Adobe Acrobat has always set the benchmark for high quality PDFs, seeing off numerous rivals throughout its 17 year history to be regarded as the industry standard.

In 2008, Version 9 of Acrobat made even greater leaps into the uncharted waters of document creation with its embedding of video and animation capabilities to really bring PDFs to life. For the first time documents could truly be multimedia experiences providing the end user with many different layers of data and analysis.

But Acrobat 9 was not the only pioneering move that Adobe made three years ago. Launching concurrently with Acrobat 9 was Acrobat.com, an online business community that allows many and disparate members of an organisation to work simultaneously on the same documents. The advantages are obvious; it eliminates the need for endless emails back and forth between colleagues as well as streamlining the operation onto one single platform.

There are a number of different elements that go into the making of Acrobat.com. The first of these are the virtual workspaces, the HQ of the document sharing experience. From here you can create the number of files and folders required for your purposes whilst also monitoring the users working on them. You control who has access to what, creating various levels of authority within the user group and you can also view who is currently working on any given document and exactly what they are doing, be it writing, editing or amending.

Conversion of files to the PDF format is remarkably straightforward as well. Files created in Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint can all be converted with the click of a button. The Create PDF option is a smooth and fast tool to transform staid documents into the vivid and exciting Adobe template.

Possibly the shiniest jewel in Acrobat.com's crown is its web conferencing service Adobe ConnectNow. Whilst the ability to interact visually with colleagues in a conference context is invaluable in itself Adobe ConnectNow is so much more than just mere video conferencing. For a start it provides users with the option to 'take over' another user's computer so that they can see first hand what changes a colleague would like to see on their work. This approach is so much more effective than any amount of verbal explanation, however eloquent or precise. Other options such as whiteboard, screen sharing and chat pod all enhance the online meeting room dynamic by catering to every requirement of web conferencing needs.

Last but by no means least is Buzzword, Adobe's online word processor specifically built for the authoring of reports and proposals. Like Acrobat.com's workspaces you can allocate roles and levels of access to contributors as well as monitoring their online activity. In addition, colour coded comments are easy to apply to a document in real time and the version history option allows everybody to view the stages a document is undergoing on its way to completion.

And all these desktop application style resources are available within a web browser so there is no need to painstakingly install program after program before you can get started.

Whilst Acrobat.com is accessible and user friendly a basic knowledge of Acrobat software is very much recommended. The best way to familiarise yourself with Adobe's body of work is to undertake a course that will teach you exactly what you need to know to get the most out of Acrobat.com.