Facilitating In-Office Signings with DocuSign

The business transactions conducted through DocuSign are typically delivered to “remote” signers, who aren’t present with a representative of the DocuSign client who sent the document(s). However, the Signer and Sender can still use DocuSign when they’re in the same location. This scenario, generically referred to as “In-Office Signing,” can deliver the benefits of electronic signing to the Sender while maintaining a convenient user experience for the Signer with several approaches.

DocuSign’s classification for a Signer, in the same place with the Sender, is called “In-Person” Signer. This classification changes the signing workflow from:

Envelope notification –> email address of the signer (why direct them to email when they’re standing right here?!)

To:

Sender acts as a host to the signing process, performed by the Sender and Signer on a single computer.

This process removes the need for the Signer’s email address since the Sender receives Envelope notification. DocuSign understands this alternative signing workflow, and prompts the users through the process of gathering identification for the Signer and turning control of the computer between users. Click for a more detailed description of the in-person signing process.

While this process has been described as happening on a desktop computer, you can use an iPad or other suitable mobile tablet for in-person signing.

Some DocuSign clients have satisfied the “In-Office” scenario by extending the notion of DocuSign’s Embedded Signing. The Embedded Signing solution embeds the signing experience directly within a web portal controlled by the client. Since this signer navigates directly from the client portal to the DocuSign process, Embedded Signing also de-emphasizes the need for email to deliver the documents for e-signature.

Instead, the client portal application identifies the Signer and delivers the appropriate documents. This can naturally extend an existing online member site, or it can be an application dedicated to the In-Office scenario. Some clients have supplied a dedicated computer for this purpose to create the concept of a “signing kiosk”.

This standard e-signing pattern delivers Envelopes through email notifications. Current technology may allow opportunities to enable In-Office signing through the standard Remote pattern. For instance:

Mobile Signing
DocuSign has a signing interface specifically designed for mobile devices, and supports Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile phones. If an In-Office Signer has such a device that can access their email, a standard DocuSign Envelope to a Signer would be effective at allowing In-Office Signing.

Web Mail
If an In-Office Signer can access to their email through a web browser, such as anyone using Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, or another web-enabled email interface, they could sign their documents In-Office if a computer, kiosk, or mobile tablet were available for their use.

Wet Sign and Fax
If none of the previous approaches fit, and the prospect of the Signer preferring to sign with a pen seems likely, the “Wet Sign and Fax” approach will allow this concession while still realizing some of the benefits of using an electronic signature platform. In this scenario, the Sender would send the documents to himself (eliminating the need for the Signer’s email) and print the documents. The Signer would sign the paper copies with a pen. Once complete, the Sender would use DocuSign’s faxing capability to deposit the signed documents back into the Envelope.

While this approach circumvents some of the technological control of ensuring proper execution of the documents, it does uphold several valuable properties:

Fax submission will invoke the next step in the Envelope’s routing order/processing stepsDocument storage in a common repositoryActivity that is logged and auditable

These approaches facilitate In-Office Signing with DocuSign. Some of them are based on what the Sending organization can do, such as: What resources can we use to create an Embedded Portal and provide kiosks in the offices? Or, can I allow my client to use my computer?

Others are dependent on what the Signer can do, ex: does your client have a smart phone?. Hopefully, we’ve shared some insight into options to help you design an approach or a hierarchy of approaches that best suit your e-signing needs.

DocuSign is more than just electronic signatures, it's a complete web-based eSign solution working to help you close more business and make more money.