PDF Signature Appearances

When signing PDF documents it is possible to create visible signature appearances. These show a representation of the digital signature stamped on the document. Signature appearances are visible even when documents are printed. They are a very useful feature to help human users establish trust and understand and accept digital signature technology.

ADSS Signing Service provides a PDF signature appearance designer tool that allows detailed control over the signature appearance. Using this tool multiple signature appearances can be configured and linked with PDF Signing Profile. Different signature appearance attributes such as "signing reason", "location", "signer contact details", "signing date/time" can be defined. The ADSS Operator can also control the font style, color, font size and where to show these text items within the signature field. Images of items such as company logos and hand-signatures can also be added at precise locations within the signature field.

Clicking on the PDF Signature Appearances shows the following screen:

A list of existing PDF signature appearances is shown. The table below explains the various options:

Items	Description
Appearance Name	A friendly name assigned to this PDF Signature appearance for easy identification purposes.
Description	Description for this appearance (optional).
Preview	Click on the “View” link under this column to see how this signature appearance will look when stamped on a PDF document.
Export	Click on the “Export” link button under this column to export the relevant signature appearance settings out of ADSS Server.
Search	Click on this button to see different search options. This is useful if there are a lot of PDF signature appearances and you need to search for a particular one.
Clear Search	Click on this button any time to discard the search results and see all PDF signature appearances.
Make a Copy	Creates a exact copy of a selected Signature Appearance, which can be edited while creating. Note: Copy of a template creates without the Name and Description of a selected Signature Appearance template.
Import	Click on the Import button to import the PDF Signature Appearance file from the file system.
Delete	Deletes the selected signature appearance.

Existing PDF signature appearances can be sorted in either Ascending or Descending order by selecting a table column from the drop down list. The list of PDF signature appearances can be sorted by Name or Description.

Clicking on the Import button will display the following screen:

It will allow the operator to import PDF Signature Appearance file from the file system.

Click on the New button to create a new signature appearance, the screen below is shown:

The table below explains various items on this page:

Items	Description
Appearance Name	Assigns a friendly name to this PDF Signature appearance for identification purposes.
Appearance Description	For a more detailed description for this appearance, the operator may specify the usage for the appearance, e.g. "PDF Signature appearance used when signing PDF invoices sent to European customers".
Manage Appearance Objects	The following different signature appearance objects can be added, removed or modified in this section: Signed By Signing Date Reason Location Contact Info Hand Signature Company Logo Border Note: Hand-signature and company logo images can be resized by selecting the image using the left click of the mouse. The overall signature appearance size (aspect ratio) and size of the signature appearance images can also be changed by following these simple instructions: Bring mouse over the signature appearance or image border re-size pointers. Click on a corner of the border and re-size pointers. Hold the mouse and drag it to increase or decrease the aspect ratio of the signature appearance.

For Signing date the following date formats are available:If it is required to override a signature appearance attribute dynamically with a value sent in the request message then it is important that this attribute is added to the relevant signature appearance using a default value. If the attribute is NOT added to the signature appearance it cannot later be over-ridden!

In order to use non-English characters in the signature appearance, font embedding should be enabled for visible signatures in the relevant profile so that those characters are shown properly in the signature appearance.

EU Date
US Date
Full Date
Short Date
Short US Date
ISO 8601 Date

If you have configured the use of a specific font in the signature appearance profile, this needs to be placed in the fonts directory. The directory path is defined by the DEFAULT_FONTS_DIRECTORY property in the system.properties file in folder <ADSS_INSTALLATION_DIR>/conf. The default value for the fonts directory is:<ADSS_INSTALLATION_DIR>/fonts/. You can change this value to point to any directory on the ADSS Server machine.

Click on the Font Color to select a suitable color:

Clicking on the Search button on PDF Signature Appearance main page will display following screen:

This helps to locate a particular PDF signature appearances. The PDF signature appearance can be searched based on "Signature Appearance Name". If a search is based on multiple values, then these will be combined together using the “AND” operand, and thus only records that meet all the criteria will be presented.

If "_" character is used in the search then it will act as wildcard.