Overview
FormAssembly's E-Signature feature is designed to comply with U.S. E-Signature Regulations, including the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA). It is also compliant with the Australian Electronic Transactions Act.
The E-Signature feature accomplishes two primary functions:
- Provides an audit trail that includes authentication of the respondent, verifying their identity, and ensuring they are who they claim to be.
- Complies with the E-Sign Act, which states that electronic signatures, if used according to the law, are legally binding and valid to the same extent as signatures attached to paper documents.
On forms where you have enabled E-Signature collection, your users will be asked to verify their submission with an E-Signature after they submit the form.
To get started with our E-Signature feature, you can follow the steps below.
For information on how to use the E-Signature Step to sign a generated PDF, check out this article here.
Requirement
To use the E-Signature feature, a FormAssembly user must:
- have Content Management user permissions enabled for their login
- specifically, the Enable E-Signature permission must be enabled for the user account
Settings
Form Contact Information
To begin, you'll need to configure your Form Contact Information so that those completing your form will have a specific person to contact should they have questions about the E-Signature.
Signature Configuration
In the Signature Configuration section, you have the option to collect signatures with initials and to customize a signing message. The signing message will be displayed above the signature request when the user is completing their E-Signature.
Form Submission Process
Once the respondent clicks the submit button, they will be taken to the E-Signature request screen. Here, they will be required to electronically sign their name, enter a valid email address, and submit their initials (if you have selected the initials option in the configuration).
Email Verification
Once the respondent has signed and submitted their E-Signature, they will receive an email with a verification link to help ensure the authenticity of their signature. They will need to click on the link (or copy and paste the link into their browser's URL) to finish the verification process.
After the respondent has completed this verification, they will receive a final email confirmation, as will the email address listed in the "contact email address" field of the E-Signature setup. This email will contain a link that allows the respondent and form creator to view a record of the E-Signature.
E-Signature Record
Summary
From the Summary section of the E-Signature Record page, you will be able to see what specific steps of processing have been completed, as well as the record details and events that occurred during the processing.
You will also find the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier), which is a unique ID that is assigned to each E-Signature submission. Finally, you can find the record checksum, the package signature hash, and the custodian signature hash on this page as well.
Signed Response
From the Signed Response section of the E-Signature Record page, you will be able to view a copy of the E-Signature, which includes the signatory's IP address and the UUID for the submission. You can also view a Printer-Friendly Version of this response.
Options
From the Options section, you can choose to resend the record retrieval email to the signatories on record.
You can also choose to send the record to a third party if you would like them to have temporary access to the E-Signature Record for 24 hours.
If the signatory entered an incorrect email when signing, you can also choose to reset the signatory's email from the options page, provided they have not clicked the verification link. This will resend the verification email to the new address.
E-Signature Records and Data Purging
If you are using the E-Signature feature in conjunction with FormAssembly's data purging, there are several additional notes to consider.
If you set your purge settings to delete entire response records, the response will be purged, but there will be a separate copy of the signed data that will not be purged. This is because, by law, E-Signature records must be retained indefinitely.
Your Form Respondent will still have access to the signed data in the initial email they received.
If you have not purged the entire response, you will still have access to the signed data in the response view. If you have purged the entire response, you will need to contact the support team to retrieve that data, as it is stored on our servers for security purposes.