Check it out at http://adobeevangelists.com/superblog/

It updates every 2 hours (on the even hour).  When you click an individual article, you will go to the original source on the author’s blog.

There is also an RSS feed at http://adobeevangelists.com/superblog/feed

Avoka has customers in the USA, Europe and Australia.  They have many LiveCycle and Flex gurus that build customer solutions as well as some killer products.  Check them out.

Go to Tour de LiveCycle ES2 Web version at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/tourdelivecycle/web

One nice feature is that you can bookmark specific content.  For example, to learn about LiveCycle Workbench, go to http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/tourdelivecycle/web/#illustIndex=0;sampleId=3610;docIndex=-1

If you are curious about LiveCycle, this is a great starting point.  Check it out!

Today we released a version of Tour de LiveCycle that has been updated to the recently released LiveCycle ES2. This tool covers the entire LiveCycle ES 2 suite which is far more than simply data services.  Topics include process management, rights management, document security, developer tools, end user interfaces and much more.  There are over 1,000 pages of content and samples!

If you are curious about LiveCycle, this is a great exploration tool.

If you are already a LiveCycle ES2 user, this is a great reference tool.

Tour de LiveCycle ES2 is a desktop app built on Adobe AIR.  You can download it from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/tourdelivecycle.

If you blog frequently on topics related to LiveCycle ES, please share the install badge by adding the following HTML:

<iframe width="216" height="182" frameborder=0 scrolling="no" src="http://tourdelc.adobe.com/badge/"></iframe>

Check it out at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/

Sign up here.

In addition to all of Adobe’s activity, I wanted to make you aware of something new from one of our partners, Avoka Technologies called SmartForm Composer that will be on display at MAX at booth #434.  I’ve seen a few demos of this new product and found it to be quite impressive!   SmartForm Composer is a web-based Flex application that makes it easy to build PDF forms. With Composer, you simply select one of our pre-defined templates, and quickly build an interactive Adobe XFA compliant PDF SmartForm that looks great and work with LiveCycle ES.

Avoka has put together a great video demo..  check it out!

• Flash Player, including cool new features of Flash Player 10
• Developing applications for the Flash Platform using Adobe Flex
• Exploring the types of applications possible with Flex, including data visualization examples, real-time data push apps and more
• Deploying applications on the web and on the desktop with Adobe AIR
• Wiring Flex to various back-end applications using LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS
• Adobe’s ultimate server-side SOA platform, LiveCycle ES – process management, data collection, rights management, PDF generation and much more
• Discussing how all of these technologies fit together in “real world” applications
• Sneak peeks at several upcoming products

The event is free but requires registration. Click here to register now.

Ok, here’s what marketing told me to say: Learn how top companies are improving their business bottom line by lowering operational costs, increasing productivity and driving revenue growth using the Adobe Flash® Platform and Adobe LiveCycle®. Join us in San Jose  for this complimentary event.

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LiveCycle ES not only provides 100+ out-of-the-box services, it also provides the ability to combine or orchestrate these services using LiveCycle process management (workflow) capabilities.  These newly created processes become new services.  The LCES invocation layer exposes all of these services to the outside world through various endpoints including SOAP, Flash Remoting, EJB, watched folders, email, and in the upcoming new version of LCES, REST!

So, you have ColdFusion services and LiveCycle ES services; each set of services offers its own unique capabilities, and all of them are callable using common means.  What can you do when you combine them?

When does LiveCycle ES need ColdFusion?

LiveCycle ES offers a ton of out-of-the box features, but it doesn’t include many capabilities that ColdFusion provides such as Microsoft Exchange integration, image manipulation, dynamic chart creation, and numerous other CF-abilities. If what you need is not provided by the  new CfaaS in CF9, you can easily create your own services by writing custom ColdFusion components (CFCs), and as you would expect, these CFCs can also be exposed as web services or Flash Remoting endpoints.

When does ColdFusion need LiveCycle ES?

