Create a PDF (or word doc) to send to Adobe Sign for Signature Request

[philipf]

Hello,

I am curious if any one had any thoughts on how to get essentially get a ticket created in jira, and then at the end be turned into a document that is sent out for signature using adobe sign.

We do not want to use Zapier or any automation tool.

1. I have looked into using a jira plugin file exporter to generate a wodrd doc, that gets delivered to adobe sign, which then sends it out for signature.

2. Another option is to use a O365 form, then power-automate the whole thing. With one part of power automate would be to send the form to adobe, and also send to jira.

I prefer option 1, so there is one ticket, and one flow that starts in jira.

Is there other ways to do this in jira?

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

UPDATE ON 9 OCT 2025

Better PDF Automation is available also for Jira Cloud!

You can start automating this any time. Here is the documentation.

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ORIGINAL ANSWER

We are developer of the Better PDF Exporter and Better PDF Automation (DC version) apps which sound like the perfect pair to handle this!

Right now, the automation part of the pair is not released for the Cloud yet, but we have a working prototype. When out, it will make it possible to generate PDF documents as part of regular Jira automation rules. 

If you can tell me how Adobe expects a document, then I should be able to tell if this is something that is within our near-term scope.

We primarily plan to support emailing PDF documents and to attach them to issues in the first version. If you can access an issue attachment from an automation rule, and forward that to Adobe (both sound pretty realistic to me), then you could approach it this way... :-?

[Andreas Klopp]

We want something similar...

We want to use the Jira workflow and the approval process here too – so far, so good.

However, we also have processes that require approvals in the form of an electronic signature. We use Adobe eSign as our eSign tool. The idea is to add a task to the workflow to generate a PDF, the “approvers” receive a message for electronic signature, they do this using eSign, and the signed document is attached to the Jira task.

It would be perfect if the status of the approval were also visible in Jira—as it works here in the DocuSign version in this video  https://youtu.be/HCCswF-1YEw?si=iwnQ6a7eWEA5ecgt

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Andreas Klopp Does DocuSign offer an API?

It seems they do!

https://developers.docusign.com/docs/esign-rest-api/reference/

You could introduce a new "Single select" type custom field called "Approval status" with at least two status values, one which denotes that the "approval is pending" and another which denotes that the approval was done ("approved" or something).

Then use an automation rule that pings the DocuSign API and gets the current status for each work item which is now in "approval is pending". Only these are the work items that need to be polled again and again. You should be able to connect to the DocuSign API using the built-in "Send web request" action.

It just one extra field and one rule.

[Andreas Klopp]

Thank you for your reply and your assessment.

However, we use Adobe eSign and are looking for a suitable solution for this.

The link to the video was only intended to show the desired range of functions.

I like the suggestion with status fields. Can something like this also be implemented with Better PDF Exporter + Better PDF Automation + Adobe eSign?

Adobe also has an API for the eSign service. 

Acrobat Sign API Overview — Acrobat Sign Developer Guide

REST API — Document e-signature Software — Acrobat Sign

Since we are not developers, but only users, it is difficult for us to develop such an integration ourselves. We prefer to use tools that are also maintained, which is why we are conducting research.