Setting default sizes for text and date tags for a team or organization

Available with: Team & Custom Plans            Role: Team Admin, Super Admin

Team Level Default Text and Date Tag Sizes

  1. From the user dashboard, navigate to the admin portal and then go to the “Users & Teams” page.
  2. Select the team that you want to edit.
  3. In the action menu select “Settings”
  4. In the pop-up that appears, select the “Documents” tab or scroll down to the documents setting section where you will see the “Default text tag size” and “Default date tag size” options.
  5. Change the height and width of the tags as needed, then click “Save”.

Organization Level Default Text and Date Tag Sizes

  1. From the user dashboard, navigate to the admin portal and then select “Global Settings”.
  2. In the pop-up that appears, select the “Documents” tab or scroll down to the documents setting section where you will see the “Default text tag size” and “Default date tag size” options.
  3. Change the height and width of the tags as needed, then click “Save”.

What is an Audit Trail?

An audit trail can be the deciding factor between a valid and an invalid electronic signature document.

You may be familiar with the difference between electronic signatures and digital signatures. In case you’re not, an electronic signature is information in electronic form (can be sound, symbol, process, etc.) that is associated or attached to a document. This means that as long as one can demonstrate that the signature is associated with a person and that there was intent to sign, everything is legally binding and accepted.

A digital signature is actually a form of electronic signature that uses an encryption algorithm that helps validate who the signer is. It also ensures that the document cannot be tampered with, as the signature becomes invalid if the document is changed after signing.  You can read about the differences between electronic signatures vs. digital signatures here.

Now that we have covered the basics, let’s get to what an audit trail is and why it plays an integral part in the process of validating of a document.

Technopedia, the IT education site, defines an audit trail in the context of information technology, “as a chain of evidence in the form of hard or electronic business transactions or communications resulting from business processes, functions or programming executions.”
In other words, an audit trail is a detailed list of critical data points pertaining to the transaction that are recorded and reported. These data points help verify the validity of the transaction.

Below is a list of important components we display in Signority’s audit trail:

  • Unique Document Title
  • Secured seal (Digital Signatures)
  • Email Address Of Signers And Viewers
  • The IP address of the involved parties
  • Documents viewed by each signer
  • Signers consent to terms of service
  • User authentication: SMS and Email
  • Signature creation (by each signer)
  • Party agreement to / acknowledgement of document
  • Document downloads after signing
  • Signer’s Status
  • GUID (or ‘Globally Unique Identifier’)

For the sake of avoiding any form of confusion, let’s go over what these components mean and what value they add to the entire electronic signature validation process.

Unique Document Title
 
Unique Document Title

A unique document title is the unique file name of the document that was originally created by the document creator. The unique document name can be found in the first page of Signority’s audit trail.

Secured Seal (Digital Signature)

The “Secured with Digital Encryption” image on the audit trail indicates that the document has been digitally signed by Signority to ensure document integrity. This means that if the signed document was changed, edited, or tampered with in any way, the digital signature on the document would break and be considered invalid.

Email Addresses of Signers and Viewers

The audit trail records and displays the email addresses of all parties involved, which can be either signers or viewers.

  • Signer: Signers are users who are required to sign a particular document. A signer could be a primary signer or a witness.        
  • Viewer: A viewer is a user with view-only capabilities.


The IP Address of involved parties

According to IP Location, an IP address or Internet Protocol is “A unique address that computing devices such as personal computers, tablets, and smartphones use to identify itself and communicate with other devices in the IP network.”

In terms of Signority’s audit trail, the IP address associated with a particular signer or viewer at the time of viewing the document, is recorded and reported — adding an extra layer of validity to electronic signature documents.

Documents viewed by each Signer

The Documents viewed by the signer or viewer are displayed in the name section in the Audit trail. The audit trail also displays the exact time the document was viewed.

GUID (Globally Unique Identifier)

GUID’s of Globally Unique Identifiers are defined by BetterExplained as “Large, enormous numbers that are nearly guaranteed to be unique.”

They usually look like this: fa06cc7a-8a32-44c2-9e4d-2192818ab076

At Signority, every document created is assigned a Globally Unique Identifier and can be viewed in the audit trail.

Signers’ Consent to Terms of Service

“Signers’ consent to terms of service” refers to the signer or viewer agreeing to abide to the Signority terms of service in order to use services provided by Signority.

User Authentication

Verifying the identity of a user before granting access to secured information is the main intention of the User Authentication feature.
With Signority, two additional methods can be used to verify signers and viewers — i.e. SMS and email — when email and /or SMS password authentication is turned on by the user, Signority sends a randomly generated unique code to the recipient. The code is required to access the document.

The type of user authentication used is displayed in the “Authentication” section of the Signority’s Audit Trail.

Signature Creation (by each signer)

The Signature Creation section is a critical component of the audit trail, it is the original signature of the required parties.
At Signority and most other eSignature providers, a party’s signature can be created by:

  1. Using a touch pad/screen or mouse
  2. Typing their signature using a keyboard
  3. Uploading a scanned copy of their signature
Document downloads after signing

Once the document is finalized by all of the signers, all parties involved are notified via email with an attached copy of the finalized document for safekeeping. In addition, the audit trail continues to track document downloads after signing and is updated live.

Signer’s Status

The signer’s status reflects the final action taken by all required signers. The status can be: “Rejected”, “Waiting to Open”, “In Progress”, “Finalized or “Viewed” — depending on the action taken by the signer.

