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Placing signature and other fields
Where a person signs, what else you can ask them for, and which fields are required.
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On step three of the envelope wizard, pick a recipient in the left-hand panel, then drag a field from Drag Fields onto the page where you want it. You can also click the field type and then click the spot. Every field belongs to one recipient, and a recipient only ever sees their own.
An envelope is the document you sent for signature, together with everyone who has to act on it.
The fields you can place
Signature. Where the person signs. Placed as a slim box, because it is meant to sit on a printed signature line.
Initials. A short version of the same thing, for initialling each page or a particular clause.
Date Signed. Filled in for them, automatically, with the date they actually signed. Use this rather than asking anyone to type a date next to their signature.
Date (picker). A date they choose, from a calendar. For a start date or an effective date, not for the date of signing.
Text. A box they type into: a job title, a company number, a reference. Turn on Multi-line in its properties for an address or a longer answer.
Checkbox. A single tick. For an acknowledgement or an option.
Radio Group. A set of options where exactly one can be chosen. You are asked for a group key and for the options, one per line, and they are placed together as a group.
Which fields must be filled in
Signature and Initials are always required. There is no way to make them optional, and that is deliberate: a signature box nobody has to fill in would let a document complete with nothing signed in it. Their properties panel says so in place of the toggle.
Every other field has a Required switch, which you will find in Field Properties after clicking the field. Turn it on for anything you genuinely need back, and leave it off for anything that is nice to have.
What happens if a required field is left empty
The recipient cannot finish. The button that completes their signing will not let them through, and they are told which field is missing, on which document and on which page, so they can go straight to it.
That is the whole reason the switch exists. Anything you mark as required is something you are guaranteed to get back; anything you leave optional you may or may not. Decide accordingly, and be sparing, because a form of twelve required boxes is a form people abandon.
Field properties
Click any placed field to open Field Properties on the right:
- Type changes it into a different kind of field.
- Label names it. It is what the recipient sees on the box, so "Job title" is worth typing.
- Placeholder, on a text field, is the grey hint shown until they start typing.
- Assigned To moves the field to a different recipient.
- Required is the switch described above.
- Multi-line, on a text field, lets the answer wrap over several lines.
Working across recipients and documents
Each recipient has their own colour, shown in the left-hand panel with a count of how many fields they have. A recipient with none is marked as needing fields. If your envelope holds more than one document, use the strip along the top to move between them.
For a schedule or a table where several fields must line up, use Grid region under Layout Tools: draw a rectangle over the table area, set up the columns once, and the fields inside are placed neatly aligned rather than dragged one at a time.
Before you continue
Check that every signer has at least one Signature field, that every field is assigned to the person you meant, and that nothing sits over text the recipient needs to read. Then press Continue.
If you cannot continue
The button stays greyed out until every signer has at least one field. Look down the recipient panel for anyone marked as needing fields, select them, and place a signature for them.
If the document area is blank, give it a moment: a document uploaded seconds ago may still be finishing its preparation. Field placement also needs a reasonably wide screen, so if you are on a phone, come back to this step on a laptop.