MAXWELL AFB-GUNTER ANNEX, Ala. -- The Business and Enterprise Systems (BES) Directorate’s Adobe team completed option year two transition activities supporting the Joint Enterprise License Agreement (JELA) III contract in the BES Service Management Division.
During this period, the team executed several initiatives to improve processes and communications leading to a successful fiscal year-end transition.
Analysis of existing workflows resulted in moving Software Benefits Administrators (SBAs) touchpoints earlier in the process to improve license refresh to all users.
The Adobe team met with the JELA vendor to incorporate License Orchestrator improvements to permit Department of the Air Force (DAF) personnel at Major Commands, Combatant Commands, and unit levels to get quotes online and for small orders, complete transactions using Government Purchase Cards.
Large orders were successfully executed by engaging the Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization team at Defense Information Systems Agency to process purchase packages and complete contract actions.
In the last option transition period, December 2022 through early January 2023, many DAF users on the Air Force Network (AFNET) received pop-up messages that their Acrobat license was about to expire.
The Adobe team pulled multiple resources from the process chain and performed a post-mortem on the incidents that led to the pop-up messages to determine the root causes.
One of the key takeaways that turned into action was implementing a series of webinars in early October 2023 for JELA enrollees specifically to discuss the process of updating Adobe license files on end-user PCs. Additionally, the team provided new license files to build update packages for deployment to Standard Desktop Configuration (SDC) machines worldwide. Two dozen new updated license file packages were staged on Air Force Center for Electronic Distribution (AFCED) for authorized users to download.
Then the Adobe team collaborated with the Air Force Public Affairs Agency to build updated releases for Creative Cloud bundles for DAF users to pull tested and approved versions of those
products to update their deployments via AFCED. Regular communications to SBAs occurred with the latest information on availability conveyed to end-users to begin applying new license data to local machines sooner and avoid a reoccurrence of last year’s pop-ups. These actions provided a successful deployment of Adobe products to more than 575,000 users across the DAF.
The Adobe team is working to help the Department of Defense (DoD) continue building upon the success realized by leveraging service, component, and 4th Estate agencies to combine buying power through the Adobe JELA IV acquisition. The new agreement is scheduled to begin September 30, 2024. The agreement will continue to enhance value for DAF and other enrollees through better terms and conditions and incorporate lessons learned from the current agreement with significant benefits to the DAF mission.