Prefillable tags

Prefillable tags are tags that the sender can fill in before sending out a document for signing. Note that signers cannot edit the information entered by the sender.

Prefillable Text

Prefillable text tags are tags that a sender can fill out with text before sending out a document for signing.



Prefillable Number

Prefillable number tags are tags that a sender can fill out with any numerical value before sending out a document for signing.

Cancelling documents

If you have a document out for signing that is In Progress that you would like to cancel, Signority’s cancel feature lets you do that. To access the feature, login to your Signority account. Then navigate to Documents and locate the document you would like to cancel. Select the document by clicking on the checkbox next to its name. Then at the top of the page, locate the Cancel Signing button. After clicking on this button, a dialog will popup on your screen. Here, you can choose the type of cancellation that you would like to perform. There are three choices:

  1. Cancel & Send email
  2. Cancel & No email
  3. Resend Signing Request

Cancel & Send email

This will cancel the document’s signing workflow. To use this option, you must input a cancellation reason. All recipients will receive an email notification that the document signing has been cancelled containing the cancellation reason. The document status will be changed to “Cancelled”, and recipient editing access to the document will be removed. The cancellation reason will be included in the audit trail of the cancelled document.

Cancel & No email

This will also cancel the document’s signing workflow, but will not notify the recipients of the cancellation. Recipient access of the document will still be removed, and the document’s status will be changed to “Cancelled”.

Resend Signing Request

This will cancel the current document signing workflow, removing recipient access to it. However, it will immediately create a copy of the document containing all the tags and resend the signing request from the beginning of the workflow.

Document Retention & Backup

Role(s): Super Admin, Team Admin, Doc Admin

In Signority, the Document Retention Period is the number of days for which a finalized document should be “retained” before it is deleted from Signority. By default, this period is set to 90 days. During this time, unless disabled, users in your team will be unable to delete documents until the retention period has passed. After the defined period has passed and the document is set to be deleted, it is sent to the Purge queue, which you can find on the Documents page. 14 days after a document enters the Purge queue, Signority permanently deletes the document. During this 14-day period, you can download the document and/or save a copy if needed.

 

Set up Document Retention Period

  1. In the admin console, navigate to Users and Teams in the left menu.
  2. Select your team and click on Settings on the action bar above the teams list.
  3. In the pop-up, scroll to Retention and Backup or select Retention and Backup from the tab navigation.
  4. If it is not already enabled, toggle on ‘Enable Document Retention’.
  5. Adjust the number of days before a document is permanently deleted.
    Note: After the defined period has passed, the document will be sent to the Purge queue for 14 days before Signority permanently deletes the document. Signority will send an email notifying you that Signority will purge the document seven days and three days before it is permanently deleted. 



Important notes

Increasing the number of days in the retention policy
If you increase the number of days in the retention policy, any documents that are in the Purge queue will have their deletion date extended. If the increase is greater than the number of days that a document has been in the Purge queue, then Signority will remove the document from the Purge queue, and update its expiry date. For example, suppose. today is November 1, 2021. There is currently a document that has been in the Purge queue for four days, meaning that in 10 days, on November 10, 2021, the document will be deleted permanently. If you increase the retention period by 16 days, the document will be removed from the Purge queue. It will be moved back to the Purge queue in 12 days on November 12, 2021. Signority will delete the document permanently 14 days after this, on November 26, 2021.

Decreasing the number of days in the retention policy
If a user shortens the retention period by X number of days, then any signed documents not yet in the Purge queue will have their expiry date shortened by the same X number of days. If the updated expiry date for a finalized document has already passed, the document will be placed in the Purge queue, where Signority will permanently delete them after 14 days. However, for documents that are already in the Purge queue, shortening the retention period does not change how much longer a document will stay in the Purge queue before being permanently deleted.

Turning off the retention policy
If you turn off the retention policy for your account or team, then all documents in the Purge queue will be removed from the Purge queue, and all signed documents will be displayed and accessible as usual. All documents will continue to remain in your Signority account until explicitly deleted.

Disable/Enable New Device Login Notifications

New device login notifications let you know by email whenever a new device is used to access your Signority account. This can be used to help detect fraudulent accesses to your account and allow you to take action to protect your account.

To disable these notifications, login to your account, and under My Account, select Profile Settings. In the Profile Settings page, click on the Security Settings tab and scroll down to the checkbox that reads Enable new device login email notification. To disable, simply uncheck the checkbox.

Multi-Tag Editing for Faster eSign Prep

Long forms with lots of fields can be a hassle to prepare for signing. Here is a list of actions and keyboard shortcuts that will speed up your Signority eSigning work.

Document or Template Editor Page

  • Click and Drag to select multiple tags at a time. After releasing the mouse, you will see an editor panel appear in the right side of the page with the following options
    • Delete All: deletes all selected tags
    • Transform: Each button aligns selected tags either to the left, right, top, or bottom
    • Required: Set all selected tags to be required or optional
    • Recipients: Change the recipient assigned to the selected tags
  • Ctrl + Click (⌘Cmd + Click on Mac): Will select a tag in addition to any other tags that are already selected
  • Ctrl + C (⌘Cmd + C on Mac): Copies a selected tag
  • Ctrl + V (⌘Cmd + V on Mac): Pastes copied tag
  • Right Click -> “Copy”: Copies multiple selected tag
  • Right Click -> “Paste”: Pastes multiple copied tags