Version 1.4 of AssureSign DocumentLAUNCH™ for Windows is being released the week of June 7. As we implement new customization options in the DocumentNOW® interfaces, we follow up by adding related functionality in our downloadable client applications to provide new, rich features.

For example, DocumentLAUNCH now supports the ability to pass in documents containing dynamically created JotBlocks (the interface for handling this was implemented in DocumentNOW in version 2.1.1 of the AssureSign application). Additionally, new features introduced in the online AssureSign application such as the ability to specify regular expression string validators on parameters (being released with version 2.1.2 of the AssureSign application) are now supported in DocumentLAUNCH. When you specify custom validation handlers and messages during the template creation process they will now be enforced and displayed within DocumentLAUNCH. Other performance enhancements and features based on customer requests have also been implemented.

Current users will be able to download the latest version when logged in to their AssureSign account, from the AssureSign Tools section of the help pages. Please contact your AssureSign account representative for a demonstration if you are interested in finding out how DocumentLAUNCH can get you up and running with integration from the desktop with minimal technical requirements.

As we looked for better ways to support the various integrators and developers coding against our software, the AssureSign engineering team realized one of the typical ways we ourselves approach obtaining technical support is through forums and web searches.  So we introduce the AssureSign technical forum, located at http://forum.assuresign.net.

If you are an active user of DocumentNOW® interfaces, DocumentTRAK™ notification services, AssureSign for Salesforce, or have technical questions regarding AssureSign, please visit http://forum.assuresign.net.  You will be required to register in order to use the application.  If you have any questions about the use of the site, please contact your AssureSign account representative.

The AssureSign support staff will also be occasionally posting information on the forum, including sandbox update notifications and release notifications.  We may also solicit user feedback on proposed features and development plans. And your answers to any technical questions posed by other registered users are encouraged and will also contribute to the value of this site.

AssureSign version 2.1.2 is being prepped for release to the developers' sandbox the week of May 10.  

A large number of under the hood enhancements are being implemented to improve document processing throughput, particularly when documents are streamed in via DocumentNOW® services.  The Text version of the SubmitWithFile interface has been enhanced to improve throughput, however all submission operations should experience performance gains on the sandbox.  Changes will be made in stages, whereby first software will be upgraded followed later by additions to our sandbox hardware environment to improve your experience there.

Most visible operation of the application remains unchanged with this release, however we will be adding in features to allow for improved disclosure and compliance for specific jurisdictions.  For example, in consultation with your legal staff and your AssureSign account manager, it will be possible to configure templates to display custom disclosures based on your needs, such as in the case of specific types of transactions or to meet certain countries' requirements.  We are also adding in some powerful new features for document submissions, including the ability to configure template parameter regular expression checking server side and to return parameter regular expressions to your front-end application.  

Sandbox client contacts will be receiving notification regarding the upgrade.  The application is currently being qualified for production release in QA with an expected release to production in early June.

Building on the latest features released in our core SaaS application version 2.1.1, the AssureSign for Salesforce application has been converted to access the faster and more feature-rich V2 DocumentNOW® interfaces.

One powerful addition made possible by this conversion is the ability to submit documents stored in Salesforce that contain dynamically created JotBlocks™ (AssureSign signature and data collection locations and attributes).  Customers using proprietary or third party document creation processes can leverage this new feature by inserting the well-defined dynamic JotBlock tags into their documents.

Additionally, we have made it easier to integrate AssureSign with your custom objects, through providing a more complete list of available custom object fields in the parameter tagging help section, exposing custom object fields for manual selection, and providing specific custom object field mapping examples in our online documentation.

Existing AssureSign for Salesforce users will receive a notification on their application indicating when the new version is available for download; we anticipate the general release to occur on Wednesday, March 24.  AssureSign sandbox users who access their sandbox accounts in a development version of Salesforce may access the tool starting today:  please contact support@assuresign.com for information about downloading the fully functional preview version of the tool for your development environment. 

The latest version of AssureSign, version 2.1.1, is currently being qualified and is being released for our integration clients to the development sandbox on January 20 with production release scheduled for mid-February 2010.

