Drag and Drop PDF to Web Browser from Adobe Acrobat Window

[ITLOUIS]

I am developing a web application that captures multiple certificate based signatures (signed using a CAC card) on a pdf form and stores the document into a database. Microsoft Edge browser is the only browser available on the client machines. Adobe Acrobat Pro is also available on the machines. Currently, users have to download the PDF from the browser, open it in Adobe Acrobat, sign it, save it, find it in their saved location and drag and drop it into a browser upload area on the web page. Ideally, they would sign it in the browser and hit a button to save it back to the database (or maybe even not hit a button - just sign and let the application save it back to the database). I don't think this is currently possible using Adobe's PDF extension in the web browser. I've Googled this more than I'd like to admit. The PDF viewer in Internet Explorer appears to be much more developed and allowed digitally signing using the CAC card right in the browser window without needing to open up a local copy of Adobe Acrobat. 

Is it possible to drag and drop the entire document from within Adobe into a browser window? I noticed I can drag and drop the document tab into another adobe window but it doesn't allow dropping into the browser. This would greatly improve the user experience for getting their signed PDF forms back to the web server (then to the database). I've also thought about adding a button to the PDF form that would represent the entire document and which could be dragged onto the web page (similar to dragging a file from Windows Explorer into the web page).

[Thom Parker]

No, but you might be able to get the documents signed by using one of the Adobe Embed APIs, avoiding Acrobat all together. 

https://developer.adobe.com/document-services/apis/pdf-embed/

[ITLOUIS]

Thom, thanks for the response. I looked into the documentation and it looks like digital signatures are not supported at this time in the Embed API. I did make some progress using a document level javascript function to display the file location and name after saving the pdf. Users can copy and paste this into the web page for upload saving them a few clicks.

[Thom Parker]

There are many PDF tools and services out there that are suitable for use on a server. Some from Adobe as well as 3rd parties. I'd suggest looking around for something that will work for you.   

Another possible solution is to send the PDFs directly from Acrobat to your server. So the user doesn't have to  bounce between Acrobat and the web site. They can do it all in Acrobat/Reader. This could be done by running the doc.submitForm() function from an Acrobat Automation script.