Creative Tech Support

Adobe Creative Cloud for Teams puts an administrator in charge of licenses and app installation. The administrator can add or revoke team membership and licenses from the admin page. This is preferable to individual licenses, where each user is on their own. With individual licenses, a user could possibly change their password, deactivate Creative Cloud from their company computer and install it on a personal computer without management approval.

Whether you have team or individuals, licensing is done by Adobe IDs, not serial numbers or codes. Licensing must be renewed every 30 days. This usually happens silently through the internet without the user’s knowledge. If a license expires it will ask to sign in again with an Adobe ID associated with a valid/current license.

Signing up for a team subscription

The administrator signs in with a master Adobe ID and purchases licenses. Adobe needs a credit card on file for monthly subscription fees.

1. Sign up for Creative Cloud for Teams. Use the admin Adobe ID and password.
2. Select the number of licenses you need. You can install each license on up to 2 computers.
3. Enter billing information and complete the transaction.

Managing team members

The admin may want to assist team members sign in, and even assign passwords. This is especially important if you plan to install the same license on two computers. You’ll need to know the password and it may be easiest to make them all the same.

If you’d like, you can create Adobe IDs for computers instead of users so the licenses are easier to handle and remain constant when staff changes. For example, adobe01@mydomain.com, adobe02@mydomain.com. Each needs a working email address on your mail host. In Google Apps, we create a group called licensing@mydomain.com, add an admin to the group, then create group aliases for all the potential Adobe IDs. All correspondence goes to the admin, not the user, and the email addresses cost nothing.

Assigning licenses

1. Sign into Adobe with the admin account.
2. In the navigation section choose Manage Team.
3. Assign users by email addresses – these will become their Adobe IDs for sign-in and app activation.
4. Fill out the form. You might include a note to the user that they should forward the invitation email back to the administrator for acceptance. This puts the administrator in charge of passwords. 

Accepting an invitation to Creative Cloud team

Sign into the designated Adobe ID and join the team. This can be done on the computer that receives the license or prepared ahead of time by the admin.

1. Sign out of any Adobe IDs.
2. Click the link in the invitation email.
3. Sign in with the correct Adobe ID. If the team member has an Adobe account, enter their existing password and skip to step 6.
4. If you’re creating a new Adobe ID, enter a password.
5. It’s helpful to sign in with a designated password. Enter the name and date of birth. You can use a standardized date of birth for all team members (January 1, 1980). Then click Create and accept the terms.
6. Accept the invitation to Adobe Creative Cloud.
7. Now you can download apps and share files, although it may be much faster to use an install package provided by the administrator.

Building a package for installation

A team administrator can download Adobe apps and set particular options, then create a package for installation on workstations. This can save an enormous amount of internet traffic and download time. Learn more about the Creative Cloud Packager & see a short video here.

1. Sign into Adobe with the admin account.
2. In the navigation section choose Manage Team.
3. Click Deployment Tools in the sidebar and Download Creative Cloud Packager (CPP).
4. Open the CPP Launcher disk image from Downloads.
5. Open CPP Launcher app. It downloads and runs.
6. Choose Creative Cloud for Teams and sign in with the admin login.
7. Click Create Package.
8. Type a package name and choose a location to save.
9. Across from Package Configurations click Change.
10. For most situations, choose Admin users update via Adobe Update Manager and click Save.
11. For license type, choose Named Licensing. Click Next.
12. Select a language (English North America).
13. Select apps or updates to include in the package.
14. Click Build.
15. After building the package, drag the folder to a shared server or portable drive.

Installing Adobe Creative Cloud from a package

Rather than having each team member download Creative Cloud apps through the internet individually (5–15 GB per computer), install from a package on a shared drive.

1. Quit all Adobe apps. Do not open any Adobe apps or install anything else while Adobe Creative Cloud installs.
2. Connect to the shared drive containing the Adobe installation package.
3. Open the Build folder and Install.pkg file inside.
4. Authenticate as an administrator and install.
5. Be patient. The installler might not show a progress bar. It may say Running package scripts for about 20-30 minutes, then it’s done.
6. Drag the new apps from the Launchpad or Applications folder to the dock.
7. Open the Adobe Creative Cloud app from the Launcher or Applications folder.
8. Sign in with the Adobe ID and password assigned by the admin.
9. Launch an Adobe app to confirm the license.
10. Click the Creative Cloud icon in the menu bar, then click Apps and install any updates.

See user instructions for installing and updating Adobe Creative Cloud. Or get more help managing Creative Cloud for Teams.

Learn more about installation.