Secured Signing offers the best of both worlds – Independent Verification and Cloud-based Archive of Signed Documents Posted on March 21, 2017 - 3:34 pm by John Webster Independent verification of signed documents is so important. We know it is one of the key reasons people choose Secured Signing. It is the reason Secured Signing uses a personal PKI digital signature for every document signed. The signed document contains everything needed to verify the document is authentic and reliable. We don’t need to keep a copy of your document so we don’t.But accidents happen and on occasions people can forget to save their signed document somewhere safe. Secured Signing now provides the option to keep an online or cloud based archive of all signed documents.It’s your choice to enable the cloud archive option. In My Settings it is simply a case of turning on the cloud storage option. For enterprise accounts you can choose to enable cloud storage for all accounts or just some.With cloud storage enabled, when the singing process is complete and the document is removed from Secured Signing, a copy will be saved to the cloud. We use a specialized service provider for the storage and documents are held in an encrypted format for peace of mind.The My Documents page provides a complete history of all the document you have added to Secured Signing. It shows you a summary for each document and the option to display the log or audit trail for each document. If you enable cloud storage, you will also be able view the signed document.The optional cloud storage service is offered to Secured Signing customers at no additional cost.Another great option to ensure you never lose a signed document is to setup a default completion recipient. Adding your records team as the default completion recipient means that Secured Signing will send them a copy of all signed documents automatically without you having to remember. You may also be able to use the email address for your recordkeeping system as the completion recipient.
Adding Document Review to your Signing Workflow made Simple in Secured Signing’s Summer 2017 Release Posted on February 23, 2017 - 10:22 am by John Webster Welcome to the latest in a series of posts covering the new capabilities of the Summer 2017 release of Secured Signing.This post will cover how you can add a reviewer to the signing process. It may be that your manager may need to approve an agreement before it is sent to a supplier to sign. There may also be a need to get approval from the customer’s accountant or lawyer before they sign your document. Whatever the specific reason, adding a reviewer into the signing workflow automates the process and ensures you have a record of the approval right in the document log.My last post talked about adding additional recipients to a signing workflow. Adding a reviewer is simply a case of promoting one, or more, of your notification recipients to be a reviewer.From the Invitation Workflow screen, enable Additional Notification Recipients and click the View/Manage button. Select your notification recipient and select the Reviewer role for that recipient. The reviewer notification recipient will receive an email inviting them to review the document. The Review button or link in the email will take them directly to the document in Secured Signing. Once they have read the document, they have the option to approve or reject the document. Once all reviewers have approved the document, the signing process will commence and invitation will be sent. Should the reviewer reject the document, a reason must be supplied. If a document is rejected, the signing process is cancelled and no invitations to sign will be issued. The document owner will receive notification the document has been rejected.All review activities are recorded in the document log. In the case a document is rejected, this will include the reason for the rejection.Watch the feature in action below!· Adding a Reviewer to Your Signing Workflow · Working with the Notification Recipients / Reviewer Portal Making the review process part of the signing workflow means the signing process starts as soon as the review phase completes without the document owner needing to do anything, It is one more way that Secured Signing makes your process quicker and simpler.‘Til next timeCheers, John
Secured Signing summer 2017 release caters for additional recipient notifications Posted on January 31, 2017 - 4:41 pm by John Webster If you have ever wanted to include someone in a Secured Singing workflow, who doesn’t sign, but is kept up to date on how things are progressing, you are not alone. We have had requests from procurement teams for the manager to receive notifications on all contract signings. Some companies wanted the notification that a signing process had been completed to go to a centralised processing team to ensure the signed document was always recorded properly. The development team know a good idea when they see one, so they built it! Notification recipients and completion recipients are just a couple of the more than 100 enhancements that have been made to Secured Signing with the Summer 2017 release. There’s far too much to talk about in a single post, so this time I’ll focus on how you can use additional recipient notifications. When you send an email asking somebody to do something, you address the email to that person in the ‘To’ field. You may also want to let somebody else know what is happening, even though they don’t need to do anything personally. For an “FYI” recipient, you may add that person to the ‘CC’ field. Think of additional recipients as a “CC” to your signing workflow. Including an additional recipient in your signing process couldn’t be simpler. Simply click the checkbox on the invitation workflow screen and click the View/Manage button to select one or more people to receive additional notifications. Notification recipients will receive all the notifications for the singing process but they are not able to sign the document. Completion recipients will only receive notification of completion of the signing process. When additional recipients are selected, the document owner can type the details during the invitation process. To make it even simpler, they can select the person from a list of recipients. The list of notification and completion recipients is managed in the account settings. In the email Notification recipients receive. a link to the notification recipients’ portal is provided. The portal provides a dashboard showing all the documents where the person has been included in the singing workflow. For each document, the due date and the status of the signing process is displayed along with links to click through to the document and the document log. The portal shows current documents, recently signed documents and a full history of documents the person has been included as a notification recipient. The notification recipient portal can be accessed directly from the Secured Signing website. To include additional recipients, you will need to enable notification recipients and/or completion recipients in your account settings. The toggle to turn on additional recipients are shown under the We Sign heading on the My Setting page in My Account. Next time we’ll talk about a great variation on additional recipients – reviewers! Reviewers must read and approve the document before the invitations to sign are issued. Stay tuned to find out more.
