Today, AssureSign is releasing  the latest version of its Salesforce tool, AssureSign for Salesforce CRM v 1.4.0. This new version includes an immediate presentment feature for documents. This feature enables documents to be signed when the document originator and signatory are face-to-face in the same location, such as a customer in a sales office. When the immediate presentment option is selected, a list of available signatories for the current signing step appears. The AssureSign landing page opens in a new window upon selection of a signatory and the signing process may begin.

To ensure signatory security is maintained and immediate presentment is used only according to corporate rules, system administrators may specify which documents may be presented for an immediate signature by modifying settings on templates in the AssureSign administration site,  and may be globally turned on and off from the AssureSign settings section within Salesforce.  The immediate presentment feature thus provides a powerful new option allowing the customer to sign in the most efficient way according to your sales model.

As part of AssureSign’s security enhancements, AssureSign for Salesforce CRM v 1.4.0 also includes the option to set passwords for completed documents.  This important feature works hand in hand with the security settings added in the AssureSign v 2.0.3 release to ensure links to completed documents maintain the security intended when the document template was designed.

Customers may access the latest release of AssureSign for Salesforce CRM at https://login.salesforce.com/?startURL=%2Fpackaging%2FinstallPackage.apexp%3Fp0%3D04t700000007u8D. Previous versions of AssureSign should not be uninstalled prior to installation or data may be lost. If you require assistance with installation or have any questions, please contact AssureSign at support@assuresign.com.

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.
 

AssureSign LLC, a leader in electronic signature technology, officially unveiled the latest release of its AssureSign product, AssureSign v2.0.3. With this new release, AssureSign delivers a higher degree of security and compliance.

AssureSign is a web-hosted service that facilitates the managed processing of documents in an all-digital, highly secure, mission critical, environment. The primary focus of the latest release is the addition of security features to enhance AssureSign’s ability to match the enterprise-level security requirements mandatory for compliance by companies in financial services, healthcare, and numerous other industries.  New features include account security settings regarding password strength, re-use, expiration and lockout, as well as the ability to require personal X.509 certificates for document signers.

To further the goal of meeting clients’ regulatory requirements, AssureSign formalized a HIPAA Compliance Plan in January 2009. The HIPAA Privacy Rule protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information, and patient confidentiality. All customer care staff, software engineers and information technology department staff have completed HIPAA privacy and security training. This move to address Electronic Protected Health Information illustrates AssureSign’s commitment to addressing the needs of specific industries with regard to security.

AssureSign is also in the process of earning an enterprise-wide SAS 70 certification. A SAS 70 certification represents that a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of their control objectives and control activities, including controls over information technology and related processes. SAS 70 certification demonstrates that a service organization has adequate controls and safeguards when hosting or processing data belonging to customers.  Type 1 certification will be completed in the second quarter of 2009, and Type  2 certification is expected near the end of the year.

“Our SAS 70 initiative is focused on the entire range of services, infrastructure, processes and back office systems used to deliver the AssureSign solution to our customers.  This differentiates us from those who simply state that their servers are located elsewhere in a SAS 70 data center.   If you understand what SAS 70 means, you understand the difference, “ said David W. Brinkman, AssureSign’s Chief Executive Officer. “With the release of our enhanced security version and the various measures we’ve taken to ensure we remain compliant, AssureSign now offers unparalleled security, further enhancing our electronic signature technology. And since AssureSign is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, existing customers can immediately have this new functionality without having to upgrade any software on their system.”

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.

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.