CF  includes neither the workflow/process management capabilities nor most of the extensive document-related services included in LCES.  CF does provide some PDF creation capabilities and in CF9, you can now add headers and footers, optimize images, and more.  But when when you look at  the PDF capabilities of LCES, you’ll find a long list that includes rights management, digital signatures, 2D barcodes, and much more.  LiveCycle also brings human workflow features to the table for things like approval processes and collaboration, which many CF developers will likely find useful in a variety of applications.

I’m still working out the details of my session, but here’s a rough agenda:

• Introduction to ColdFusion as a Service (CFaaS)
• Introduction to LiveCycle ES
• Calling ColdFusion services from LiveCycle ES (including calling a simple CFC)
• Calling LiveCycle ES services from ColdFusion
• Exploring various use-cases where this madness actually makes a lot of sense
• Brainstorming what a new custom ColdFusion component in LCES could/should look like

This is all subject to change based on how successful my demo preparation goes, but so far, it’s looking good, and I think it will be a fun session.  If you have never looked at LiveCycle ES, this is a great way to get started.

Sign up here – http://cfunited.com/2009/topics#topic-367

• Flash Player, including cool new features of Flash Player 10
• Developing applications for the Flash Platform using Adobe Flex
• Exploring the types of applications possible with Flex, including data visualization examples, real-time data push apps and more
• Deploying applications on the web and on the desktop with Adobe AIR
• Wiring Flex to various back-end applications using LiveCycle Data Services and BlazeDS
• Adobe’s ultimate server-side SOA platform, LiveCycle ES – process management, data collection, rights management, PDF generation and much more
• Discussing how all of these technologies fit together in “real world” applications
• Sneak peeks at several upcoming products

The event is free but requires registration.   Click here to register now.

Ok, here’s what marketing told me to say: Learn how top companies are improving their business bottom line by lowering operational costs, increasing productivity and driving revenue growth using the Adobe Flash® Platform and Adobe LiveCycle®. Join us in Atlanta on July 29th for this complimentary event. 

Kevin Hoyt is doing a similar event in New York, NY on July 30th. 

I’m also doing the same event in San Jose, CA on August 19th.  The registration link above has all of the events.

Financial Services: Account Enrollment

Improve account enrollment while driving consistency and efficiency across channels and products. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Account Enrollment solution accelerator, you can minimize repeated data entry, streamline account processing and setup, and deliver tailored information to customers with ease.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/AccountEnrollment
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/fin_account_enrollment.html

Financial Services: Correspondence Management.

Ensure customer communications are consistent, tailored, and cost efficient by managing all of your correspondence on a single platform. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Correspondence Management Solution accelerator, you can automate all kinds of correspondence — from welcome packages and confirmations to proposals and claim letters — while ensuring communications are accurate, compliant, and secure.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/CorrespondenceManagement
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/fin_serv_corr_man.html

Cross-Industry:  Human Capital Applications

Adobe solutions can help HR teams simplify and streamline forms-based processes, as well as reduce costs by providing self service options to employees.  Adobe solutions can support secure HR processes throughout an enterprise, engaging employees and applicants whether online or offline, and integrating the employee or applicant data within your existing infrastructure. The Human Capital Applications solution accelerator facilitates new employee onboarding and offboarding. With Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Human Capital Applications Accelerator, you can streamline data collection, secure employee data, dynamically generate welcome and exit packages, and reduce compliance risks and loss of intellectual and physical property.

• Connect presentation: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/HumanCapitalApplications
• Further details: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solutions/cross_vertical.html

Technology Building Blocks

Supporting these new solution accelerators are additional technology building blocks (Selection and Capture, Content Creation, Correspondence Generation) and updates to the existing On-Demand Assembly building block.

For further information including referencing the solution guides and technical documentation or to download these new releases, please visit http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/solution_accelerators.html.

Additional information will be posted soon on the Adobe Solution Accelerator team blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/lcsolutionaccelerators/

To learn more about Adobe LiveCycle, check out Tour de LiveCycle, a desktop application for exploring LiveCycle’s features, tools, APIs, and more.

