With Agreement Express you can create simple, yet powerful, document workflow in seconds by using Signing Groups. Workflow controls the order by
which people are expected to sign documents and the timing as to when
they will receive documents. Within Agreement Express this is
controlled by signing groups. A signing group dictates when a person
will be allowed to sign a document, and when they are notified that the
document is available for them to sign it.
By default everyone
begins in signing group 1. To move a person to another signing group
click on the Options button when placing a signature block and choose
the signing group you would like the person to be in from the drop
down. Signing groups are sequential and are automatically created as
you go. In other words, signing group 3 will not appear until you have
assigned a person to signing group 2, and so forth.
Example
Tim and Bob will be signing an agreement first, after which Jane will approve the document. The publisher would
drag and drop signature blocks for Tim and Bob as they would normally.
By default Tim and Bob are in Signing Group 1 so it is not necessary to
choose the Options button.
After adding a
signature block for Jane, the publisher would click Options and select
signing group 2 from the drop down. When they have completed preparing
the remainder of the document for publishing they would then press Send
Agreement.
Tim and Bob will each
receive the document at the same time. If you use the Visualizer within
Agreement Manager you will see both Tim and Bob appearing in Group 1
and Jane in Group 2. The visualizer will automatically update to show
when both Tim and Bob have viewed the agreement, and subsequently when
they have signed the agreement. Only after they sign will an email
notification be sent to Jane, and the agreement will permit Jane to
sign.
Please note that, as
with all Agreement Express documents, once the first person has signed
a document any fields in the document are locked unless you explicitly
set the field attributes to allow editing after signing. If you are
using signing groups you can choose a field attribute to restrict
fields within your document to editing by only explicit signing groups.
This is a handy feature if you want to add "for office use only"
sections to your documents.
With our example
above, if the document in question had of been a New Account
application, where Tim was the applicant and Bob was the sales
representative, you can make it easy for Jane to approve the
application and add an account number to the file. By putting Jane in
group 2 and setting, the field attributes for the Account Number field
to "edit by Group 2" the account number field will be locked for Tim
and Bob and only available for Jane. |
Working with Signing Groups |