LEED Online and Adobe Reader DC - Adobe Reader 11 is end of life

Hi Kerry,

I agree. This is causing serious issues at my institution, as we cannot access any LEED Online forms using our company network. Hopefully an update is planned very soon to address this.

Zach and Kerry - I sent Kerry's request to my LEED Online contact on the USGBC Technology team on Tuesday. But with Greenbuild this week, I don't expect an answer until next week at the earliest. I did find this link - https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/end-of-support-acrobat-xi-reader-xi.html - that confirms that Adobe quit supporting Adobe Acrobat 11.x and Adobe Reader 11.x on 10/15/17. ("End of support means that Adobe no longer provides technical support, including product and/or security updates, for all derivatives of a product or product version (localized versions, minor upgrades, operating systems, dot and double-dot releases, and connector products).")

I will post additional information when I have it.

I spoke to the responsible person at USGBC this evening. He recommended using the off-line functionality of LEED Online (you download forms, open, save as, then upload). They have no plans to update LEED Online to address this issue - the long term plan is to move away from Adobe to a combination of uploads (i.e. Excel) and ARC. 

I expect this is not the answer you were hoping for - hopefully the work around is not too unpleasant. It sounds like they have done this correctly and lock the form when you download to edit until you upload. 

My contact at USGBC Technology Team got back to me with an update. It expands on what Michael posted regarding offline functionality of LEED Online. Here's what he shared: First, "With respect to online pdf forms, I strongly discourage in using them as Firefox stopped NAPI plugins, and other browsers also will stop the support pretty soon."

He went on to say: "My recommendation is to start using the offline form workflow and have them start working with offline mode. For this offline mode, the user can use any PDF reader as it supports the edit, so users with Adobe DC can also work easily in offline mode."

LEEDuser Premium Members can read more about working in offline mode in the June 2016 update for the LEED Online Status Updates forum - https://leeduser.buildinggreen.com/tipsheet/leed-online-status-updates. To keep them in the loop, I will direct readers of that forum to this discussion but you might find additional useful information there.

I have reached out to an Arc Skoru contact I made at the Colorado Green Schools Summit regarding the comment made above about Arc. I'll post more when I hear back.

Question:

For this offline working mode they propose, is it literally just saving a version of the form offline (or downloading it from the credit library if you can't even get it to load on LEED Online in the first place), filling it out accordingly, and then uploading it back to the website as it's own file in the "Uploads" section for the credit, like you would for a supporting document? I'm going off of memory here, but aren't there some credits that don't even give the option of uploading something, unless you are able to click the 'special circumstances' box on the template...which you won't be able to click if you can't get the form to upload...
Alternatively, is there some magic working on the website that takes what you save offline and populates it to the template when you upload it back to the site, like it used to do back in v2.2 days?

We're starting to see this happen in our organization as well, and it's going to be a massive problem across the board.

Emily - I'm working on a more thorough answer but for now, please review the "How do I access credit forms offline?" Help link - https://www.usgbc.org/help/how-do-I-access-the-credit-forms-offline - in addition to the information noted in the LEED Online Status Updates forum above. In light of Adobe no longer supporting its customers, USGBC and GBCI are moving away from live PDF forms and we'll need to go back to working offline with them (like we did in LEED Online v2). But I can't comment on the magic just yet! Happy Thanksgiving!

I briefly posted that I was unable to access the offline form as well, but I've managed on a second try by ignoring the information on the form that I needed to update Adobe--it was a red herring. Downloading the forms to work offline is tedious, but it seems to work despite this initially misleading message. Its a pity though that LEED on Line has become so cumbersome. I do hope that there will be a fully online functionality soon.

Melissa - I'm sorry to hear you had trouble initially using offline forms but glad to know you shared a trick (avoid the red herring update Adobe message) that helped you get working. I saw your original comment before you edited it above, and I think USGBC needs to hear that teams are frustrated with the situation and therefore are considering other rating systems in lieu of LEED.

I still haven't heard back from my contact at Arc Skoru in regards to Michael's statement above...

But from my conversations with USGBC staff, don't count on LEED Online's improvement. As noted above, in light of Adobe no longer supporting its customers, USGBC and GBCI are "forced" to move away from live PDF forms. Due to this lack of support from Adobe, the workaround for current teams is to use the offline forms in LEED Online.

