Web Services with Digital Signature?

Question

Hello,
I spoke to Adobe yesterday regarding using web services to submit forms, but our forms need to have a digital signature in them. He said (not a quote, just a recap here) while technically possible, it will be difficult since we would need to deserialize the document.
So, has anyone accomplished this? Is there a QPAC out there that can already handle this?
Thank you,
Jennifer

Answer 1

Hello Chris,
I really am in unfamiliar ground here, so if a servlet works, then great (of course I have no clue how to do that...).
Basically we need to have a form out on a website so that people can submit this form with a digital signature. We do have Form Manager, but right now cannot use it since the Form Manager requires AD/LDAP accounts. Considering that our form is a request for a USER ACCOUNT, we are stuck :D I thought the web services may have been our answer, but then it was looking like we couldn't use it because of our digital signature requirement.
The only reason I wanted to try to make this fit back into the workflow is for after the fact processing done by admins (who will definitely have a LC account). I figured an admin could trigger the workflow by sending the user (no LC account) an email with the URL to the pdf form - I assumed this could be done with some type of init form. The 2 different possible scenarios:
1. The user gets the email, fills the form and signs it and then provides the email address to the next user (again, no LC account) to fill and sign and then to a third user without an LC account to fill and sign and then if we could hook back into the work flow from there so that the admin could basically "check off" that their account was created which would then send an intro email to the user with their account info and other message.
2. Within the Init Form we provide the supervisor and security manager email addresses, so that when the first user submits the form, it automatically sends an email to their Supervisor (assuming we need to hook back into the workflow). And then eventuall we get to the "check off" part and go on our way.
After these three people sign the form, believe it or not, we need TWO (possible 4) more signatures. These people will have LC accounts.
Overall, I need to keep the form intact with the digital signatures so we can store the form. Would the HTTP Post submit to a servlet accomplish this? If so, where can I read up on this further?
Regarding the form storage, I originally thought this would be stored for viewing through Form Manager, but Adobe Support indicated that the admin would have to actually upload this filled out form through adminui, so this just sounded like a mess to me. I was hoping to have something where the admins could search for submitted forms as needed.
I hope this is all making sense. We spent so much money on this product and it's looking like we cannot use it now because of 1. requirement of an AD/LDAP account to use Form Manager and 2. if we don't use Form Manager, it looks like we cannot utilize web services due to our requirement of a digital signature.
I just need to get this form online and ideally, get it hooked back into the workflow somehow with keeping the digital signature in tact.
Another question - What if we received the form via email with the first three parts filled out (data + digital signatures from the non-LC account holders). Can we get this form submitted into the workflow then to utilize Form Manager?
Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it.
-Jennifer