Secured Signing’s largest ever upgrade to its digital signature platform with summer 2017 release Posted on January 25, 2017 - 8:41 pm by John Webster Secured Signing continues to develop its digital signature and workflow platform with their Summer 2017 release, the largest ever package of new capabilities and enhancements, providing customers with an unmatched breadth and depth of capability for online signing.Responding to engagement with its customers, Secured Signing, the preferred partner for e-Signature solutions, made their Summer 2017 release available to customers, delivering better control for administrators, new tools to include interested parties in the signing process and many enhancements to tailor fit the online signing workflow to business needs. This release provides customers with more than 100 enhancements to the Secured Signing digital signature and workflow automation platform, all with a common theme of giving the customer finer control of how Secured Signing works for them. Significant new capabilities headline the release including an all new portal to better manage enterprise plans, including reviewers in the signing workflow, the ability to include additional notification and completion recipients in the signing process, configurable reminder schedules, expansion of the public forms library and the addition of an attachments library. “I’m really pleased with the sheer number and depth of improvements our development team has delivered with the Summer 2017 release.” said Mike Eyal, Founder and Managing Director of Secured Signing. “Things like the improved enterprise portal and the additional recipients portal are significant pieces of work to have delivered in a release, let alone both in the one release. These big outcomes all dovetail with the myriad of other enhancements to give our customers finer control in how Secured Signing works for them.“ Interested third parties to a signing transaction, be they a contracts manager seeking oversight on progress or the records team eager to ensure all executed agreements are captured, can now be included directly in the signing workflow. Additional notification and completion recipients will receive push notifications from Secured Signing in real time. An all new notification recipients’ portal provides a dashboard to see progress on demand and provides an overview by document or by person. Adding reviewers to a signing workflow allows advisors such as the customer’s lawyer, accountant or manager to be seamlessly embedded in the signing process. The approval of the reviewer is included in the document log and the invitation to sign is issued as soon as the approval stage is complete. Secured Signing automates the whole process for rapid turnaround and complete transparency and accountability. Many signing transactions people automate with Secured Signing require supplementary documents. The document library expands existing capability to include attachments to the email invitation by allowing these to be selected from a centrally managed library of documents ensuring the most recent version is used by everyone in the team. In a similar vein, the public forms library has been expanded with the inclusion of KiwiSaver (KS2, KS10) and Tax Code Declaration (IR330) forms, providing mobile ready, web versions of common government forms that are ready to use out of the box. Public forms can be tried online for free at https://www.securedsigning.com/products/public-forms A complete refresh of the enterprise plan portal gives administrators a clear, simple to use and mobile responsive experience for access anytime, anywhere. The front page dashboard provides an ‘at a glance’ overview of account activity and signing performance with the option to drill down to a comprehensive suite of reports. A broader range of configuration options gives finer control over branding options, email templates, reminder schedules and document libraries, account settings and many more. About Secured SigningSecured Signing provides a comprehensive and secure SaaS digital signature service that delivers a full range of form completion and eSigning capabilities combining advanced personalized X509 PKI Digital Signature technology with easy-to-use, simple-to-deploy, compliant solutions. Secured Signing enables its users to utilize smartphones, PCs, any tablet device and any browser, to capture their graphical signature, fill-in, sign, seal and verify documents anywhere, anytime. The solution streamlines business processes, cuts back on expenses, expedites delivery cycles, improves staff efficiency and enhances customer service in a green environment.
