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Deadlines and chasing people up
Setting an expiry date, what happens when it passes, and how to nudge.
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Choose a deadline under Expiry on step one of the envelope wizard. Reminders go out automatically in the last days before it, and you can send one yourself at any time with Send Reminder on the envelope's own page.
An envelope is the document you sent for signature, together with everyone who has to act on it.
Choosing the expiry
Expiry offers four choices:
- Standard: 30 days after sending, which is what you get if you change nothing.
- A number of days after sending, such as 14. The days count from the moment you send, so an envelope you save as a draft and send next week still gets its full 14 days.
- On a date, for when the document has to be signed by a particular day. Dates in the past are not offered.
- Never expires, for a document that stays open until it is signed or you void it. See below.
The Review step shows what you chose under Expires, and so does the envelope's own page once it is sent. Set a deadline deliberately whenever it matters to the reader, because it is the date they are shown.
A template can carry an expiry too, set under Default expiry when you build or edit it. It fills in this choice when you start from the template, and you can still change it for that one send.
What the date does
Three things follow from setting one.
Your recipient sees it. A line under the button in their email says when the request expires. In practice this is the single most effective part of the whole feature: a request with a date attached gets acted on, and one without it goes to the bottom of the pile.
Reminders start. In the last two days before the date, anyone who has not yet signed is emailed a nudge, at most once a day. People who have already signed are never chased.
The envelope closes on the day. Once the date passes, the envelope moves to Expired and the signing links stop working. Anything already signed is kept in the record.
An envelope that never expires
It stays open until everyone has signed or you void it, and it never moves to Expired. Your recipient's email states no deadline.
Each signing link still lasts 30 days, because a link sitting in somebody's inbox should not work for ever. If your recipient comes back after that, their link will ask them to request a new one. Press Send Reminder and they get a fresh link that works for another 30 days.
With no deadline there are no automatic reminders either, since those are timed from the deadline. Chase with Send Reminder whenever it suits you.
Choosing a sensible date
Give people enough time to read it, and not so much that they file it and forget. A fortnight suits most business documents. A week is fine for something short and expected. A month is long enough that the reminder arrives after everyone has forgotten what the document was.
If your recipient needs to take advice on it, ask them before you set the date rather than after.
Chasing someone yourself
Open the envelope from Envelopes and press Send Reminder. It goes only to the recipients who have not yet signed. From the list you can do the same without opening it, using Send a reminder in the menu at the end of the row.
You can also do it straight from Home. The Needs your attention panel gathers envelopes that have gone quiet and puts a Remind button on each row.
A document you signed on your own through Self sign has nobody else to chase, so it offers no reminder and is never sent one automatically.
When the deadline is close
Open an envelope inside three days of its expiry and a coloured band appears across the top saying how long is left, with a Send Reminder button in it. Inside a day the band turns red.
The strip along the top of the same page always shows Expires, so you can check where any envelope stands without doing the arithmetic yourself.
If it has already expired
The links have stopped working, so the recipient cannot simply be reminded. Open the envelope and use Resend with previous answers, which sends it out again keeping the field values already filled in, so nobody has to retype what they had done.
If it is easier to start again, build a fresh envelope from the same document. Anything that was signed on the old one stays on the old one, in its own record.
Chasing on your own terms
Automatic reminders only go out in the last two days before the deadline, so an envelope on the default 30 days is left alone for four weeks. If you want a reply sooner, press Send Reminder whenever it suits you, and let Needs your attention on Home tell you which envelopes have gone quiet.
Setting a nearer date is the other lever, and usually the better one: it brings the automatic reminders forward and it tells your recipient when you need them.
If your recipient says a reminder never arrived
Ask them to look in their junk folder, then check the address on the envelope. Reminders travel the same route as the original, so anything that stopped one will have stopped the other. See My client says they never received the email.