Adobe isn't the only game in town when it comes to PDF forms: ActivePDF, Amgraf, Cardiff and ScanSoft also offer various tools to convert paper processes to PDF.

But one interesting new wrinkle that likely will generate interest in Acrobat 7 involves dynamic forms, which are smart forms capable of updating themselves based on user choices.

Picture an order sheet that can recalculate pricing data if a customer changes the options on the widget they're ordering or adjusts the quantity. The sheet also can offer different configuration choices for different products, adjusted to inventory available.

Technically, that's not a new feature for Acrobat in itself. The big news is that, when the customer is running version 7 of Adobe Reader, dynamic forms from LiveCycle Designer 7.0 can be completed and sent without the aid of LiveCycle Forms (formerly known as Adobe Form Server).

That product represents a financial outlay of software and IT management that has priced some small and medium-size businesses--$50 million to $500 million annual revenue--out of the game. The things that used to happen only in the server can now happen on the client side, activated in Reader 7.

LiveCycle Designer, which comes free with Windows Acrobat 7 Pro, might sound new, but it's the upgrade to the software formerly known as Adobe Designer (and before that, Adobe Forms Designer).

Acrobat serves as a front end to make intelligent forms, but it's only the beginning of a forms system. Businesses that want to move processes from paper to PDF need to think of it in three phases, says Sterling Ledet, who runs traveling PDF forms training seminars. Acrobat forms gather data well, but users must deal with the business processing once the data is collected, such as storage and internal distribution.

"The application of PDF forms technology in the real world that I've seen typically has been across company boundaries," Ledet says. "In the mid-market that we tend to serve, it's a lot about working with clients and vendors, converting paper-based workflows to electronic forms–enabled workflows."

To get up and running with LiveCycle Designer forms, businesses will have to overcome two barriers, Ledet says.

First, to take advantage of all the up-to-date features that LiveCycle Designer offers--and in general, for the "cleanest" PDF forms implementations--organizations will need to get everyone using their forms to upgrade to Reader 7.

"What we have to do as an industry, whether it's PDFzone, my company, or the people who I'm training, is be a part of the solution, not the problem, by facilitating the adoption of the 7.0 Reader," Ledet says. "The more rapidly the 7.0 Reader is adopted, the better it is. It's not that huge of an initiative."

For companies using the new forms internally, IT departments can push the upgrade to employees without a problem. Upgrading the Reader poses more of a challenge for companies serving forms to customers, clients and staff outside their firewalls. One option is to put a note to download the new Reader on the Web page from which the form is deployed, or in the e-mail that introduces it to end-users.

For the sake of people who refuse or "are not in the position" to upgrade, Ledet says it's advisable to keep a hard-copy alternate form or a "dumb" PDF version of those forms. Those are not the most elegant solutions, but they will have to do as a temporary workaround until those three-quarter billion copies of Reader 3, 4, 5, and 6 out there get upgraded to the Reader 7.

The second stumbling block is a cultural issue within the typical small-to-medium-size business: Designers make intuitive forms with an eye toward aesthetic grace and function. IT people make certain that data flows where it needs to flow. Design and IT need each other in order to make usable forms and deal with the resultant data internally, but they don't always value the others' skills.

In his experience, Ledet says that designers--usually in the marketing department--tend to be undervalued within a company. Too few people outside of marketing departments grasp the importance of communicating a company's brand in addition to making a form that gets the data from Point A to Point B, Ledet says.

"PDF forms technology greatly improves a company's professional image over HTML-based forms," Ledet says. "But it requires a merger of the IT people who have to see the value of the look-and-feel people. The look-and-feel people have to respect the IT position of 'What do we do with the data?'.'"

When people take Ledet's seminars, he points out, he can help them overcome the learning curve in jumping from Acrobat 5 and 6 forms creation and the new LiveCycle Designer. They walk away with nuts-and-bolts knowledge of matters such as how to implement JavaScript and how to hook PDF e-forms into Excel, Access and SQL Server.

They also get a free FormRouter account, which for smaller businesses can take some of the technological pain out of back-end database implementation. For larger companies, FormRouter can provide a test bed for experimenting with PDF forms workflow.

Ledet can't, however, teach his clients how to overcome the "deployment curve" waiting back at the company, where issues concerning design, data handling and end-user adoption will be raised. In some environments the barriers might be impossible for designers to get past by themselves, so it will take visionary managers to see the project through.

But it's worth it, according to Ledet. "The technology has the potential to bring the same design sensibility of the commercial design agencies--the kind that big companies hire for image, look-and-feel, and just for that whole presence--to the order-entry process and to customer interactions," Ledet says. "It has the potential to do that, and it's incredibly exciting to be a part of that.

"But it's not going to happen just with IT departments, because they don't necessarily see the value. So it's the graphic arts community's responsibility to sort of justify their existence when it comes to every customer interaction, which should be polished, professional, sharp and very best-foot forward."