Compliance
Approvals and signatures
Send a document for approval, place signatures, track who signed and keep a verifiable record.
A finished document can be sent to people who review and sign it. Approvers can be members of your organization or external people who only receive an email link. This guide follows the flow from the sender and the signer side.
In short
Send a document for approval
Open the document and choose Sign. The dialog Submit for Approval asks for the approvers.
Choose Add approver. For each one set the type, Internal or External, and enter name, email and role (for example CISO). Pick the language of the signer, and optionally write a personal message.
Choose Next: place. Click on the document to put a signature box where each approver should sign. Every approver needs a box before you can send.
Decide the signing order. With Enforce signing order off, anyone can sign at any time. With it on, build steps with Add step; approvers in the same step sign in parallel.
Choose Send invitations. Each approver receives a magic link by email.
Good to know
- With an enforced order, only the first group is emailed. The next group is invited when the front group has signed.
- If the email cannot be delivered, share the link manually.
- A maximum number of roles per approver applies; the app tells you when it is reached.
Follow the status
The document shows Approval Status: Pending Approval, Approved or Rejected, with "N of M signed", who is awaited and when each decision was made. The Approval timeline and the Signing flow chart show the steps. Any rejection rejects the whole approval. The Library has an Approvers column and a Status column.
Try it
Open a document that is pending and choose View Status.
Read the timeline: who signed, with which method and when.
Change or withdraw
Withdraw Approval cancels the request. Edit approvers cancels pending invitations, invalidates the existing links and reopens the designer with the current approvers and boxes filled in. If someone has already signed and you remove their box, the signature becomes invalid and they are notified by email (Invalidate signature & remove).
What the signer sees
The signer opens the link without an account and sees "Document approval request" with the document, the approver and the sender's message.
Click the marked field, Sign here, then Draw or Upload the signature and enter a place if asked. The signature can be dragged and resized inside the document, unless the sender fixed the position.
Add a comment. It is optional for approval and required for rejection.
Choose Approve & Sign, or Decline and give a reason.
By signing, the signer confirms the review, and the signature is legally binding. An invalid or expired link says so; a document already processed shows the earlier decision.
The record
Each signature is sealed in a hash chain over the document, the signature and the audit data, and shown as Verified. Signing data such as time, place, IP address, browser and time zone is stored as audit evidence and encrypted. In the download dialog choose Include signatures and Append signature record page to get a page with signer, role, decision, date (UTC), place and the chain. Download of the signed file is available after approval.
Good to know
- The app proves who signed and that the document was not changed afterwards. Whether a signature meets a particular legal form (for example a qualified electronic signature) is not decided by the app; ask your legal adviser.
- Needed rights: submit and approve are separate rights; see Sign-in and roles.