User's Guide
How-To Guides
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Introduction
This guide describes common functions performed by all users. See the System Administrator Guide for details on setting up users and configuring the system, or the Point & Click Programming Guide for programming documents, packages, transactions and reports.
Note that not all menu items are authorized to all users. If you do not see the item in your menu when you login, you either are not authorized, or you should contact our system administrator so that you are given permission to access that function.
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Login
All users login on a page that is distinct for your deployment. Unlike other services, each customer or company has its own distinct web application and data base to allow for easy migration from shared hosting, to private hosting, to your own server. Also, this reduces any accidental data leaks or exposure of private data due to hacking attacks or unauthorized access that result from poor security habits of others. Sadly, large systems with millions of users become valuable targets to thieves and hackers.
Contact your system administrator if you need a new account so you can login, cannot reset your own password through the 'Forgot your password?' process, or for the web address (URL) to use for your deployment. When a new user account is created, an email will be sent to your login email address allowing you to choose a new password, as well as set up a forgotten password question and answer.
A typical login page looks like this:
Your company's logo will appear at the top, along with your company name in the heading.
Enter your email address and password, then click the Login button. A password can be as long as a 50-character pass phrase that includes letters, numbers, spaces and special characters. It is case sensitive. We recommend at least 10 characters, something you can remember, but others will find impossible to guess.
Check the 'Remember email' box when on your own computer to avoid having to specify it ever time you login.
If you have forgotten your password, click on the Forgot your password? link.
After you login, at the bottom of the web page, it will show when you logged in, when you previously logged, as well as the time when your browser last communicated with the server:
You may want to check the previous login time and IP address to see if any unauthorized logins to your account took place. Also, most user sessions last about 30 minutes, so if your browser has not sent anything in that amount of time, your session will terminate, you will lose any unsaved work, and you'll have to login again. Clicking on anything in the application will likely communicate with the server and keep your session active.
When you login, you will see a welcome screen that includes links you may be interested in, as well as how to ask questions, report bugs, etc. Many pages have useful tips right inside them.
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Logoff 
Whenever you are done using the application, you should logoff. This not only protects access to your account, but it also frees server resources. If you just close your browser, go to another web site (URL) or remain idle for a long period of time, the web server will eventually time out your session.
There is a logoff button on the bottom of the navigation bar on the left side column, as well as in the upper right corner.
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To Do 
Click on To Do from the main navigation bar to shows all active transactions that are queued for you to work on.
All work is shown grouped by the type of transaction. Several column headers are fixed:
- Party is the party name for the current processing step of the transaction.
- Status is the current transaction status.
- Last updated is the last updated date-time for the transaction.
- Role is the party's display name for the current processing step of the transaction.
Other columns are available to help describe the work in your To Do (such as the Email to and Subject). These customizable columns are defined in the Package's Map report fields. Check the Show To Do box to show the fields in the order specified.
To process a transaction, just click on it. This will open a new window for you to process the transaction. Close that window when you are done.
Click the Refresh button to update the list, such as after processing some work or to check for new work.
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Start a transaction 
To start a transaction, open the Start transaction menu to list transactions you are authorized to start manually.
Click on the transaction name to start that transaction for Production mode. A new window will pop up to allow you to work on that transaction. Close that window when you are done. If the transaction allows it, you can delete it from the package's document list using the Delete this transaction button. The package document list is either the first page you see, or while in edit mode, you can click on the Return to the document list button to show it.
If you are testing or making changes, you can run the transaction in Test mode by right-clicking on the transaction name:
Click on Start TEST transaction to start the transaction in Test mode using all of the most recent test versions where available. If a component has no test version, the production version will be used.
Click on Start TEST like Production to start the transaction in Test mode, but using only production versions. This is a good "final test" after you migrate components from Test to Production, or when a customer says something odd is happening and you want to test out a production-level transaction, but in Test mode.
Note, some transactions may not be started by users, and those will not be listed here. Some transactions are configured to be started by External users, parties who are not logged in, such as transactions that are started by your customers who visit your web site or are started via integration of existing applications you have.
See our YouTube video on starting a transaction.
