The AssureSign tool for Salesforce is in its final QA cycle, and is about to be released.  I know that the marketing staff will be publishing announcements, but I wanted to give some information on this upcoming release.

Our approach with AssureSign DocumentNOW interfaces has always been one of openness, providing the ability for any number of platforms to integrate with our services.  In the case of salesforce.com, we have found that we have a similar philosophy as to cloud computing and SaaS.  Creating our first Salesforce tool for integrating with AssureSign accounts earlier this year was fairly intuitive, then, on our part.  We are aware that there are a number of document creation and management tools for use within Salesforce, and we are happy to say that we have developed a mechanism for leveraging these existing processes and tools to allow integration with AssureSign.

AssureSign version 2.0.1 was recently released and included the ability to stream in pre-created documents with the document launch operations.  We concurrently developed this ability into our new version of our tool for Salesforce, version 1.3.0, which we will be posting to the Force.com AppExchange on November 26, 2008.  This new version of the tool retains the ability to use templates created within AssureSign, and adds the ability to use pre-created documents pulled from Salesforce document stores, or contextual attachment stores.

We are already planning new features for the AssureSign tool for Salesforce for early 2009; and development is in progress for AssureSign version 2.0.2 for an early Q1 2009 release.  Watch here for more information on the new features we will be adding in these releases.
 

And now ... a word from the AssureSign tech staff. Of course, I won't divert much from the glowing praise of the sales staff, but I will provide some more concrete examples of what is coming up in future releases.
 
Version 2.0.1 of our product has been moving through our QA process for several weeks now, and will be released in Q4 2008.

As with several of our other recent releases, the major elements in this release are really hidden to most users, but are critical to improving our ability to integrate with the existing document management processes already in place in businesses.  The previously released DocumentNOW family of web service interfaces provided businesses with the critical ability to dynamically apply their data to template documents created in AssureSign without the need for any other document creation software.  This meant that only the thinnest piece of variable data needed to be sent in order to create dynamic contracts and other documents.  Of course, businesses have been avidly moving to create documents electronically without implementing the ability to electronically sign them for a while now; so we are trying to bring them to the party, too, with new DocumentNOW interface methods in version 2.0.1 of our software.
 
We will be implementing the ability to pass a previously created document within the communication to AssureSign through several optional methods; here's a technical explanation.  A W3C standard called Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism -- or MTOM (pronounce "M-tom") -- provides the framework for "embedding" the contents of a document in a SOAP call.  AssureSign engineers have developed a mechanism to pass  a document  within the data submission using MTOM, along with providing other options for clients not operating in an environment supporting MTOM; and our engineers have tested it from a variety of client environments.  As before, these submission options are available as synchronous (I'll wait until you're done) or asynchronous (I'll check back later) methods.  What this means is that whether you already have a process for creating PDF documents or you would like to use AssureSign's capabilities to merge your data into a PDF we have a solution for you.
 
For Salesforce customers, our AssureSign tool for Salesforce will also be modified to include the ability to pass in previously created documents.  Look for an implementation of this to be shown at DreamForce 2008 in San Francisco.
 
Beyond that, we continue to add usability features based on marketing feedback and the needs of our clients, including the ability to have a customer sign with blue "ink", the addition of online training videos, and other mechanisms designed to make the document creation and signing process more intuitive.  An especially interesting feature coming up is the addition of a new kind of JotBlock, a "Certified" JotBlock, which will contain embedded information about the signing process that occurred in the submission of the JotBlock.  Look for more information here from the technical staff about future concepts we are working on.