A key feature of this release is dynamically defined JotBlock signature locations.

Templating the signature process has proven to be a powerful feature, opening the door to a limitless variety of uses of our DocumentNOW integration interfaces.  And automation through integration produces the most cost effective solutions.  While it has always been possible within AssureSign to dynamically create single use document patterns with distinct layouts, we have developed a well-defined process that allows our customers to programmatically vary the signature areas in a way that best suits their existing processes.

Client suggestions and feedback played an important part in crafting this solution.  These also created an early puzzle that caused our engineers to approach the problem cautiously.  Some clients wanted very low level programmatic control of the process, others wanted a simpler in-document tagging mechanism; some clients needed to be able to define information embedded within their streamed-in Word documents, others wanted to apply information to their PDFs using existing toolsets.

Our final solution provides all of these options and offers the flexibility to mix and match the features that suit your needs.  You will be able to define JotBlocks:

• in the template creation process
• in a text tag within the document to be signed
• through XML
  

or combinations of

• tag + XML
• tag + template
• XML + template
• tag + XML + template

For example, in a simple case where all workflow rules are well established, such as there being only 1 signatory in a single signing step who will sign 1 specific signature block that may vary in its location due to variation in the agreements terms, then the JotBlock could be defined in advance on the template and an embedded tag in the streamed-in document could indicate merely the final signing location.

In the case that an entirely new signature area is to be defined that was not known when the template was created, this could be done with embedded text or through XML.  The XML could completely describe all attributes of the JotBlock, including height, width, x/y coordinates, signing order, signatory, special instructions, etc.  Or the XML could describe complex information but a text tag with the same name could intrinsically define the location of the signature.

We are excited about the possibilities these new features provide our customers.  Existing sandbox users will have early access to documentation and examples from within the sandbox environment in the DocumentNOW help section.  For more information about these and other features of the AssureSign application, please contact sign@assuresign.com.

The AssureSign integration development team has developed a model for integrating Microsoft Dynamics® CRM, Microsoft SharePoint and AssureSign.  As Microsoft Certified Partners,  AssureSign developed this model as a pattern for Microsoft integration developers working on extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Visual Studio Team System provides an easy entry point into starting to extend the Dynamics CRM platform, offering out of the box templates for creating Microsoft Dynamics plug-ins.  Extending the plug-in application to connect to AssureSign DocumentNOW® services is as simple as adding a DocumentNOW .NET service reference.  For an integration provider that already understands the Microsoft Dynamics CRM entity model,  the only thing to learn may be the DocumentNOW methods for mapping data to AssureSign Document Templates.

The AssureSign engineers started with a basic standalone Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation using SharePoint services for storing documents.  A simple plug in was created in Visual Studio to perform the operations of pulling a selected document out of SharePoint, and attaching it to be streamed in to the AssureSign DocumentNOW web services.  The metadata on a selected entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is queried and matched to AssureSign template parameters.  AssureSign DocumentTRAK™ services are used to push data back to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and trigger the application to pull the completed document back into SharePoint, while updating the Dynamics entity with standard AssureSign document history.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM end user experience is seamless.  In this model, a contract matching an AssureSign template is chosen to be sent out for signing.  All data from the contact entity is sent along with the document behind the scenes, and a signing invitation is sent to the signatory.  Upon signing, the DocumentTRAK™ services trigger updates to the document and the history displayed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where the user receives real-time information about the document status.

If you are a Microsoft integration provider, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer, or are evaluating AssureSign or Microsoft Dynamics CRM, please contact the AssureSign sales team at sign@assuresign.com for a demonstration of this application.

AssureSign Version 2.0.4 is currently being qualified for release in early July.  In regards to this release, we have already been sharing documentation with certain clients in regards to one of the most compelling components we have added lately to the application: the DocumentTRAK™ component.

From our first design of AssureSign, we have always had a rich event model that allowed email notifications to be triggered on any number of events.  In addition, for some clients we have built custom export components that send status updates and push down documents based on their unique needs.  A do-it-yourself model for wiring AssureSign events to custom web services has been a goal of our development team for quite a while.   

