Track and Close Out an Envelope
Once an envelope is out for signature, its detail page is where you watch progress, nudge people, and close the deal — by letting it complete on its own, sealing it early with what you have, or voiding it.
What it's for
Knowing exactly where a contract stands ("she opened it twice and never signed"), getting unstuck when email fails you, and producing a defensible record of what happened when.
Navigating here
Dashboard → Document Signing → click any envelope. Drafts open in the preparation editor; everything else opens on the detail page.
How to read signer progress
Each recipient gets a card showing their milestones:
| Milestone | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Invited | The invitation email was sent |
| Viewed | They opened the signing link at least once |
| Signed | Their signature is recorded |
| Rejected | They declined, with the reason they gave |
Under One at a time, signers past the current turn show as pending and haven't been emailed yet — that's expected, not a delivery failure.
The envelope row also shows a counter of signatures collected versus required, which counts slots, not people. A client group of three people counts as one required signature.
Viewers appear separately, marked Notified — they are CC'd only and never factor into the count.
How to nudge a signer
Send reminder emails everyone still outstanding. On an envelope with an individual hold-out, open their card and use Resend link to email just that person a fresh invitation.
Reminders are manual only. Nothing in Autessa chases signers on a schedule — no background job sends nightly nudges. If you want automated follow-up, drive it from a scheduled job against the envelopes API.
How to share a direct signing link
When invitation emails land in spam — the single most common reason an envelope stalls — use Direct link to bypass email entirely.
It gives you two kinds of link:
- Per-recipient links — one per signer. Opens straight into signing with that person already identified. Send it to the right person and nobody else.
- One envelope-level link — the same link for everybody. Whoever opens it enters their email address and is matched to their own slot.
Paste either into a chat message, a text, or a calendar invite, or open one on a tablet for in-person signing.
A per-recipient direct link is exactly as powerful as the emailed invitation — it is that person's credential. Send it only to that person, and use the envelope-level link when you're posting into a channel where several recipients will see it.
How to close out an envelope
There are three endings.
Let it complete
When the last required slot signs, Autessa immediately appends a Certificate of Completion, seals the PDF, and emails every signer and viewer a download link. No action needed from you.
Seal early — "Mark as executed"
Sometimes you have the signatures that matter and the rest are never coming. Mark as executed seals the envelope with the signatures collected so far.
- Signers who haven't signed are marked not required and their links stop working immediately.
- Everyone who did sign receives a download link to the final document.
- It can't be undone.
Available on a sent envelope once at least one signature is in.
Void it
Void envelope cancels it. You supply a reason, which is shown to recipients. Every outstanding signing link stops working at once, and the envelope moves to Voided.
Void when the terms changed, the deal died, or you sent the wrong file. Then send a corrected envelope.
How to download the document
| Button | When it appears | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Download in-progress copy | Any sent, not-yet-completed envelope | The document with signatures collected so far, plus the audit trail to date |
| Download sealed PDF | Completed envelopes | The final sealed document with the Certificate of Completion |
Downloads are recorded on the audit trail, including who took them.
How to read the audit trail
Every envelope carries a complete, immutable event log: created, fields set, recipients set, sent, viewed, signed, reminded, delegated, rejected, sealed, downloaded, voided, expired, shared, unshared, ownership transferred.
Each row records the event, the recipient it concerns, the actor's email, their IP address and browser, and the timestamp.
The rows are cryptographically chained — each row hashes into the next, so removing or altering an entry breaks the chain. The panel shows a Chain verified badge when the chain validates, and Chain compromised if it ever doesn't.
What the sealed PDF actually contains
Autessa builds the final document in three stages:
- Prefill — your static content is flattened into the uploaded PDF at send. These bytes are the canonical document that every signature is computed over.
- Per-signer signing — each signature stamps that signer's fields and embeds a PAdES-B-T advanced electronic signature (CMS SignedData plus an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp) keyed to an ephemeral per-signer certificate. Signatures accumulate; each one covers everything before it.
- Finalize — when the last signer is done, a Certificate of Completion is appended and the sealed PDF is stored.
The practical consequence: any modification after signing is detectable in any standard PDF reader, not just in Autessa. SHA-256 hashes of the original, prefilled, and sealed versions are all retained on the envelope.
Who can do what
Actions are gated by your access level on the envelope:
| Action | Needs |
|---|---|
| View, download in-progress copy, download sealed PDF | READ |
| Rename | WRITE (or ownership) |
| Direct links, send reminder, resend link, void, mark as executed | PUBLISH |
| Share, unshare, transfer ownership, delete | ADMIN (or ownership) |
Deleting is deliberately restricted: only drafts (still being prepared) and voided envelopes can be deleted. A sent envelope can't be — deleting it would break signers' live links. A completed envelope never can be — it's a legally signed record. You can select several rows in the envelope list and delete them together; ineligible rows are skipped and the dialog tells you how many.