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Question

Insert Signature from Forms into PDF Using Workflow?

Forms Workflow Version 9
Updated September 15, 2014
asked on April 29, 2014 • Show version history

We are using the signature functionality for forms that was demonstrated at the 2014 Conference on some of our forms. We are curious if we are able to take the image of the signature and put it onto a PDF form using Workflow?

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replied on April 30, 2014 • Show version history

I was nudged by a Laserfiche employee I worked with last fall to respond to this thread. smiley

 

I tried to do this before the 2014 conference and had some help from this LF employee to get this working. Evidently my little project helped nudge things along at Laserfiche to include the current signature demo in the 2014 conference. I never did quite finish a solution for PDF but did come up with a plan on HOW I would implement it. 

 

Essentially I made a signature program pre-conference that used the same signature piece that is in the demo now but I saved the compressed SVG data into a field that was uploaded when the form was submitted. I then used a workflow that exported that SVG data to a file, created a bitmap of it, and applied the bitmap to a the tif image created by the laserfiche forms process and saved that tiff inside laserfiche replacing the old version of the tiff. The demo version made my creation superfluous.

 

I didn't stamp it to a PDF because there are no free tools for doing so in the .net environment. At the time I created this program it was simply a proof of concept so we didn't pursue it with any of the paid tools. However it should be doable if you wanted to run one of the free Java based PDF SDK's available for free or if you pay for a commercial .NET pdf manipulation package.

 

Here's a link to one paid SDK toolkit that could possibly do this (as an example): 

http://www.pdf-technologies.com/pdf-code-library/Adding-Images.aspx

 

Their license doesn't look too bad either since it's Royalty free and fairly inexpensive, assuming it's for your own company's use. (and I'm guessing you could also compile and release as a binary that would be ran another customer server? -- I don't know, IANAL)   laugh

 

There is a huge amount of .net pdf SDK's available on the market and many more if you want to venture beyond .net. Some of them get quite pricey but then again do way way more. The more full featured suites such as Aspose for .NET are also licensed on a per-server-deployed-to basis so they can get quite expensive. 

 

 

 

 

And one other note: The customer we did the proof of concept with did come on board with Laserfiche and is currently implementing the same signature capture piece shown in the demo with the expectation of capturing hundreds of forms a day through a forms public portal. They were fine saving the captures as digital images on the tiff just like the demo shows. Of course, they have full time web designers on staff so their web form looks a little more polished than something I could whip up. 

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replied on April 30, 2014 • Show version history

That sounds amazing! Applying it to a tiff is probably an option for us. We would just need to change the workflow order. We have a PDF Form that we would need to fill out with the employees information first, then convert it to a PDF, and then apply the signature.

 

Are you willing to share the solution you have already created?

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replied on April 30, 2014 • Show version history

I'm sorry to say I don't have any of it. I did all the work on the customer's machine from remote and the conference was like 4-5 weeks after the demo. I never got around to copying it back to my machine and when the conference happened it all became water under the bridge because I didn't need it anymore! 

 

However, I can give a few more details.

 

  • I used workflow to save the SVG file with a unique name by using the entryID.
  • I then converted that entryid.svg file to a entryid_stamp.tif using  Imagemagick  (command line).
  • I saved the document to entryid.tif  to that folder as well.
  • I waited two minutes, checked that I had a entryid_stamp.tif and a entryid.tif and used imagemagick to apply the stamp. I waited the two minutes because I had no way of knowing if it was done or not. 
  • I always inserted a "signature page" to the end of the document so I would always be able to place the signature in a known location. The form was varying lengths so there was no real way around it, especially since I had to capture 2 different signatures (one for a driver, one for whomever was accepting the delivery on the loading doc).
     

In production the plan was to use the imagemagick libraries to do most of the conversion using code - this was just a quick proof of concept though so we did it using the precompiled imagemagick command line utility. 
 

Incidentally the customer has no control over what device is capturing the signatures. Luckily forms and the signature capture piece works well on any browser that allow jquery and will run on any ios6 or higher device and android 4.x or higher. Most of the signatures are being captured on a contract driver's phone or tablet while they are at a loading dock dropping off a delivery. 

 

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replied on September 15, 2014

Were you able to implement this?

I am trying to do the exact same thing, but replied option sounds too complicated for.

I am just checking if any simpler way.. before contact the support.

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replied on September 15, 2014

We did not pursue this option because of the same reason you mentioned.

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