DocumentTRAK provides just such an environment.  In a nutshell, the DocumentTRAK wizard walks you through configuring  the AssureSign system to send data according to your schema, to your location, at a point in the signing process that you choose.  (If I was in marketing, that might have been written “Your Data.   Your Location.  Your Time.”).

For the techies among our clients who may wonder what this entails, setting up a notification endpoint can be as simple as pointing us to your service definition (got WSDL?), telling us which method to call, specifying security, and telling us where to populate the data.  After you have defined the notification simply edit a template workflow definition and assign the DocumentTRAK notification to an event.  Want to send the completed document along?  Embed it in a web service call or send it via SFTP; we have a wizard for that as well.

More information will be coming from our sales team as we prepare for the release.  Want more information now?  Contact moreinfo@assuresign.com for a more detailed description of the possibilities.

With Microsoft's announcement of the release of Internet Explorer 8, we would like to assure our clients that we performed extensive testing on the beta and release candidate versions of the software. We are happy to announce that the latest version of AssureSign, version 2.0.3, released last week, works without issue on Internet Explorer 8.
 
Additionally, cross browser testing is included as part of the extensive Quality Assurance cycle at AssureSign with every release of the product.
 

We will be releasing AssureSign version 2.0.3 to our production environment this week, and I would like to explain some of the more compelling features that will become available to our clients. The primary focus of this release was the addition of security features to enhance our ability to match enterprise-level security needs for some of our clients; we recognize that financial services, healthcare and other industries require a certain level of compliance in regards to security, and we are adding features to meet these needs.

For example, all account security settings regarding site password strength, re-use, expiration, and lockout have been added to a new account security settings section. Included are new pre-set capabilities, as well as the ability to create a custom collection of settings that match your organization’s needs.

Additionally, we have added the powerful ability to require personal X.509 certificates of document signers. Granular settings allow this to be specified per document or across the account. This provides a new layer of irrefutability to documents signed in ongoing business partnerships and in instances where the highest level of security is required.

For our existing clients, documentation has been added for all new settings, and we have introduced another guideline for system administrators entitled "Security Best Practices" which will be made available online with the release. This document provides examples of specific scenarios and explains how security-related settings may be combined to accomplish certain business goals.

To the goal of meeting certain regulatory requirements, we are happy to say that our HIPAA Compliance Plan was formalized by management approval in January; all customer care staff, software engineers and IT department staff have completed HIPAA privacy and security training. Security has always been a primary concern of our organization; this move to address Electronic Protected Health Information illustrates our commitment to addressing the needs of specific industries.

AssureSign version 2.0.2 is being released to our production servers on Friday, January 30, 2009.  Current clients will have received an earlier announcement indicating the upgrade date, along with a list of features being added.

Along with a number of internal modifications being made to add stability and provide better customer support by our Customer Care staff, following are some of the features that will become immediately available to all clients:

• A type, Certified JotBlock is being introduced which will embed information about the signing capture in the image of the typed information (such as the signatory’s IP address, the date and time of signing, and the unique internal JotBlock identifier)
• A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) signature-site customization tool, allowing clients to import custom logo graphics, add custom messages and page header information, and embed links that will be displayed during the signing process
• Settings that allow clients to customize the default redirection URL on signing step completion, in order to better integrate the signing experience into their own workflow
• Exposure to signatory IP addresses in document lifecycle reporting
• Easier visibility and access to per-seat license settings, with online ability to request additional licenses
• An online document validation tool, allowing someone with a document signed via AssureSign to validate its’ authenticity and confirm the document has not been tampered with

Many of these new features have been driven by valuable recommendations made by our existing clients; and some features have been implemented based on our internal roadmap for providing greater configuration, stability, security, and for improving the signing experience.

As much as the engineers would like to take a 2 month vacation now, version 2.0.3 is simmering on the stove as we write this BLOG entry, which will introduce enhanced security options needed by enterprise level clients.