How Do I Add External Documents to e-Sign?

A common request with our API integration is how to include external or 3rd-party documents to e-sign in the e-sign package?

This is a challenging task for several reason, though namely because of how fields are named and how Quik! instructs the e-sign solution on who signs where. 

In order to e-sign forms via Quik!, the e-sign vendor must know which fields to sign and by which recipient. This information is all handled by Quik! and automatically sent to the e-sign vendor because of how the Quik! Field Definition works. An external document, one that is not in the Quik! library, means that Quik! doesn't have any info to send to the e-sign vendor and cannot tell it where to sign and by which recipient.

Possible Solutions

Add Your Documents To The Quik! Library

Every form added to the Quik! library is built to be e-signed with all of our supported e-sign vendors, seamlessly and without any additional effort. This is the ideal solution because it is easy to add any number of documents to Quik! and include them in your form package. 

This approach will not work if your document is generated in real-time by another system, like a contract management system, illustrations, hypotheticals, proposals, or other types of generated documents.

Docusign - Use Draft Mode and Anchor Tags at Docusign

For Docusign customers, you can use a combination of Docusign Draft Mode and Anchor Tags to accomplish the integration of external documents. This process requires some type of intervention, either by your system and/or your user.

1. Make sure your document has Anchor Tags on it (see Docusign Anchor Tag support: https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?language=en_US&bundleId=evk1581360654067&topicId=hia1581360623228.html&_LANG=enus). In simple terms, an anchor tag is text placed in the field that Docusign knows how to read and look for in order to place a field on the document. If you are not using or cannot use Anchor Tags, then see the Self Service option below.
   
   
2. Configure the Quik! Forms Engine execute/html call to use the Docusign "Draft Mode" setting (see the Configuring CreateEnvelopeAsDraft property to TRUE).
   
   
3. Add your document (with Anchor Tags) to the Quik! package using the AddDocToForms Method (see this article: How Do I Add External Documents to Forms?)
   
   
4. Generate your Quik! Form package and have the user complete filling out the form.
   
   
5. Log into Docusign - When the user submits the Quik! Form to be signed (e.g. they click the SIGN button and then the SEND button in the Quik! Form Viewer), the attachment will be sent along with the form. Once in Docusign, the user will need to log in, view the envelope sitting in Draft status, and then assign recipients to the anchor tags on the document. In other words, the user must edit the envelope to assign signers to your external documents - the anchor tags enable Docusign to automatically recognize where to place the signing fields but doesn't know who is signing which fields. 
   
   It may be possible to perform this work programmatically, but there are no specific steps documented or known for how to do this - we recommend consulting with Docusign APIs to find a way to assign signers to anchor tags programmatically, if desired.

Use the Self Service Model for Docusign

The Self Service Model is another approach which gives you full control over the process. However, this approach requires more programmatic steps. This model is intended to enable you to do anything you need with Docusign and Quik!. 

This method has the following core components:

1. Quik! creates the PDF and meta data needed by Docusign - you call our APIs to retrieve these two items
2. You (customer) create the API call to Docusign and pass the documents and meta data to the Docusign API to generate a new envelope
   1. This is where you add the Quik! PDFs and you can add your own external documents to the Docusign envelope.
   2. Using the meta data Quik! provides for the Quik! PDFs, you can create your own meta data or augment the Quik! version with the necessary data about how signers will sign your external documents.

Ultimately, this approach gives you the most control, however it requires the most effort to combine two sets of documents with their own field / tag nomenclature. 

No SIGNiX Solution

At this time, there is no equivalent solution for supporting draft mode, anchor tags or full control over the SIGNiX implementation.