DocuSign: options for placing signature fields on

Question

What are the options for programmatically placing signature fields on the page. (And other field types too?)

Answer 1

There are multiple techniques available:

Place the fields via anchor text

When creating the field (tag) programmatically, you can specify a text fragment in the document as anchor text. Typically the anchor text should be colored white so it will not be visible on the page.

Positioning with anchor text is flexible since the DocuSign signature field (or other field) will track the location of the anchor text--if the document is modified and the anchor text moves on the page, the DocuSign field will track its location on the page.

Downside is that you need access to the source of the documents so you can add anchor text such as /sig1/ in white to the document.

Place the fields via x/y coordinates.

This technique works with unchanged source documents. You specify the x, y, and page number coordinates for the field.

But if the source document is revised then you need to update your software.

Use a DocuSign template, including fields

In this solution, your business colleagues create a "template" by using the DocuSign web tool. The template includes one or more "roles." Eg, a role can be named "customer", "salesperson," etc.

The template includes the signature and other fields.

Then, when you programmatically send the envelope (transaction), you specify the template id and role information in your API call.

Result: a flexible system that enables the template and its documents, fields, etc to be updated (via the DocuSign web tool) without any changes to your application software.

Use a PDF than includes PDF-level fields

PDFs include the notion of a "field." DocuSign can automatically replace the PDF fields with DocuSign fields (tabs). If you have a document generation system that produces PDF with PDF fields, the PDF-field transformation feature can be a good solution.

Enable the sender to place the fields by using the Sender View of the documents.

As part of the sending process, your application can open the Senders View of the DocuSign system for the sender. The sender would then place the fields on the document(s) manually.

This is usually the least desirable user experience since the sender of the document needs to perform the additional step of placing the fields ("tagging the document").