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Reports 
To list reports you are allowed to run, open the Reports menu item. All reports are custom-built, but this example explains the main search criteria and capabilities.
See the Point & Click Programmer's Guide for details on mapping data fields from your packages to report fields, and for building a custom report that includes such report fields.
Reports allow you to view the data stored in documents in your transactions, as well as provide basic control and monitoring of the related transactions themselves.
See our YouTube video on reports, which includes configuring them as well as running them.
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Searching and filtering matching transactions
Below is a typical search and filtering control for reports.
- Select Any transaction type when you'd like to report on all transaction types defined for this report, which are listed below the "Any" entry. You may also select one or more specific transaction types to narrow the results.
- The Production or Test radio buttons let you choose which type of transactions are you interested, those for testing, or those for production.
- Select Started by external parties to find only those transactions started by external parties, those users who do not have a login and typically created the transaction by starting from your company's web site. The "external parties" option is only available if the report has authorized you to see them. You may also select Started by any user, if the report authorizes you to do so, to include all users (those listed below this entry). You may select Started by me to include transactions that you started (this is the default access). And if additional users are listed below that, you may select individual users. Multiple selections are allowed.
- Enter a unique transaction id in the Tran id only search field to search for a particular transaction. This mode skips all other search criteria, but of course the transaction found must be one of the types listed for the report.
- Enter an email address, or partial email address, in the Party email field to limit records to those transactions in which one of the parties is associated with a matching email address.
- Check In progress to include transactions that are currently in progress.
- Check Completed to include transactions that have been completed.
- Check Suspended to include transactions that have been suspended. A suspended transaction cannot be processed further until re-activated.
- Check Only stalled to limit the report to transactions that have stalled; that is, transactions that are in progress, but have no active party.
- Choose the which date associated with the transactions to use: Started means the date the transaction was started; Last updated means the date the transaction was last changed or in use by a party; Will cancel means the date the transaction is set to automatically cancel itself if it does not complete before; and Will expire means the date the transaction will expire and be removed from the data base.
- For In date range choose from one of the options: Today will show matching transactions for the current date; Yesterday will show matching transactions from yesterday; Last 7 days will show matching transactions for the last 7 days; Last 30 days will show matching transactions for the last 30 days; Last 90 days will show matching transactions for the last 90 days; Last 365 days will show matching transactions for the last 365 days; or Date range will let you choose your own date range starting from the From date through the To date fields.
In this example, the custom report also allows for two fields to be searched in addition to the standard search fields:
- Last status allows you to search on the last status field, which is typically a document and/or party name.
- Last name allows you to search on the last name field presumably defined in the documents defined for the transaction types listed.
Click the Find matching button to generate the report based on matching transactions. The list of matching transactions will appear below.
Assuming at least one matching transaction was found, and you have permission, two additional buttons appear. Click Export to Excel to copy the data listed in your report into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Click Download CSV to copy the data listed in your report into a standard Comma-Separated-Value text file, most of which are also easily imported in a spreadsheet, which can then be used to upload that data into other systems. Note that you can re-arrange the fields, or hide some, and they will then appear in the same way in your Excel or CSV files.
Click on any transaction row to bring up details and additional controls regarding the transaction. Again, many of these capabilities are configured in the report template to be limited to only authorized users.
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Text field searching tip
Fields that allow text field searching are case insensitive.
By default it will perform a 'contains' search, meaning that data matches if what you enter is anywhere in the data. So searching for cat would match cat, catamaran, scatter and fatcat.
Use a '=' prefix for exact email match. Searching for =cat would match cat, but nothing else.
Use a '^' prefix for a starts with match. Searching for ^cat would match cat and catamaran, but not scatter or fatcat.
Generally, you can hover your mouse over such a field for a tips reminder. If it doesn't show these options, it is limited to only a default 'contains' search.
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Report transaction details
Below is a typical detail screen for a transaction:
- The upper left field will either be Test Transaction if it's a test transaction, or Production Transaction if it's a production transaction. Under it is the transaction template name, or type.
- The Package field shows the name of the package defined for the transaction template.
- The Brand library field shows the name of the branding library defined for the transaction template.
