance made against our internal benchmarks, but not today. Rather I felt like commenting on how PDFs – now officially accepted as an ISO 32000 standard – are increasingly being utilized for electronic markup, digital signature and digital turnover in the AEC Industry (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction).
The allure of the “paperless office” has been marketed to most every industry since the early days of digital imaging – aka the early 80’s for those of us not old enough to remember. There is certainly a minority of companies and industries that have been successful digitizing their paper-intensive operations. However, the majority of business operations fail to become paperless when their operational documents require a human signature or any form of manual markup process. The release of MS Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat 8.0, both of which include a secure digital signature technology, present mainstream platforms that eliminates the historical road blocks to running a paperless operation.
Imagine having a digital workflow for your organization that automatically creates electronic documents, routes them in a workflow process, includes digitally stamping and signing documents, and provides for easy search and retrieval along with bulk distribution. That electronic world has become a reality at several Document Locator shops. With the addition of the Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat add-ins to Document Locator v5.2 (part of the base product offering for those existing customers who are dying to know), customers will be able to easily check-out documents and apply comments, digital signatures, stamps and more to PDF documents directly from inside of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 (and Reader) or newer.
Thus far the feedback from the beta customers using the Adobe Acrobat integration has been terrific. The add-in functions in a similar manner to the existing product add-ins presently found in the majority of the MS Office applications, and AutoCAD. With the technology to easily store, route, search, and now digitally sign documents, Document Locator will continue to improve business efficiency while reducing paper waste and storage. Enjoy.