Build Your Own Forms with Secured Signing Smart Tags Posted on September 30, 2016 - 9:54 am by John Webster Smart Tag Form Fields give Secured Signing customers a simple yet flexible tool to build forms using familiar software such as MS Word and invite people to fill and sign them online. The development team are constantly toiling away in the background on ways to make Secured Signing simpler to use and more powerful. This month we’ll shine the light on the Form Fields they’ve added to Smart Tags that give you a simple way to design forms that are Secured Signing ready. Smart Tags are a great automation feature of Secured Signing which we have had for a while now. Many customers have found them to be a powerful way to make it even quicker to invite people to sign their document online. Adding a Smart Tag to your template allows you to quickly and easily make documents that are Secured Signing ready. The Signature Smart Tag tells Secured Signing where a signature should be placed in your document and who should sign there. Using the Smart Tag button in My Documents you can upload as many Smart Tag documents as you like and send them all off in a single process. We also have a number of customers using Smart Tag merges to invite large groups of people to sign a personalized document with just a few clicks. Watch these features below! Smart Tags- Automate your eSign Invitation from Documents Creation system Smart Tag Merge Fields – Smart Tag integration with MS Word. The addition of Form Field Smart Tags allows you to make a fillable form that works with Secured Signing. It’s simply a case of adding the relevant Form Field Smart Tag where you want the person filling the form to provide their information. You can place as many Form Fields in your form document as you need and specify whether they are required or optional. For example, adding the Smart Tag [!Field.Text.R] will place a text field in your document that is mandatory (required). If you replace the R with an O then it will be an optional text field. There are also a number of other attributes you can set including the height and width of the field. The nice thing is you can build your form in whatever software you are familiar and comfortable with. When you are done, just export it to Word or PDF format and add it to Secured Signing. When you send your Smart Tag Form to someone, they will see all the Form Field Smart Tags as fillable fields. They will need to complete all required fields before they are able to sign the completed form. It’s a much better option than sending them a form by email they have to print, complete, sign and scan to send back to you. The best way to get started with Smart Tag Forms is to grab the Smart Tag Sample document and a copy of the Smart Tag Guide. Feel free to get in contact for any questions you have with building Smart Tag Forms. Til next time Cheers, John
Secured Signing enables small and medium businesses to lead the way in Online Digital Signing Posted on September 23, 2016 - 8:41 pm by John Webster Secured Signing’s local knowledge and support make it the provider of choice for small and medium businesses looking to give their customers the simplicity and convenience of online digital signing.The small and medium businesses that are leading the take up of online, digital signing have dramatically increased their speed of doing business, reduced their costs and increased customer convenience and satisfaction. They choose Secured Signing for its ease of use, secure digital signing technology and the responsive support that comes from working with a local supplier. The agility of small to medium businesses (SMBs) is placing them well ahead of the enterprise in offering their customers the speed and convenience of signing documents online. Local accounting practices and individual bookkeepers and their clients enjoy the simplicity and convenience of signing documents like their BAS statements, with a single click, wherever and whenever it suits them. Suburban legal practices are much more likely to have realized that an electronic original, secured by a digital signature, not only provides a more authentic and reliable source document, but saves everyone the cost of postage and the avoids the print, sign and scan merry-go-round. SMBs are by necessity lean and mean operations that need low risk, well supported and affordable outcomes from their suppliers. In assessing their eSign options, they value the security and independence of digital signing as compared to electronic signatures. They recognize the advantage in working with a fellow local business that operates on the same hours they do and understands the approach to business in Australia and New Zealand. These factors and free inclusions tailored to the local market like Public Forms for online Tax File Number (TFN) declarations and Superannuation (Super) Fund Choice forms, have led SMBs to choose Secured Signing as their digital signature service provider. Public Forms are available to all accounts including free evaluation accounts. SMBs can open a free account with no obligation and there is no need to supply credit card details to try before you buy. “Secured Signing is affordable for even the smallest business with plans starting from as little as $9.95 per month.” said Mike Eyal, Managing director of Secured Signing. “The fact that our development team is local, gives us the capability to work closely with customers of all sizes to deliver solutions tailored to their needs and integration outcomes that avoid the wasted effort of manual data entry.” About Secured SigningSecured Signing provides a comprehensive and secure SaaS digital signature service that delivers a full range of form completion and eSigning capabilities combining advanced personalized X509 PKI Digital Signature technology with easy-to-use, simple-to-deploy, compliant solutions. Secured Signing enables its users to utilize smartphones, PCs, any tablet device and any browser, to capture their graphical signature, fill-in, sign, seal and verify documents anywhere, anytime. The solution streamlines business processes, cuts back on expenses, expedites delivery cycles, improves staff efficiency and enhances customer service in a green environment.
