Acrobat Federated ID user unable to use Adobe Sign

[Derek25932123tstn]

Hi,

We use the Admin console to administer our domain's user accounts and license assignments for Acrobat. We use Federated IDs with SSO to our Azure tenant. We don't use Adobe Sign or have any licenses for it.

Recently one of our Acrobat users was asked by an outside party (Not in our domain or tenant) to sign a document with Adobe Sign. When they tried to sign the document it brought up their federated login, asking them to sign in with their Azure credentials. From that they get an error "Something went wrong Please wait as we work to fix this problem, then try again. If the problem persists, contact customer service." with a single button "Go back to sign in".

In the end the users agreed to use a different platform to sign that document so I can't continue troubleshooting with that account, but I'd like to permit the use of Adobe Sign if it's something we need to explicity allow. Is this issue because we don't have any Adobe Sign licenses? Is there a setting in the admin console to allow Adobe Sign with our Federated IDs, or should a different tenant's signature request not have asked for our user's Federated ID?

Thanks for any insights!

[Anshul_Nautiyal]

Hi @Derek25932123tstn,

Thank you for reaching out. Based on the information provided, the issue appears to stem from the absence of Adobe Sign licenses in your organization. Without these licenses, users cannot access Adobe Sign features, including signing documents upon request. Below are the key considerations to address this:

Adobe Sign requires valid licenses assigned to user accounts. Without a license, users will face access issues, including error messages.

Federated IDs and SSO work with Adobe Sign; however, users must have an assigned license through the Adobe Admin Console. The described error is likely due to the absence of a license, not a Federated ID issue.

There is no specific setting to "enable" Adobe Sign for Federated ID users. Access is granted by assigning Adobe Sign licenses to users or groups in the Admin Console.

I would recommend you to purchase Adobe Sign licenses for users requiring access. To learn more about this you can check out the following helpx Doc: Adobe Document Cloud feature administration

IIf you require further assistance with purchasing licenses, assigning them, or configuring your Admin Console, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
^AN

[Derek25932123tstn]

Hi AN, thanks for the quick reply. Just to be clear, the external party is licensed for Adobe Sign and requested our signature on their document. That requires a paid license from us? That can't be right, please confirm.

Thanks,

-Derek

[Anshul_Nautiyal]

Hi @Derek25932123tstn,

Thank you for your follow-up and for providing additional clarification. To clarify, recipients do not need a paid Adobe Sign license to sign documents from external parties. Signature requests allow signing without a license, provided the recipient uses a valid Adobe ID or follows the provided workflow.

However, the issue here likely stems from the following:

Federated ID Integration
Your organization uses Federated IDs and SSO. If the user attempted to log in with their Federated ID (which is managed by your organization) and Adobe Sign is not part of their licensed entitlements, it could result in an error because the system does not recognize Adobe Sign access under their account.

The error message "Something went wrong" suggests that Adobe Sign is trying to authenticate the user but cannot find the necessary permissions tied to their account, likely because no Adobe Sign license is enabled for your domain.

Let me know if you have additional questions!

Regards,
^AN

[Derek25932123tstn]

Hi AN,

Thank you, I agree with your assessment, which is the reason for my question here in the first place. What is the solution if a user with our Federated ID and no Adobe Sign license needs to sign an external parties Adobe Sign document?

Thanks,

-Derek

[Meenakshi Negi]

Hi Derek25932123tstn,

Thank you for your patience, and sorry about the delay in response.

When the document is sent via Acrobat Sign, the recipient does not need an Acrobat Sign subscription or an Adobe ID. However, here, the recipient was using Acrobat. The Acrobat subscription includes the individual service plan by default. To confirm if the recipient has an Acrobat Sign account with the email address, we will need the email address to check the entitlement. Would you mind sharing the email address in the private message? You may initiate a private message using the envelope icon at the top right corner of this community page.

Let us know if you have any questions. 

Note: Please do not share the email address or personal information on public platforms for security reasons.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[Jason30635727sn2p]

I know this is an old post and you may have figured this out a long time ago. As they have all mentioned, the receipient does not need a license, I know this because it is how we have new hires sign submit their documents. What jumps out to me is that the sender may have selected the option to have have the recipient authenticate to be abel to sign it, and would be as simple as re-sending without that requirement toggled. 

hope that helps!

[Derek25932123tstn]

Hi Jason, thanks for the reply. I forgot to update that we did finally figure out how to get around this issue. Unfortunately the sender is under requirements that authentication is necessary to sign a document (think compliance/regulations). The problem seems to come from our use of (non-Adobe) SSO for other Adobe product licenses - our org has no licenses for Adobe Sign. When our user is prompted to sign the document, it defaults to trying to use SSO, sees that our users don't have Adobe Sign licenses, and errors out.

The workaround is that our user needs to choose "use a different account", then create a "Personal" Adobe account (with our domain's email address, the same email address as the SSO account). When they select the personal account, they can finish signing the document.

This is a terrible workaround. As you noted, a license should not be necessary to sign a document. I do not consider it a "solution", but it's the only way we've found that works for now.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if authentication could be the key - I did observe that in order to authenticate to sign a compliant document on our (other, non-Adobe) electronic signature platform, the system will ask a number of personal identity verification questions. This could be part of that whole regulatory/compliance bit I mentioned earlier, and maybe just using SSO isn't necessarily "compliant". I'll have to ask our users if they encountered any additional identity verification questions. If this is the case, it's not explained anywhere that I could find. Next time we encounter it I'll pay more attention to the creation of the 'personal' Adobe account with our users.