Tuesday, November 25 2003
Network managers who put Acrobat 5 across their enterprises had it easy in comparison with Acrobat 6. Back then, they could download a free tool, Acrobat Enterprise Installation Tool (AEIT), and let it rip while they slept.
Acrobat 6 brings complications, such as a bevy of new features and three new versions in Professional, Standard and Elements, the latter of which only shows up in enterprise settings. To help the point people in IT who need to manage Acrobat on everyone else’s desktop, Adobe has made available a new tool called InstallShield Tuner for Adobe Acrobat.
It’s still free. But because it’s new—and because Acrobat 6’s differences are still relatively new to most people—Adobe is also conducting an hour-long seminar next Thursday, Dec. 4, at 11 a.m. EST/8 a.m. PST. Those who can’t catch it live typically can view archived versions a few days later.
Adobe created the tool for both new and current Acrobat enterprise customers, said David Stromfield, product manager for Adobe. The Acrobat team licensed installer technology from InstallShield to upgrade from AEIT, and folded in suggestions for improvement from IT managers who had used AEIT.
Moreover, more than 100 corporations participated in the Tuner beta program, including several in Asia and Japan that helped ensure compatibility with localized versions. From these experiences, Adobe developed not only the final version of Tuner but support materials such as help for people deploying Acrobat via SMS or IBM Tivoli, as well as white papers about using Acrobat in the enterprise.
“It can handle all four versions of the Acrobat 6 Desktop product (including Reader), ” Stromfield said of Tuner, which works on Windows—and can also handle plug-in installations at the same time the application is installed. “It works hand-in-glove with the Windows installer that we built into Acrobat 6.”
All together, Adobe hopes its IT support—including the free-of-charge Tuner and its surrounding cloud of educational materials—will help induce more corporate customers to buy Acrobat in corporate quantities.
Tuner enables network administrators to configure Acrobat their way, allowing them to turn off features that single users must deal with—such as auto-update and online registration. IT departments can set up “silent installs” that work in the background of client machines and pre-specify items such as company name and serial number. This prevents old serial numbers from being used and assists enterprise software asset-management tools in drawing an accurate picture of what’s “out there” on the network.
The utility also controls PDF creation and security settings from the server, and it gives the IT people control over whether or not Acrobat puts shortcuts in the Desktop and Start menu. Once all the settings are customized, Tuner offers the deployment of Acrobat via SMS, the network or FTP.
“It helps to keep the organization adhering to whatever corporate standards IT has decided upon, (such as) creating PDFs using certain settings, ” said Stromfield. “The Tuner tool can enable that by making sure a single corporate job options file is installed.”
Another example is when an organization uses certain digital-signature handlers, he said. Administrators can specify those handlers within the Tuner tool so that Acrobat knows what they are, but end users don’t need to be burdened with the information.
Source:
PDF Zone