2015, You’ve Been Great – Here’s to 2016! Posted on December 14, 2015 - 2:01 pm by John Webster I am sure you agree it is a little hard to believe another year has slid by. As we at Secured Signing start to think about the holidays, spending time with family and probably eating too much, it is timely to cast a backward glance at 2015. This year has been a great one! We were out of the starting blocks early with a complete overhaul of Secured Signing released in January. Since then the pace hasn’t slackened with a whole slew of new capabilities released. Our support for mobile devices is better than ever. Invitations can now be rerouted to make sure the right person signs. Security has been increased with the option of SMS for two factor authentication and the introduction of codes to sign. Your invitations and signing page can be branded with your logo and details. With all those improvements delivered this year it is no wonder the development team are looking forward to some R&R! There has also been much to celebrate in what our customers have achieved using Secured Signing. We heard from Don Thomas about how public notaries are making the transition to digital signing. In Balance Bookkeeping and Essential Bookkeeping reminded us that with online solutions small businesses can be in the forefront of the online revolution in how we work. We welcomed The Recruitment Company to our growing list of customers in the recruitment industry. ATC Midwest and ASC Migration have both used online signing to conquer big distances between them and their customers and save time and money in the process. It was also great to expand the solution we deliver for H&R Block to include online police checks within their signing process. As we turn our thoughts to the close of this year and look forward to next year, we take the opportunity to wish you all the best for the summer holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Exit the PDF Forms Dead-End with Secured Signing Form Filler Posted on May 13, 2015 - 3:46 pm by John Webster Now you look back, the effort you invested in adding fillable fields to your PDF forms might seem like a waste of time. The hope was that it would be a step towards making it easier for your customers to complete the form. In reality, fillable PDF forms are a bit of a dead end. Even though you can fill them on screen, they still need to be printed to be signed and returned.In this last post in our series introducing the new capabilities of Secured Signing, we’ll show you a way to turn your PDF forms into proper online forms by adding them to Form Filler.For those of you just joining us, a massive refresh of Secured Signing was launched earlier this year. As well as a complete update of the look and feel, we introduced a range of new features including:• Improved Support for Mobile Devices• Rerouting of Invitations• Ability for an Invitee to Decline an Invitation• Options for Stronger Identity VerificationCheck out the earlier blog posts to learn more about these great new features. The last of the big updates we want to make sure you know about is the ability to directly import your fillable PDF forms into Form Filler.Secured Signing has always had great forms capabilities. For simple forms, Form Filler allows you to convert your existing printable forms to forms than can be filled and signed online. For more complex forms with internal rules and data validation, Form Direct allows us to build dynamic HTML forms your customers can complete and sign online.With the new improvements to Form Filler, you can finally get a return on your investment in creating fillable PDF forms. When you add your PDF form to Form Filler, it will recognize the existing fields and convert them automatically for you. All you need to do is save your new form as a template and invite people to complete it and sign it. No need to print!Even better, the people you invite to fill and sign your form can do so on any browser on any device. This is really convenient for people using mobile devices that typically can’t deal with PDF forms at all.Give it a try yourself! Click the Form Filler button, upload your existing PDF form and check out the results. Don’t yet have a Secured Signing account? No Problem! Register for a free trial account.