Below is a brief summary of what’s new in the upcoming release of LiveCycle ES:

• Improved development and authoring tools, including many features to make team development possible and process design more intuitive.
• Improved UI development capabilities
• Improved LiveCycle ES administration including new monitoring capabilities and easier backup and restore functionality
• Improved support for document assembly of XDP-based documents including a new interface to generate DDX commands
• Improved administration and platform maturity with  improved backup and recovery support
• Expanded platform, database, and JVM support including a new turnkey installer
• Improved out of the box solutions for reviewing and commenting of processes

The list above only scratches the surface of what’s new.  You’ll find other enhancements across many of the individual services that make up LiveCycle.  We’re also saving some big surprises for later this year so STAY TUNED!

Important Links:

• Join the LiveCycle ES Pre-release program and download the beta
• Marcel Boucher’s blog post announcing the beta
• Tour de LiveCycle – a great starting point for learning more about LiveCycle ES
• Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center
• My previous LiveCycle ES blog posts
• Adobe MAX 2009 – learn TONS about LiveCycle this year.  Be sure to check out the LiveCycle @MAX Bundle

Between Tour de LiveCycle and LiveCycle Cafe, you will be hooked up with LiveCycle goodness.  Check it out at http://www.adobe.com/go/cafe.  It only takes a few seconds to download and provides immediate value.

Pricing and additional details are available here.   I suspect that this will fill up quickly so signup!

After the success of Tour de Flex, we decided that a similar interface could be useful as a means of exploring the features of LiveCycle.  We combined forces with Avoka Technologies’ LiveCycle gurus and created a vast collection of content including samples, videos, whitepapers and more.

You can grab Tour de LiveCycle from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/tourdelivecycle. (BACKUP LINK: http://tourdelc.adobe.com/badge). It is built on Adobe AIR and will run on Windows, Mac and, Linux.  All of the content is hosted so the installer is only about 1.5MB.  We do plan to offer more content locally as part of the application in future versions so that it will be available offline and load faster.

If you are curious about LiveCycle ES, this is a great first step.  If you are an existing LiveCycle ES customer, you will find that Tour de LiveCycle is a valuable reference tool. And if you are a Flex developer who thinks that LiveCycle ES is only about data services, I’m betting that you’ll be surprised to find that LiveCycle ES is much, much more.  It goes well beyond <mx:RemoteObject>!

If you blog frequently on topics related to LiveCycle ES, please share the install badge by adding the following HTML:

<iframe width="216" height="182" frameborder=0 scrolling="no" src="http://tourdelc.adobe.com/badge/"></iframe>

If your organization is starting to consider PDF as part of your enterprise technology stack, you will likely run into  the following questions :

• How do I generate PDFs from Microsoft Office files and other formats?  How about in mass quantities?  Can we automate this?
• How do I convert PDFs for archiving so that every aspect of the document is preserved perfectly?  Will these documents look the same in 10 years?  What if a future user doesn’t have the fonts I used to create the PDF?
• How do I secure PDFs so that only authorized users can access them?  Can I set an expiration dates?  Can I revoke rights?  How secure is it?
• How do I enable more interaction with PDFs so my customers and partners can interact with them?

Most people are familiar with Adobe Acrobat and know it as Adobe’s tool to do lots of PDF stuff.  However, you might not be as familiar with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite.   LiveCycle ES  software is a server solution that brings together data capture, information assurance, batch document output, process management, document conversion, integration and content services.

Here are some links to get you started with understanding LiveCycle ES:

• Adobe LiveCycle ES Home Page
• LiveCycle Developer Center (I suggest reading the Quick Starts first)
  
• Adobe LiveCycle ES – an intro video for developers – a 14 minute video overview that I recorded a few months ago
• Technical Whitepaper
  
• Financial Services Demo
• Government Demo
• Manufactoring Demo
• Life Sciences Demo
• Customer Stories
• Inside PDF Blog – tons of great articles about PDF
• PDF/A – PDF as a standard for archiving (PDF Document explaining PDF/A)
• LiveCycle Rights Management
• LiveCycle Digital Signatures

Want to learn more?  Let’s chat!

Below is a list of the content available today.  Good stuff!

Marcel Boucher recently wrote a blog post explaining the whole concept.  Marcel explains exactly what a solution accelerator is and what is it not.  It’s a good, straight-forward explanation.

The article can be found here.