Hey guys... I have some legal questions about using digital signatures and stamps in Laserfiche if someone could help me out. Out Finance department wants to start using digital signatures for their invoices, but our auditors review these documents every so often. Up till now, we created a WebLink folder secured by a Laserfiche account we gave them access to. Whenever they requested documents, our Finance department would dump the files in this folder, migrate the files to the public volume their account had access to and viola... access is obtained. Now with digital signatures I know you cannot validate or even see our signatures through WebLink because we use an internal CA to distribute the user certificates needed to use digital signatures. But using signature stamps you could see their signatures on the paper. My question is, why wouldn't we just use these stamps in place of the digital signatures? I could right-click the stamp and look at the metadata to see who applied/modified the stamp. With the exception of finding out who was responsible for the deletion of a signature stamp, I don't see any difference... or am I wrong on that one? Which leads to my next question. If we decided to use digital signatures, I know we would have to obtain a certificate from an authorized external CA like VeriSign in order for these auditors to validate the signatures. In order for them to see these signatures, would we be able to use WebLink or do we have to use briefcases? How does this work if they don't have Laserfiche at their office? I know this lengthy question guys and sorry, but wanted to get my ducks in a row before deploying this thing forward. Thanks!
Question
Question
Digital Signatures
Answer
There are several ways our users are using some form of a “digital signature” in Laserfiche. Here are some of the ways it has been implemented with some pros and cons.
The “signature” field with Workflow. When a user changes a “signature” or “approval” field (usually restricted with security), workflow takes their username, date/time, and action and adds the data to a “history” multi-value field. The history field is read-only to everyone except workflow. This allows auditors to see who has taken action on the document and when/where, even if they’re accessing the documents through WebLink.
- Pros: easy to use, implement, tracks history/audit, flexible (field values=approved, completed, rejected, NIGO, etc), WebLink friendly, Mobile friendly.
- Cons: you may not need/want an approval field, requires a simple workflow, might provide too much info for an auditor
The stamp approach. As mentioned in the question, using a stamp is perfectly reasonable. You can use a custom stamp with %(Username) that automatically gets replaced with the signer’s username, but that’s as of Laserfiche 8.2+. Or you could use a generic private/public stamp.
- Pros: Clearly visible on the document, easy for users, visible when exported/printed, WebLink friendly.
- Cons: Not all companies consider a stamp a “digital signature”, users need the right to make annotations to the document, not Mobile friendly.
- Cons: Requires a bit of setup from IT, pay for certificates, not WebLink friendly, not Mobile friendly.
DocuSign. Our new integration with DocuSign can send a document from Laserfiche to another person for a signature using the DocuSign service. It requires Web Access 9.0.2 and the DocuSign integration on the Marketplace.
- Pros: It’s an electronic signature (there’s a difference), non-lf users can sign, DocuSign iOS app available, signature visible on the document (PDF).
- Cons: DocuSign cost, integration cost
As you can see, there are a several ways to do digital signatures in Laserfiche and it’s really up to the organization to determine what their needs are, regulations, and what will work for them. Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
Replies
We just implemented a workflow that adds an approval stamp to an invoice when approved and the stamp is visible when we pull up the document in Weblink, but when we go to print the document as a pdf in Weblink, the stamp disappears. Is this a security issue? I've tried researching it but have found nobody else that has this problem. I know it can be done but we must have something set up wrong. Thanks!