Be Sure Who is Signing your Document Online Posted on April 15, 2015 - 3:25 pm by John Webster This post continues our series on the all new Secured Signing with a look at the options available for stronger verification of identity. Secured Signing now gives you the option to use text messages as a second form of identity confirmation. Inviting people to sign documents online is much more secure and reliable, not to mention quicker and easier, than sending them by post. With two factor authentication, your confidence in who is signing your document is even higher! When we send documents by post, we take it on faith that the person who signs is actually the person intended. In reality, a physical address is usually shared by a number of people including all the members of a family or all the employees in a business. Sending an invitation by email, to sign a document online, significantly increases the confidence your document is being signed by the right person. For most people, an email address is personal, so only your invitee will have access to sign the document. As part of our project to deliver an online Tax File Number (TFN) Declaration for the Australian Tax Office (ATO) a second form of identity verification was required. To meet this requirement a text message (SMS) was included in the signing process to provide even stronger confidence in the identity of the person signing the declaration. Secured Signing is pleased to now offer two factor authentication as a standard part of We Sign to give you even greater confidence you have the right people signing your documents. You have the option of enabling SMS in the My Account area when you log in to Secured Signing. If you do so, the next time you invite someone to sign a document, each invitee will have a checkbox to enable the use of SMS for that invitation. For each invitee that has the checkbox ticked, you are prompted to supply the mobile phone number for that person. When the invitee starts the signing process they will be sent a code by SMS to the number provided. The code needs to be entered before the document can be signed. Using SMS as a second form of identity confirmation greatly increases your confidence the person you invited to sign your document is in fact the person who signs it. This approach is a simple and common way to have people verify who they are. A number of Internet banking systems combine a traditional password with a code sent by SMS. Next time you invite someone to sign your document online with Secured Signing, consider taking advantage of the extra peace of mind by using SMS to be doubly sure the right person is signing your document. As always, if you need a hand be sure to check out the demonstration videos and the step by step instructions on the website. Of course you can always get in touch with our friendly support team for help too!Till next time Cheers, John
E-Notarization delivers Convenience and Security Posted on March 25, 2015 - 8:41 pm by John Webster Notary Public, Don Thomas collaborates with local digital signature provider for digital certification.Public Notaries will soon be recognizing the value of providing digitally certified, electronic copies of documents to their customers if New Zealand Lawyer and Notary Public Don Thomas has his way. Early adopters like Don Thomas see the advantage of giving their customers the convenience of an electronic document, that can be sent quickly and easily anywhere in the world, combined with the security of digital certification. “I am convinced we need to be offering e-notarization services,” said Mr. Thomas.People turn to Notaries at important points in their lives like applying for student or work visas. Supplying the correct documents that have been certified as true copies, is crucial in securing a positive outcome for their application. Seen from this perspective, a routine legal procedure is actually something that helps people to realise opportunities that can shape the rest of their lives.One of Mr. Thomas’s first successes with e-notarisation was assisting a student renew her visa by witnessing applications to a New York University and to the US examination board for an alternative identification number. The ability to offer an electronic copy of these documents that was digitally certified, meant these documents could be supplied by email, avoiding the need to post paper copies half way around the world.Initially Mr. Thomas volunteered digitally certified documents in conjunction with hard copies. Within a few months though he found people were seeking him out on the basis of being able to provide e-notarisation services. In December last year, he was able to deliver a certified document for a Merrill Lynch USA client without any hard copy ‘backup’. His experience of the acceptance of digitally certified documents by both customers and recipients has been positive.Mr. Thomas uses Secured Signing to “sign and seal” documents as a Notary. “To me, the advantage of using Secured Signing is they provide an easy to use facility at a cost that is affordable, as you only pay for what you use,” said Mr. Thomas. “Also, being locally based, they have been working with me to deliver a solution that specifically meets the needs of Australian and New Zealand Notaries.”As Notaries consider adding e-notarization to the capabilities they offer, it is important not to confuse digital certification with the many methods available to insert simple electronic signatures or images of signatures into a document. Digital signatures provide strong methods validate the identity of the signatory and to detect any alterations or additions to, or deletions from, the signed document. This security is further extended with the certification part of the digital signature standard also ‘sealing’ or ‘locking’ the document.Don Thomas is eager to see all Notaries setting themselves up to be able to offer e-notarization services. “People will not know the service exists if we are not setup to promote and develop the awareness of it,” he encourages his fellow Notaries.Public Notaries willing to take up the challenge are welcome to contact Don directly. Those new to the convenience and security of digital signing can sign up for a Notary Account and give Secured Signing a try.About Don ThomasDon Thomas is the Principal of Thomas & Co, a law practice based in West Auckland, New Zealand. Thomas & Co is a well established law practice that commenced business in 1966. Don was appointed a Notary Public in 1978. His legal career has been typified by constantly seeking to adopt new technologies and systems into his legal practice. He is an early adopter/originator of concepts including electronic files (paperless office), inter center Document Exchange, law office word processing and settlement by facsimile.For more information please visit: www.thomas.co.nzAbout Secured SigningSecured Signing provides a comprehensive and secure SaaS digital signature service that delivers a full range of form completion and eSigning capabilities combining advanced personalized X509 PKI Digital Signature technology with easy-to-use, simple-to-deploy, compliant solutions. Secured Signing enables its users to utilise smartphones, PCs, any tablet device and any browser, to capture their graphical signature, fill-in, sign, seal and verify documents anywhere, anytime. The solution streamlines business processes, cuts back on expenses, expedites delivery cycles, improves staff efficiency and enhances customer service in a green environment.For more information please visit: www.securedsigning.co.nzPress Contact:David SchulzSecured SigningPhone AUS: 1800 305 175Phone NZ: 0800 55 33 66E-mail: david@securedsigning.com