DocHub Sign Requests offer efficient workflows that reduce the time and hassle needed to capture legally binding eSignatures and form responses from third parties.  They are the perfect solution for completing contracts, forms and other documents.  In this article, we'll cover some of the key features offered by DocHub Sign Requests, including:

• Signers Authenticate Instantly
• Automated Reminder Notifications
• Automated Inactivity Expiration
• Custom Branded Toolbar and Email Notifications
• Signer Options
• Custom Email Message 
• Signing Order
• Manage and Audit
• Reusable Templates
• Creating, Assigning Fields, Sending and Finalizing

If you'd like to learn how to send one now, you can jump to this article instead: Creating and sending a document as a Sign Request

Signers Authenticate Instantly

DocHub delivers a secure, instant-authentication, URL to the Signers of Sign Requests.  

Signers will not need to sign up or create a DocHub account.  After clicking their instant-authentication URL, they can access, complete, and sign the document with no further verification steps.  For more information about the signer's workflow and to see a step-by-step animation, see: Receiving a sign request as the signer.

Automated Reminder Notifications

If a signer missed the first email or didn't complete the request within a given time period, DocHub can optionally deliver up to 3 automated reminders.

You can opt-in or opt-out of reminders on a per Sign Request basis. 

You can adjust the default reminder schedule that is automatically applied to all Sign Requests in your Sign Request Settings.  If the document is owned by an Organization, then the default Sign Request Settings of the organization are used (Organization -> Settings -> Sign Requests).

Manual Email Reminders

In addition to automated email reminders, the sender has the option of sending signers another notification email as a reminder from document's Audit Page by clicking Signer Actions > Send Reminder.

Automated Inactivity Expiration

You can choose between 1-90 days before any inactive signers cause the document to simply expire and be locked from further changes which means they'll no longer be able to sign the document. Use the drop-down menu for Expiration to set the amount of days after the last email reminder which will be 30 days by default though this setting is disabled (unchecked) by default, so you'd need to check the box to enable it first.

To adjust the default Expiration settings for all Sign Requests, go to https://dochub.com/settings/sign-requests. 

Custom Branded Toolbar and Email Notifications

The document toolbar and notification emails and can be custom branded with your avatar and color scheme.

Custom branded document toolbar example:

Custom branded email notification example:

You can modify these settings for your user from Settings > Profile 
The settings for an organization are located here: Organization > Settings > Profile

Signer Options

Receives Final Copy

When enabled, the signer will be emailed a PDF or download URL providing access to the final version of the document.  If there are multiple signers on the document, then the document is not finalized until all signers have finalized their changes. 

Signer Can Annotate

When enabled, the signer can freely markup the document with use of the complete annotation toolset. 

The annotation tools allowed by this feature include: Free Text, Pen, shape tools, Highlight, Stamp, Comment, Insert Image, and the "Sign" tools.  To learn more about annotation tools, here's a related document:  DocHub's Annotation and Editing Tools

Custom Email Message 

You can use a custom email message and subject line in the email notification to the signers by toggling the "Customize" button for the Message option in the Sign Request modal.

Signing Order

If there are multiple signers, you can decide whether to allow them all to sign at once, or you can enforce a signing order (sequential signing).  You can choose your preference from the Sign Request order dropdown.

One at a time

Selecting "One at a time" ensures while one signer is signing, no one else is able to make changes to the document.  We recommend this option for most multi-signer scenarios.

You can change the order of the signer queue by dragging the three dots on the left of the signer.

If this option is selected, email notifications will only be delivered only to the signer who's turn it is to sign.  Once a signer finalizes their changes, the next signer in the queue will be notified that it's his turn to sign until all parties have finalized their changes.

All at once

By selecting "All at once," all signers of the document will be notified and allowed to make changes to their assigned fields simultaneously.

We recommend this option for documents with multiple signers where each signer is only assigned to specific fields that cannot change the meaning of the document.  For example, this works well if only Signature and Initial type fields are assigned. 

We advise against this option if annotations are enabled for any signer.  Additionally, we advise against this option if text fields that can materially change the meaning of the contract are assigned to any user.

For more information about signing orders, see: Sign Requests: Signing Order

Manage and Audit

After sending a Sign Request, the document is saved to your Sent folder.  If the document is owned by an organization, it will appear in the organization's "Sent" dashboard.

You can manage signers and the overall document from the document's Manage and Audit Page which can be reached from your sent document:

You can also access the page to Manage and Audit from your Dashboard sections:

Document and Signer Overview and Actions

The top half of the audit page includes an overview of the Sign Request and Signers.  Various actions are available from the Document Actions and Signer Actions drop downs. 

Document Actions

Use the Document Actions menu in the upper right corner of the Manage and Audit page to Make a Copy of the document, Void Sign Request, Destroy Document, or to Share or Send the document with anyone else.

Signer Actions

If you need to make changes to any of the signers or would like to send an email notification as a reminder to any of them, you can use the Signer Actions menus on the Manage and Audit page for your document. This menu will appear to the right of each signer that hasn't Finalized your document yet. 

To get there, open the document and click on the button to Manage and Audit in the upper right. Each signer will have a Signer Actions button to the right of it which will open a drop-down menu with the following choices:

• Send Reminder - sends another notification email to the signer which asks them to complete and sign the document. 

• Reassign Email Address - If you want to change the signer to someone else for when you accidentally entered the wrong email address or had a typo or simply need a different person to sign. Once a signer has been reassigned, a notification email will be sent to them with a secure link to the document.

• Remove Signer - This removes the signer entirely from the Sign Request document where they can no longer complete the fields that were assigned to them. 

To learn more, see: Editing a Sign Request after it's been sent.

Audit Trail

At the bottom of Audit page is the document's audit trail.  Here you can find a list of events related to the document. To learn more, see: View & download an Audit Trail for your e-signed documents.

The delivery status of outbound email notifications will also appear within the audit trail.  If the recipient's server responds to DocHub servers with a successful delivery response, then "Delivered" will appear.  If the recipient's server indicates the message failed to go through, then "Error" or "Failed" may appear. 

Failed Email Deliveries

Upon a failed email delivery, DocHub will automatically send an email the Sign Request's sender.  The email will alert the sender of the delivery status and pass along the error message, as received from the recipient's server.

There are several reasons why an email would bounce and be returned undelivered, but it's usually caused by simply entering an incorrect email address (i.e. a typo) or the signer may have given you the wrong contact information by accident.  If this happens to one of your Sign Requests, you can verify which email address was used and then Change the Email Address for the signer which will resend the Sign Request to the different email address and any form fields on the document will be reassigned to the new email address instead.

To learn more about the audit page and what changes can be made after sending a sign request, see: How do I edit a Sign Request after sending?

Tip:  The Audit Page can be reached by appending "/audit" to the end of the document's URL.

Reusable Templates

If you plan to send the same PDF as a Sign Request more than once and would like to keep reusing the document, we recommend that you create a template which will create a new copy of the file every time you send a Sign Request so that the original remains the same (and can be edited after sending one), but you can also create a Sign Request from a regular document if you have a unique contract that you don't plan to reuse with other signers. To learn more, see:

• Creating and sending a reusable template
• What is the difference between a template and document?.
  
  

Creating, Assigning Fields, Sending and Finalizing

For step-by-step instructions on how to get started, see this article: Creating and sending a document as a Sign Request.