- The Id field show the transaction id. It is also shown in the window's title bar.
- The Status field specifies if the transaction is in progress, completed, canceled, or suspended.
- The Expires field shows the date, if any, this transaction is set to expire and be deleted.
- The Auto-cancels field shows the date, if any, this transaction is set to cancel itself if it's not completed by then.
- The Stalled field shows the date the transaction stalled; that is, when it was detected that the transaction is still in progress, but there are no active parties to move it along.
- The Started field shows the date and time the transaction was started.
- The Started by field shows the user, if any, who started the transaction.
- The Last updated field shows the date and time the transaction was last updated.
- The Last updated by field shows the user, if any, who last updated the transaction.
The Download transaction data button will download, as XML data, all of the data fields stored in the transaction. Typically, this is all related parameters that were posted at the time the transaction was created.
The Reason/note to log field can be populated and then click the Change status / Add log record button next to it to choose from the action type to take: Add reason/note to log (no status change) is used to simply add a comment to the log for this transaction; Cancel transaction will cancel the transaction if it's currently in progress; Suspend transaction will suspend the transaction if it's currently in progress; Cancel suspended transaction will cancel the currently suspended transaction; Resume suspended transaction will re-activate the suspended transaction so it's in progress again; Re-activate canceled transaction will re-activate a canceled transaction so it's in progress again.
The View activity log button will popup an activity log (see below for more) that shows all actions taken with respect to the transaction, as well as any user-defined log records.
The View email button will popup a window that lists all emails sent related to this transaction, as well as any correlated replies or bounces. See the view user email information in the system administrator guide for any details.
The Party List shows each party to the transaction, including the status, number of documents, email address (if known), user who process as this party (if any), when the party was created, and a More button related to emails. If you click the More button, there will be an option to View email to see the emails for this party, and Send email again to send the email invitation associated with the party again, and if the party is still active, you can enter a New email address to transfer the party to a new email address should the original email address have been incorrect or you learned another person needs to process it.
The Document List shows each document by name and ID, whether the document was a Production or Test version, and the status of each party with respect to that document, including the party status, document status, last updated date and when the document and data snapshot was taken. The Download document data button can be used to download the data currently stored in the document in XML format. If the document had files uploaded to it, the Uploaded files button can be used to download any of those files. If a snapshot exists, a View/download snapshot button appears and you can click to choose to View document snapshot to see the document at the time that party completed/signed it; View document snapshot as PDF to view that same document as a PDF file; View data snapshot to view the XML data in the document at the time the party completed it; and Download Snapshot XML to download the full snapshot and digitally signed data and document.
Lastly, there's an option to select one or more documents (either the latest version or the version after a particular party completed it) and download them together as a PDF file. Just select which documents are of interest, then click the Download selected as PDF button.
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Report transaction activity log
You can use the report's transaction activity log to follow every step the transaction has taken:
Select the From date and To date to narrow the range, or leave both blank to include the oldest through the newest records. Check General to include general log records, those that relate to the basic process flow. Check Basic trace to include more details about the processing steps. And check Detail trace to include the most details about the processing steps. The latter two are particularly important when programming test transactions to determine what may be wrong with your configuration. You may also search for a particular string in the Log record contains field. Click the Find matching button to list all matching log records related to the transaction.
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Example of transaction data in XML format
If you download the data associated with a transaction, you will receive something like the following, which includes all parameters for initial values and related information about how the transaction was started. Basically, most are interested in the set of <nameValue> elements listed under the <nameValues> element of the <esfRecord root element.
