Document Signing
Document Signing is Autessa's built-in e-signature product. Upload a document, place signature fields, choose the order people sign in, CC anyone who needs a copy, and send. Every view, signature, and download lands on a cryptographically chained audit trail that ends in a sealed PDF.
What it's for
Contracts, engagement letters, consent forms — anything that needs a legally signed PDF can be run end to end inside Autessa. Signers don't need an Autessa account: they get an emailed link and sign in the browser. Reusable templates make repeat documents a two-minute job, and the Poweruser API and AutessaScript SDK let your agents and apps drive the whole flow programmatically.
Navigating here
From the dashboard, select Document Signing in the sidebar. It's permission-gated, so it only appears for companies with e-signature enabled.
The list page is your workspace: a folder tree down the left, and a table of envelopes filtered by status (Drafts, Out for signature, Completed, Rejected, Voided, Expired), by recipient, by title search, and sorted however you like. It opens on Drafts + Out for signature — the day-to-day working set. Expired envelopes stay hidden until you ask for them.
The three things most people want
Before the full walkthroughs, the three questions that come up first.
1. You choose the order people sign in
Every envelope picks one of two orders on the Recipients step:
| Order | What happens |
|---|---|
| Everyone at once (parallel) | All signers get their link the moment you send. They can sign in any order, simultaneously. |
| One at a time (sequential) | Only the first signer is invited. When they finish, the next is invited automatically, and so on down the list. |
Signers sit in numbered slots, and under One at a time the slot number is the turn order — put a signer in slot 1 and they go first. A slot can hold more than one person as a client group, in which case any one of them signing satisfies the slot.
2. You can CC people who never sign
Add anyone as a Viewer and they're CC'd, read-only. Viewers:
- get a read-only copy the moment you send,
- get an updated copy each time someone signs,
- get the final sealed document once everyone has signed,
- never sign, hold no slot, and never hold up completion.
This is the right home for a records inbox, a paralegal, or the counterparty's accountant. See Send a document.
3. Repeat documents become templates
Set a document up once as a template — its field layout plus named roles like "Client" and "Provider" — then create an envelope from it by assigning a real person to each role. Signing order and CC roles are baked into the template too, so instantiation is just binding people to roles.
Templates are built by uploading a document under Templates, not by converting an existing envelope — there is no "save this envelope as a template" action. If you have already sent something you want to reuse, upload the same file under Templates and lay the fields out there once. From then on every send is a two-minute job.
Walkthroughs
| Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Send a document for signature | Upload → recipients and order → fields → review → send, with page editing, prefilled content, and custom invite messages. |
| What the signer sees | The recipient's side: the emailed link, consent, filling fields, adopting a signature, delegating, and declining. |
| Track and close out an envelope | Reminders, direct links, voiding, sealing early, downloads, and reading the audit trail. |
| Reusable templates | Roles, field layout, multi-document templates, and creating envelopes from them. |
| Organize and share | Folders, contacts, sharing levels, and transferring ownership. |
| Automate it | Driving signing from AutessaScript, the Poweruser API, and Custom Apps. |
Key concepts
- Envelope — one document (or document set) sent for signing. It moves through Draft → Sent → Completed, or ends in Rejected, Voided, or Expired.
- Signer slot — each required signature is a numbered slot. A slot holds one signer, or several as a client group where any one of them can sign. Under One at a time, the slot number is also the turn order.
- Viewer — a CC recipient. Read-only, never signs, never blocks completion.
- Field — dropped onto the document. Recipient fields are filled by the signer you assign (Signature, Initials, Name, Email, Date signed, Text, Checkbox); prefilled content is filled by you before sending (static text, static date, image) and signers can't change it.
- Template — a document plus named roles and a field layout, reusable for every new envelope.
- Folder — a nestable, shareable container for filing envelopes. One envelope can sit in several folders.
- Completion policy —
ALL(every slot must sign) orANY_ONE(the first signature completes the envelope).ANY_ONEdoes not combine with One at a time. - Audit trail and sealing — every event (created, sent, viewed, signed, reminded, delegated, downloaded, voided…) is recorded on a cryptographically chained audit trail with a chain-verification badge. Each signature is embedded as a PAdES advanced electronic signature, and the final PDF gets a Certificate of Completion appended.
What your signers need
Nothing. No Autessa account, no app, no password. Possession of the emailed link is the credential — a single-use, high-entropy token that only ever exists in that email; Autessa stores a hash of it and never the token itself. Links carry an expiry you set per send.
If invitations land in spam, don't fight the mail server — open the envelope and use Direct link to get a signing URL you can paste into a chat, a text message, or a calendar invite. See Track and close out.
Under the hood — tools, agents, tables & jobs
Unlike Meeting Recorder or Meeting Reminders, Document Signing is a conventional, self-contained service — not an agentic feature. This is worth knowing as an admin because it means there's very little to inspect or switch off: no AI tools, no agents, and nothing running in the background.
Document Signing provisions no tools, no agents, and no scheduled jobs. Sealing happens the moment the last required signer submits (event-driven, not a background job), and reminders are manual only — sent when you click Send reminder. Envelopes carry an expiry date, but nothing sweeps expired ones automatically.
Tables
The feature's data lives in a set of plain database tables. You won't edit these directly, but they map cleanly onto what you see in the UI:
| Table | Holds |
|---|---|
signing_envelope | Each document sent for signing — its status, signing order, completion policy, sharing level, expiry, and the stored PDF versions (original, prefilled, sealed). |
signing_recipient | The signers and viewers on an envelope, and each one's status. |
signing_field | The fields placed on the document (signature, initials, date, text, etc.) and where they sit. |
signing_audit_event | The immutable, cryptographically chained audit trail of every event on an envelope. |
signing_envelope_permission | Per-user share grants on an envelope. |
signing_folder / signing_folder_permission / signing_envelope_folder | Folders, their share grants, and which envelopes are filed in them. |
signing_contact | Each sender's personal address book of people they have sent to. |
signing_template / signing_template_document / signing_template_role / signing_template_field / signing_template_permission | Reusable templates — their source files, roles, field layouts, and share grants. |
Disabling the feature
Document Signing is gated by the E_SIGNATURE company permission — turn
that off to remove it for a company. Because there are no background jobs or
provisioned tools, there's nothing else to disable; per-envelope behavior is
controlled by the signing order, completion policy, sharing level, and link
expiry you choose when you send.