How to Send eSignature Requests with a Custom Signing Link

You might have a requirement to enforce your brand identity to the signers while sending out the signature requests, especially when embedded signing is involved. However, when you send a document for signing, BoldSign automatically notifies the signers via email. This email includes a secure signing link which helps the signers to review and sign the document. The signing link by default will look like this:

You might want to customize this host link to point your domain instead of app.boldsign.com. There is a way to achieve this with BoldSign API and this blog explores that option. If you follow the steps discussed in this article you will get the signing link similar to the below for your application.

Send Documents for Signature From your App

To send document for eSignatures from your app, you can use the BoldSign ‘send’ API. The code example below shows how to do this. Please note that here we have set the property “disableEmails” as true. So that we can later customize the mail sending process with our own link for signer.

curl -X 'POST' \ 'https://api.boldsign.com/v1/document/send' \
     -H 'accept: application/json' \
     -H 'X-API-KEY: {your API key}' \
     -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
     -F 'DisableEmails= true' \
     -F 'Message=' \
     -F 'Signers={
        "name": "Hanky",
        "emailAddress": "[email protected]",
        "signerType": "Signer",
        "formFields": [
           {
                "id": "string",
                "name": "string",
                "fieldType": "Signature",
                "pageNumber": 1,
                "bounds": {
                  "x": 50,
                  "y": 50,
                  "width": 150,
                  "height": 25
                   },
      "isRequired": true
    }
  ],
  "locale": "EN"
}' \
  -F 'Files=@{your file}' \
  -F 'Title={title}' \
    

Generating Embedded Signing link:

Following the successful completion of send API, you will receive the document ID from the BoldSign API. To obtain the embedded signing link for your signer use the following code snippet:

curl -X GET 'https://api.boldsign.com/v1/document/getEmbeddedSignLink?documentId=17882g56-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-ce5737751234&signerEmail=alexgayle@cubeflakes.com&signLinkValidTill=10/14/2022'  
     -H 'X-API-KEY: {your API-KEY}'
    

Note: The document creation process is asynchronous in nature. You will receive a document ID immediately, but the uploaded document might still be processing in the background. To resolve this, you can configure webhook. To know more details about configuring webhook please refer to this KB article – How do I know whether my document or template is ready for eSignature?

Customize the Signing Link

Now we have the signing link which is returned from the above ‘getEmbeddedSignLink’ API. As we have chosen to disable email notifications from BoldSign, it’s our responsibility to notify the signer with an email. This can be achieved by integrating with your own email system or preferred communication channels. You can refer to this blog further to send custom email notifications with the BoldSign API – Custom Email Notifications Using AWS SES and the BoldSign API.

Please follow the below steps to create and use the custom signing link.

1. Before sending the email, personalize the signing page link with your own domain. Replace the default host and path with your website link. For example, change the standard sign link:

into a customized one:

2. Now you can craft an email and include the customized signing link.
3. When recipients click the link, they’ll be directed to your organization’s website to initiate the signing process.
4. When a recipient visits your signing page, in your application you have to create an iFrame with a BoldSign’s signing page URL. Here just inverse what we have done to customize the signing link (replace the “yourhost/yourpage/” with “app.boldsign.com/document/sign”). Now the URL you load in the iFrame will look like below.

This enables your users to review prefilled details and sign the document within your domain. The view will be look like below.

Monitoring Document Completion Status:

To track the completion status of documents and notify users, you can configure the BoldSign webhook to trigger when a document has been successfully completed. This involves subscribing to the “Completed Document” event in the BoldSign Webhook settings.

Upon successful document completion, the webhook will send a notification to your designated endpoint, which can then be used to initiate further actions, such as sending an email with the attached PDF of the completed document to the parents.

For detailed instructions on creating and configuring webhooks, refer to the BoldSign API documentation on Webhooks Introduction. You can also create your own webhook page directly here – BoldSign API Webhooks.

Conclusion

I hope this article helps you to improve your branding experience with BoldSign. If you have any feedback, please post it in the comments section below. If you require any assistance or wish to explore our services in more detail, we invite you to schedule a demo or reach out to our dedicated support team via our support portal.