<esfRecord xmlns="http://open.esignforms.com/XMLSchema/2009">
<id>60be4b7b-f03c-46dd-b362-ae4a1ee10e52</id>
<esfname>data</esfname>
<encrypt>true</encrypt>
<compress>true</compress>
<nameValues count="24">
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_RequestURL</name>
<value>http://open.esignforms.com/demo/S/Demo/Reports</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_QueryString</name>
<value>
tid=5c5df880-7476-44e9-8c2e-06f3a591b69e&ESFTEST=Yes&ESFLIKEPRODUCTION=Yes
</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESFTEST</name>
<value>Yes</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_user_agent</name>
<value>
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.77 Safari/535.7
</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_accept</name>
<value>
text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Started_By_User_Family_Name</name>
<value>Demo last name</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_referer</name>
<value>
http://open.esignforms.com/demo/vaadin/;jsessionid=A0E4134A327E3AFCCD57480293FE63AD
</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="uuid">
<name>ESF_Started_By_User_Id</name>
<value>7a4d38ce-7457-406f-9fb0-c174d2bc997c</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_connection</name>
<value>keep-alive</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_host</name>
<value>open.esignforms.com</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESFLIKEPRODUCTION</name>
<value>Yes</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="datetime">
<name>ESF_Completed_Timestamp</name>
<value>2012-01-27T00:57:21Z</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="emailaddress">
<name>ESF_Started_By_User_Email_Address</name>
<value>"Demo user" <demo@example.com></value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Started_By_User_Personal_Name</name>
<value>Demo</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="datetime">
<name>ESF_Start_Timestamp</name>
<value>2012-01-27T00:56:16Z</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_accept_encoding</name>
<value>gzip,deflate,sdch</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Started_By_User_Email</name>
<value>demo@example.com</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="esfname">
<name>ESF_Completed_Party</name>
<value>FirstParty</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_cookie</name>
<value>
JSESSIONID=A0E4134A327E3AFCCD57480293FE63AD; ce=demo%40example.com; __utma=148663459.1851346224.1282586987.1285177947.1300488096.3; __utma=77754314.164675453.1306035270.1312051316.1317158170.129; __utmz=77754314.1306035270.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)
</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_RemoteAddr</name>
<value>50.46.122.56</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>tid</name>
<value>5c5df880-7476-44e9-8c2e-06f3a591b69e</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Method</name>
<value>GET</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_accept_language</name>
<value>en-US,en;q=0.8</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ESF_Request_Header_accept_charset</name>
<value>ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3</value>
</nameValue>
</nameValues>
</esfRecord>- ESF_Start_Timestamp is the date-time it was created.
- ESF_Started_By_User_Id is the user id of the person who started this transaction if it was started by a logged in user.
- ESF_Started_By_User_Email is the email address of the person who started this transaction if it was started by a logged in user.
- ESF_Started_By_User_Email_Address is the full email display name and email address of the person who started this transaction if it was started by a logged in user.
- ESF_Started_By_User_Personal_Name is the first/personal name of the person who started this transaction if it was started by a logged in user.
- ESF_Started_By_User_Family_Name is the last/family name of the person who started this transaction if it was started by a logged in user.
- paramName is the value of the named parameter passed at startup (X prefix is needed if original param started with a number; '-', '/' or '.' replaced by '_').
- ESF_Request_Header_headerName is the value of the named header passed at startup ('-', '/' or '.' replaced by '_').
- ESF_Request_Method is 'GET' or 'POST' based on type of original startup HTTP request.
- ESF_Request_ContentType is the HTTP request's mime-type/content-type when specified.
- ESF_Request_RequestURL is the HTTP request's original URL.
- ESF_Request_QueryString is the HTTP request's query string portion of the URL.
- ESF_Request_RemoteAddr is the HTTP request's remote address (typically an IP address).
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Example of document data in XML format
If you download the data associated with a document, you will receive something like the following:
<esfRecord xmlns="http://open.esignforms.com/XMLSchema/2009">
<id>bc313161-7891-47ae-96f4-3af98c4cb9b2</id>
<esfname>SampleReportDoc</esfname>
<encrypt>true</encrypt>
<compress>true</compress>
<nameValues count="6">
<nameValue type="money">
<name>desiredSalary</name>
<value>50000</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="integer">
<name>yearGraduatedHighSchool</name>
<value>1998</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue type="date">
<name>dob</name>
<value>1980-01-02</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>ssn</name>
<value>123456789</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>lastName</name>
<value>Franklin</value>
</nameValue>
<nameValue>
<name>firstName</name>
<value>Ben</value>
</nameValue>
</nameValues>
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General tran search 
The general transaction search feature is very similar to Reports, except that is has fixed fields in the listing instead of custom field selections. This feature provides full access to the transaction and thus has less control than with custom reports. It is recommended this feature only be given to system administrators or other power users who have full control over the transactions they can list.
