Digital Signatures for Conformance Report PDFs

What does a CivilPro signed Conformance Report look like?

There is a new section on the Conformance Report called 'Declarations' that contains one or more digital signatures, as below:

What does a CivilPro Conformance Report Digital Signature actually mean?

A digital signature can mean different things depending on the context. For Conformance Reports signed in CivilPro, a digital signature means that users of the report can rely on the following specific claims:

• A user was logged on to CivilPro with their credentials. These credentials are associated with the name on the Conformance Report
• The user has performed specific actions in the CivilPro system such as conforming a Lot and/or completing a specific Lot Review
• The document has not been altered since it was produced.

We assign the CivilPro certificate of trust to the report which can be inspected in any PDF reader. Visual placeholders representing a physical signature are added to the document.

 

Do I have to provide an image of my signature?

No. This is entirely unnecessary for the purpose of a digital signature. You can add an image of your signature if you want - just put it in the user settings, but otherwise we will allocate a ‘signature like’ representation of your name. You may have seen similar ‘signatures’ if you have used Docusign or other digital signing products.

A digital signature does not claim that someone has physically signed a document. It certifies that a trust authority (in this case CivilPro) confirms the user was logged on to our system and performed an action. As such, it is the certificate and the stamps for the user on the PDF that have meaning rather than an actual image of a user’s signature.

 

How can I use CivilPro signing?

At least for the first 12 months, you get access to 50 digital signatures a month per Company at no cost. These do not accumulate if unused and relate to the previous 30 days on a running total basis.

Resigning a document that has previously been signed does NOT count against your usage, even if it was in a previous month.

Unlimited Document Signing is an opt-in feature of CivilPro and can be added to your annual subscription. Providing certificates and signing services are additional costs we incur (even beyond our development costs) and we cover this by charging for $995/year for unlimited signatures or $495 for 1000 credits (ex. GST). 

Contact CivilPro to have this enabled.

 

How does it work?

In the latest version of CivilPro, there is a section in the Project Settings where you can specify signatures for Handover. If you don’t need digital signatures, just leave it empty. Depending on the requirements of your project, you can add the signature of:

• the user that Conforms the Lot,
• user that assigns a certain Lot Review Status,
• or combinations thereof. It is completely customizable.

This configuration is used to populate the new ‘Declarations’ section of the conformance report. You will not see any signatures when previewing (as signing a document relates specifically to PDFs), but when the conformance report is printed to a PDF, or included in a Lot Summary PDF and the signing option is selected, then the document is signed with our certificate.

 

Important Note:

As described above, the signing of our reports occurs at the point that it is turned into a PDF. The reason is that the signing process is a feature of the PDF format. This means that when you preview a conformance report, you will see the Declarations section, but with the names and dates printed instead of the signed certificate.

When will my Conformance Report include digital signatures?

The following requirements must be met:

1. The project settings for Handover have been configured and are active
2. One or more of the actions specified in the Handover settings have occurred
3. The report or summary option to sign has been selected.
4. The report has been exported to a PDF

 

How to get started:

As mentioned earlier, each database is currently provided 50 free Digital Signatures per month - so our customers can test out this functionality. To apply Digital Signatures to your Conformance Reports, Handover actions must first be setup. To do this:

1. Navigate to the Handover tab in Project Settings:

 

2. Add new Handover actions:

In the Handover tab, handover actions are created. These are defined conditions that, once satisfied, will enable the printing of a Digital Signature and Signoff Text on Conformance Reports produced thereafter. The Digital Signature printed will be that of the user that satisfied the condition (i.e. Conformed the Lot, or assigned the Lot Review Status). 

• Source - select either 'Conformed' or 'Lot Review'. This determines the source that will activate the Digital Signature
• Status - applicable when 'Lot Review' is selected as the source. Lot Review Statuses setup within the project will be selectable from a dropdown here
• Signoff Text - this the text that will be printed alongside the digital signature on the Conformance Report once requirements of the milestone are met (e.g. when 'Administrator Reviewed and Approved' Lot Review Status is added to a Lot
• Is Active - this enables / disables each of the requirements from being active

Ensure you Save Settings after you are finished making changes. 

That's it, the Digital Signatures are ready to go! Once a user (with sufficient Role permissions to do so) assigns a Conformed status and / or defined Lot Review Status to a Lot, their Digital Signature will be printed on Conformance Reports thereafter, along with the respective Signoff Text.

But what about printing an actual signature? 

As mentioned earlier, if a user has not added a signature to their profile (My Account -> Settings -> Wet Signature), their name will be printed in cursive as their Digital Signature. To instead use an actual signature, they must upload an image of their signature in the Wet Signature area.

Here is an example of the Conformance Report produced after the Lot Review Status of 'Administrator Reviewed and Approved' was assigned (from the example above), and a Wet Signature was setup in the user profile:

Troubleshooting

I have configured handover information and requested a signed report, but the signatures section is not showing..

Check you don’t have a custom report. If you had a pre-existing custom report then it will not contain the signature sections and CivilPro cannot sign the document. You will need to delete your custom report and recreate any changes from the new default report.

My report is showing digital signatures, but there are other manual signoffs still showing...

When the project handover is configured, we prompt to update the conformance options that control the manual report signoff sections. If you cancelled the prompt, or have otherwise modified the Conformance Report options, then this can change the visibility of these sections. Update the Conformance Report options as shown here (Desktop) and here (Web) and set them as default.

I have the digital signatures, but I still want to show the manual signoff sections...

We really recommend against this, but you do you. Update the Conformance Report options as shown here (Desktop) and here (Web) and set them as default.

I was playing around with digital signatures and set up the project settings, but now we just want to go back to a manual signoff section but they have disappeared....

Optionally delete your handover configuration in project settings or mark them inactive. Then update the Conformance Report options as shown here (Desktop) and here (Web) and set them as default.