But this transition away from data rich forms is not new. USGBC started this early last year when they rolled out the LEED v06 forms that went back to using Excel spreadsheets (Calculators) for a lot of data entry. 

Thanks so much, Michelle. I'm realizing now what the overall picture is, and how to work with it. As so often happens with LEED On Line, the potential challenges and changes don't seem to be explicitly shared with the users quite the way I would hope. In our current technological moment, its always difficult to know if key emails went straight to spam, or if there is just a reluctance to broadcast problems. Although I've had some really heroic outreach from single GBCI staff assisting me last summer when suddenly I couldn't access forms, I still haven't seen any wider communications strategy on these issues coming from GBCI as an entity. Considering the huge pressure and stress to deliver these projects, many of which are 5-10 years in the making, with high overall fees for LEED, and considering our responsibilities as key members of project delivery teams involving up to 10 or more other consultants with regular stage deadlines requiring us to update the team, it seems flippant for GBCI not to anticipate what kinds of issues we're dealing with and to be more pro-active about it. (Yes, I missed a key client presentation because it took 3 days to figure this out--while dealing with jet-lag and an office move). A problem foreseen is one that can be dealt with sans panic. I've just received a email from probably another very helpful GBCI staff so I'll relay my frustrations to them. I'll pass on any helpful advice that I can.

Melissa - Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with many of your sentiments. I have tried via LEED Online Status Updates - https://leeduser.buildinggreen.com/tipsheet/leed-online-status-updates - to keep users abreast of pertinent technology changes.*  If you haven't already, please consider reviewing the content in that Tipsheet from LEEDuser’s Documentation Toolkit - https://leeduser.buildinggreen.com/toolkit. And BTW that would actually be the ideal forum to post threads like this one that Kerry started last month that directly relate to LEED Online.

*(IMHO USGBC has chosen to not outline many of the LEED Online updates for its users. But I don’t have insight into USGBC’s strategies and motives.)

I look forward to any additional insights you gain from GBCI.

Hello LEED USERS - The most recent Mac OS (10.13.6) update has rendered the active Adobe worksheets for LEED unreadable.  I have been able to use the LEED Adobe editor  without issue until this mandatory update.  Anyone else have issues or know if I can revert back to the previous Adobe version and make the forms work?  I have about a dozen projects in the works and need access ASAP!  Thanks- Brian

Brian - See https://leeduser.buildinggreen.com/forum/leed-online-now-leed-line, where this MAC OS issue is discussed.

This is causing serious issues at my company, as we cannot access any LEED Online forms using our company network. Hopefully an update is planned very soon to address this. I had also tried to contact Adobe Support for this issue but it was not very helpful.

Sophia - Please do not expect an update from USGBC on this. USGBC's Technology Team says its out of their hands due to browser changes with PDFs. Their response is to use LEED Online with offline forms, which can use any PDF software. I hope you visited https://leeduser.buildinggreen.com/forum/leed-online-now-leed-line where I referenced additional information.

Hi all, when uploading a completed form, do you typically put this in the Credit Uploads? The LEED page on this shows a "upload edited form" button, but I don't have this on my computer. (Accessing through internet explorer)

Hi GianCarlo,

Yes, if your settings are to use offline forms (which is nearly all of us these days, out of necessity), you'll be forced to download a local copy when you click on the Form button, save it so you can work in it, and then when done, you will upload it on the Uploads page in the dedicated place where they ask for it. There are some tricks to getting this to work, though, that I've found out the hard way...

1. When you download a form, DO NOT change anything about the file name. If you do, the upload connectivity will be broken and it won't function the way it's intended to.
2. Most of the users I've seen must use Adobe Acorbat or Pro to fill out the form. For whatever reason, using Bluebeam (and likely any other program, but haven't tested others) also breaks the link. Bluebeam also has quirks sometimes where it won't save info that is input, even if it looks like it does. When you close and reopen, the info isn't there. Best just to use an Adobe program in general. LEED Online has long had issues with other PDF programs, anyway, so this is not a surprise to me.

This applies mostly to the imbedded v4 forms. I believe the v4.1 forms (that you access and edit outside of your project website) are much more user friendly.

As for browser, you no longer have to use Internet Explorer if you're working in forms offline. I use Chrome, and it works just fine.
There are a few unicorns left who can still actually edit the forms within IE like we used to be able to, but they're few and far between, and from what I can tell, are usually working in older versions of windows and/or IE. 

Hope that helps.