This view provide basic control and monitoring of transactions that a user has List permission to view.
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General tran searching and filtering
Below is a typical search and filtering control for general transaction search.
- Select one or more transaction types you'd like to list (only those transactions you are allowed to List are shown).
- Choose your date range starting from the From date through the To date fields.
- Enter a unique transaction id in the Tran id only search field to search for a particular transaction. This mode skips all other search criteria, but of course the transaction found must be one of the types allowed.
- Enter an email address, or partial email address, in the Party email field to limit records to those transactions in which one of the parties is associated with a matching email address.
- The Production or Test radio buttons let you choose which type of transactions are you interested, those for testing, or those for production.
- Check In progress to include transactions that are currently in progress.
- Check Completed to include transactions that have been completed.
- Check Suspended to include transactions that have been suspended. A suspended transaction cannot be processed further until re-activated.
- Check Only stalled to limit the report to transactions that have stalled; that is, transactions that are in progress, but have no active party.
Click the Find matching button to generate the listing based on matching transactions. The list of matching transactions will appear below.
Click on any transaction row to bring up details and additional controls regarding the transaction. This is the same function as for report transaction details shown above, except all buttons are enabled to provide full access to the transaction.
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General search transaction details
See report transaction details for details on this function.
General search transaction activity log
See report transaction activity log for details on this function.
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Forgot your password 
If you have forgotten your password, shame on you! But assuming you set up a useful question and answer, you should be able to choose a new password automatically.
From the login page, click the Forgot your password? link to show this page:
Type in the email address you use to login, then click the Send email to reset my password button.
Then, check your email for a unique link that is sent to you to continue with the reset process. This step prevents people who do not control your email account from even attempting to reset your password. You should receive an email like the following:
Click on the link in the email and you will be presented with the question you set up when you set your password like the following:
Type in the answer to your question. Note that it will be displayed, so do this in private. Unlike a password, the answer is not case sensitive and non-alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers) are ignored. Click the Continue button.
Assuming you gave the correct answer, you will then be prompted to set a new password as well as a new forgotten question and answer. The previous question will be auto-filled, but you can change it or keep it, and you will have to provide the answer again regardless. This is the standard page to Set my password.
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Set my password
To set your password, as well as the forgotten password question and answer, you will be presented with this page:
Enter your password two times to ensure you have typed the expected value. The password will be masked like a regular password field and is a phrase that can be a mix of letters, numbers, spaces and special characters. It is case sensitive.
Think up a good question that the system can ask you if you ever forget your password and need to reset it and enter that in the Question to ask you field. Provide the corresponding answer in the Answer you will provide to reset your password field. Unlike a password, the answer will be displayed, so please do this in private. Answers are not case sensitive and special characters are ignored. This is essentially a "second password" so make sure the question and related answer are not too easily guessed should anybody ever attempt to reset your password while they have access to your email account.
Click the Set my password button once you have completed the form. If successful, click on the login now link displayed and you can begin to use the application.
Note that an email will be sent to you every time your password is changed, so if you did not just change your password, it is an indication someone may be accessing your account without authorization.
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Session expiration
In order to keep your user account safe should you stop using it, or if you just close your browser without logging off first (a no-no! -- always logoff when you are done), the application will automatically log you off if you have not had any recent activity. Clicking on most areas of the application will keep your session active, with the last server access shown at the bottom. The system administrator can set how long a user session is, but it defaults to 30 minutes.
If you click on something and see the following:
it means your session expired due to lack of recent usage. Note any changes you may have made (if they were not already saved, they will be lost) and click on the red box to continue and login again.
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Communication problem
It is possible that while you were logged in, your application was restarted, such as for a new release, to resolve a bug, or because of some error on the system or application code.
If you click on something and see the following (or any other red box error):
it means your session was terminated unexpectedly. Note any changes you may have made (if they were not already saved, they will be lost) and click on the red box to continue and login again.
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