A User's Guide to SigningHub Web

Signature Fields

Fields

Description

General Tab

Recipient

A read-only field to display the signer's name and email ID for whom this signature field is being configured.

Level of Assurance

A mandatory field to be selected to perform signing for a user. Levels of assurance will be available as allowed in the role assigned to you.

Level of assurance will be set for a signature field by default as per the configured default level of assurance under Personal Settings>Signature Settings. Level of assurance options for a signature field is subject to your assigned enterprise user role and can be changed under Role>Document Settings.

The terms for a level of assurance are as per the eIDAS Standards. For details of these terms click here. Possible values are:

• Simple Electronic Signature (SES)
• Electronic Seal (eSeal)
• Advanced Electronic Seal (AdESeal)
• Qualified Electronic Seal (QESeal)
• Advanced Electronic Signature (AES)
• High Trust Advanced (AATL)
• Qualified Electronic Signature (QES)
  
  

In case the Document Owner tries to add a higher Level of Assurance in combination with Simple Electronic Signature (SES), then Simple Electronic Signature (SES) will be removed.

For a smoother workflow, while adding more multiple signature fields on the document, the system will simply use the level(s) of assurance of the last field for the latest one instead of asking for every signature field. You can always modify the level of assurance for each field manually.

Display

For a signature, this field will be available when you are allowed (in your user role) to add invisible signatures on a document.
 
When available:

• Select the "Visible" option, if you require a visible signature from the signer in this field. This signature will have a proper appearance on the document as configured in the signer's Signature Appearance settings.
• Select the "Invisible" option,  if you require an invisible signature from the signer in this field.
  An invisible signature entails all the characteristics of a signature and is duly verifiable like a visible signature. However, it does not have any appearance on the document.
  When a signature field is marked as invisible, an eye icon is placed in the signature field (as shown with the red arrow):
   

​This display property is not available in case the Level of Assurance of the Signature field is set to "Electronic Signature".

Always create this field on last page

This check box appears for configuration, only when you drop the signature field on the last page of a template document. Tick it if you want to always place this In-Person signature field on the last page of the document.

Authenticate signer via OTP

Select this check box to enable field level authentication through OTP process when attempting to sign the document. By default, this option is unselected.
On selecting the "Authenticate signer via OTP" checkbox, the following options will be displayed: 

• OTP authentication

This option will let the document owner send an OTP to the recipient that will used for the purpose of signing authentication. Whenever the recipient will try to sign this document an OTP will be sent to the recipient's email, mobile number, or both depending upon the document owner's service plan configuration. When the service plan allows "SMS OTP", a field to specify the mobile number of a recipient to send an OTP will be displayed. The document will be signed only upon providing the correct OTP. By default, the specified number is displayed partially masked to comply with the GDPR policy. Click  to view the complete number.

• Time based One Time Password

This authentication option will let the recipient sign the document after they have entered the Time based One Time Password. Whenever the recipient will try to sign this document they will be prompted to enter the Time based One Time Password from the authenticator app configured on their mobile device. In case the recipient has not configured two factor authentication (2FA), upon trying to sign a document that requires Time based One Time Password, an email will be sent to their email address to configure two factor authentication (2FA). The document will be signed only upon providing the correct Time based One Time Password.

Do not show this dialog automatically when a signature field is dropped

Select to automatically apply the "Level of Assurance" of the current signature field to the ones that you will drop afterwards.

This option is helpful when you need to drop several signature fields on the document without making an extra effort to manually set the same Level of Assurance for each of the signature fields separately. 

Details Tab

Field Name

An auto-generated (unique) field name which is used when you need to sign this form field through the API calls. You can change the name as required, but make sure the uniqueness of a field name is not compromised i.e., two or more fields in a document cannot have the same field name. This field is only available when the status of a document is Draft. 

Dimensions

Use this section to relatively set the on-screen and PDF coordinates/position (Left, Top, Width and Height) of the signature field. However, you can also manually move the field to the desired position in a document using drag and drop and these coordinates will be updated accordingly. These coordinates are only available when the status of a document is Draft.

Save and Cancel buttons

Click the "Save" button to save the configurations, or click the "Cancel" button to close this dialog.

1. To prevent bloating of a document with multiple Digital Signatures, if more than one Digital Signature fields are dropped against a single signer, only the last dropped signature field will be retained as a Digital Signature field, and the rest of the dropped signature fields will be converted to Simple Electronic Signature.  
2. This conversion of Level of Assurance is individually applicable to each document with in a package i.e. each document can retain one digital signature field.
3. This conversion of Level of Assurance is applicable regardless of whether or not Simple Electronic Signature is allowed against a user's role settings, the system will still retain only the last dropped signature field as a Digital Signature field, and convert the rest of the dropped signature fields to Simple Electronic Signature, and the user will be able to sign it as well.  
4. After the conversion of Level of Assurance:

• if the user deletes the last added signature field, the system will update the Level of Assurance of the second-last added signature field to match the Level of Assurance of the deleted field.
• if the user manually updates the Level of Assurance of a field which was converted to Simple Electronic Signature, the system will retain the updated Level of Assurance.

5. Let's understand this with an example:
   
      
   
   In this example, five Digital Signature fields have been dropped on multiple pages of a document, against a single signer. The last page (page 4) of the document has no signature for this signer. Only the last dropped signature field (fifth, on page 3) will be retained as a Digital Signature field, and the system will automatically convert the Level of Assurance of the rest of the dropped signature fields to Simple Electronic Signature (i.e. annotation).

1. A hand signature is a simple annotation that is added in the document along with the actual digital/ e-signature, when multiple digital/ e-signature fields are configured for a signer.
2. You can not add the digital signature and e-signature fields for the same recipient in a template.
3. An electronic signature can also be a witness digital signature, if it is generated by using a witness certificate which is a public signing certificate available on the server for digital signing. 
4. If the specified recipient (signer) in a template, does not have a SigningHub account and a digital signature field is configured for him/her, s/he will be asked to register to SigningHub before applying digital signature on the document. However, the recipient does not require a SigningHub account, when an e-signature field is configured for him/her.
5. The availability of Witness Digital Signature and OTP security features is subject to your subscribed service plan. If you cannot find these options in your account, upgrade your service plan.
6. An invisible signature doesn't have any visible appearance on a document. However it entails all other verifiable characteristics of e-signing, i.e. Time Stamping, Certificate Chain, Certificate Status, etc. An invisible signature can be a Digital Signature, Witness Digital Signature, or Witness In-Person Signature as configured in a workflow.
7. The OTP length is based on your subscribed service plan. SigningHub currently supports 4, 6, and 9 digits OTP.
8. The document owner (and the shared space collaborator, if any) can update the level of assurance of a "Signature" field, while the status of the document is, "In-Progress" or "Pending".

• In case of the document owner is an enterprise user, they can set any level of assurance as allowed in the Enterprise Role.
• In case of the document owner is an individual user, they can set any level of assurance as allowed in the Service Plan.
• In the "EDIT SIGNATURE FIELD" dialog, only the "Level of Assurance" field will be editable, the rest of the fields will be read-only.
• The level of assurance of a signature field can not be updated if a read-only template has been applied.
• Only the level of assurance of unprocessed fields can be updated.
• Where previously, the level of assurance of a signature field was set to "Simple Electronic Signature (SES), the system will not allow updating the level of assurance.
• Where previously, the level of assurance of a signature field was any other than "Simple Electronic Signature (SES), the system will not allow updating the level of assurance to "Simple Electronic Signature".