Electronic Signature can greatly speed up those processes which rely on a signature and where waiting for a wet signature can add days, often weeks to that process such as contract and invoice generation. Leveraging the data captured from an initial Nintex form passed into Nintex Workflow, no longer do we need to duplicate recipient and initiation information, and thanks to the Nintex Document Generation action, we don't even need to update a standard document each time. We can keep that template secure in a centralised SharePoint location without the risk of end users editing the source of truth.
Adobe provides the entire signing platform and handles the whole process securely online.
Coming to Nintex Workflow for Office 365 on the June release is the Adobe Sign action:
The Adobe Sign action is the perfect partner to the Nintex Document Generation action in Workflow for Office 365, for more information on that, see Dan Stoll introduction post at https://community.nintex.com/community/tech-blog/blog/2015/12/04/nintex-document-generation
This gives you the ability to build a document from list form initiation and pass to the Adobe Sign recipient to electronically sign. Let's take a look at this in action then go into the config of the action -
In this scenario I have a New Employee Contracts list with some simple metadata columns; Name, Contact Email, Position, Hiring Manager and Start Date. Lets imagine the Human Resources department are hiring a new employee and need to issue our standard contract personalised to that employee and send to them to sign electronically and return to my SharePoint environment.
Let's start by creating an item -
Thanks to the Document Generation action, I'm now able to merge this list item data with my standard company contract, move to another area of SharePoint and even convert to PDF.
In this instance, Mr Pitt's contract has been sent to our Agreements library and is now ready for Adobe Sign to take over and send for signature.
*At this stage you will need to authorise the workflow to use your Adobe Sign account* - further details for Adobe profile can be found at https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/sign.html
Brad receives an email from the Initiator with all required instructions to sign the contract -
Opening the link Brad is directed to the adobe Sign site to read and apply his digital signature, below is the process for how it would operate on a mobile device -
Clicking the link takes the user to the document to sign, along with Start highlighted
Click Start to move to the designated signature area
Click inside the signature area to open up the signature panel
You now have the option to type your name or sign free hand
Click Apply to complete the signature and go to T&C page
Select Click to sign to finish....
Brad and the initiator of the request are both sent an email indicating the document has been completed, filed and saved within Adobe Sign. Based on our action configuration the finalised signed document is then converted to PDF and saved into our SharePoint document library.
Now for the actual action configuration, what settings can we play with here...
As with all Nintex Workflow actions, drag and drop the Adobe Sign action in place and double click to open up and presented with the following options (attached screenshots also) -
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Initiator* | identifies to Adobe who to have as the initiator of the email, can be reference via metadata as well as lookup |
| Signing order* | Complete in order or Complete in any order options, linked to Recipients below |
| Recipient(s)* | Enter email or use initiator - lookup or metadata based and allows for multiple recipients to sign |
| CC | insert any CC address from metadata or lookup |
| Agreement name* | Title of the agreement to appear in email received - allows for lookup to build reference |
| Message | Message to form part of Adobe Sign email received |
| Agreement document will expire in* | Expiry date allows lookup to workflow variable so can be built around any date formulas - max 180 days |
| Reminder frequency | None, daily or weekly until signed |
| Document(s) location* | Adobe or SharePoint |
| SharePoint relative URL | Lookup based url builder, also allows for multiple documents to be merged into a single document to sign, such as a Cover page and Contract |
| Wait for all signatures* | Yes or No |
| Output document library | SharePoint document library selector |
| Output document name/path* | Lookup path builder |
| Agreement URL in Adobe Sign | Workflow variable |
| Status from Adobe Sign | Workflow variable |
| Agreement outcome | Workflow variable |
Settings marked * are required
The Adobe Sign action will be included free as part of your licensing for Nintex for Office 365 and will automatically appear in the workflow toolbox. To use the action you will need to have an Adobe Sign Enterprise or Business plan. Visit https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/sign/pricing/plans.html for more details.
Enjoy!
