Tags for DocuSign Electronic Signatures add-on

Rundl supports the following anchor tags in documents sent via the DocuSign add-on, where x corresponds to the recipient number shown in Rundl for each recipient:

• rdl.signhere.x
• rdl.datesigned.x
• rdl.fullname.x

Add these tags to your documents before using the DocuSign add-on to automatically anchor tabs to the correct location in your documents.

For example

1. Add the labels to your document or document template. For example, you could add this to a Rundl template, or a template that you use to generate document from your CRM or similar business applications.
   
   
   
   
2. Make the font of the labels match the background colour. The tags will be hidden when people view the document.
   
   
   
   
3. When the document is presented to signers for signing the DocuSign tabs are positioned at the relevant label.

Further information

The following information was copied from the DocuSign help site. 

The tab anchoring option allows you to send documents for signature that do not have a fixed layout or format. In these documents you might not know the absolute location of the tabs when you design your API client application because the tabs must move with text. As an alternative to sending X and Y coordinates for tabs, the DocuSign Service can derive an anchor location for the tab by correlating anchor information to data within the document.

When the DocuSign Service receives a request that contains tabs with anchor information, it searches the document for instances of the anchorString property. When found, it places a tab of the specified type for the designated recipient. Tab positions are established by setting offsets for the tab.

When you apply tabs to the document, DocuSign does not remove or replace the text in the anchorString property. You can hide codified anchors by using the same font color as the background of the document. So the anchor can be used by DocuSign processes and it will not be visible on the document.

To use an anchoring option:

1. Identify the location in the document by text string. You can use a pre-existing text string or add a new one. For best performance DocuSign recommends using single word anchor strings when possible, especially when there are a large number of pages in the envelope. For example, you might want to add a Sign Here tab to the "Borrower's Signature" lines in a document, but that phrase might occur in places in the document where you don't want to tab to appear. In this case, you could add the text "BorrowerSignHere" in white font color (so that isn't visible in the document) to all the places you want Sign Here tabs to appear and use "BorrowerSignHere" as the anchor string.
2. Reference the anchor through the anchorString property of the tab.
3. Determine the offset from the anchor string location to where the tab should be placed.

Setting a positive value in the anchorXOffset property moves the tab right on the page and positive values in the anchorYoffset prove moves the tab down the page. The anchorUnits property specifies the units used for the offsets. For Sign Here and Initial Here tabs the bottom-left of the anchor string is equivalent to position (0,0), and the bottom-left of the tab graphic is placed relative to that. For all other tabs the bottom-left of the anchor string is equivalent to position (0,0), and the top-left of the tab graphic is placed relative to that. DocuSign does not currently provide tools to derive the offset values. Determination of the proper offset will likely require some trial-and-error.

Rules for working with anchor tags

When anchor tabs are used, all documents in the envelope are searched for the anchorString property.

• You set the text of the anchor string in the anchorString property. DocuSign tabs are created for each instance of the anchorStringproperty within the document, so special care must be taken to establish unique anchor strings that do not result in unintentional tabs.
• You cannot use the same anchored tab for different recipients for the same document.
• The DocuSign system cannot search for text that is embedded in an image when checking for anchor strings.
• X or Y offsets supplied for a tab apply to all instances of the tab in the document. To use different offsets at different locations in the document for the same recipient, create multiple, unique anchor tabs.
• If the Y offset value of an anchor string would force a tab outside of the page boundaries, the tag is placed at the page boundary. If the X offset value places a tab outside of the page boundaries, the error message Invalid_User_Offset is sent. The error message includes the X offset that resulted in the error.
• The system does not support an anchor string embedded in the form of a PDF X-object in the document.
• The system does not re-flow the text that surrounds the anchor tabs. It is the responsibility of the document author to provide sufficient white space to contain the potential width of the ultimate tab value.

Tips and Tricks

The following are tips for effective use of anchor tags:

• In order to avoid unintentional conflicts between text contained in an anchorString property and the text that naturally exists in documents, establish a codified syntax for the anchor string text that is unlikely to appear elsewhere in a document.
• Develop an extensible and consistent syntax that can be used across multiple document types.
• Especially for documents that have variable numbers of tabs or signers, author the source document to include hidden anchor tabs for all potential signers/permutations. Then, control the tabs that are actually placed by including/excluding the anchor tabs in the request. This approach allows a single document to be used for all use cases instead of maintaining separate documents for each scenario.