I hope someone out there has done this or maybe has very creative abilities to describe how to make this happen.
Have a document in Notes client that need to put in email and send to external customer. Outside customer opens email and sees document either embedded in email or as an attachment. Customer prints document and signs it. Then scans back into computer, attaches to email, and sends back to us. We take attachment and place in Rich Text field of original document.
This is my initial thoughts on how to do what was asked of me. The requirements were to “send the document to the customer, have them sign it, and capture it back into the same document”.
I have to believe this has probably been done many times and hope to find the best solution from the expertise in the Notes realm.
Subject: This will only work if the other user is also using Notes
For me personally, I would send them a link to a website, where it says something like click this link to approve etc. which goes a website and again confirms they want to sign.
Unfortunately, I cannot use either one. The external emails will be going to customers that do Not have Notes clients - probably have MS mail systems. And I cannot use a web site because do not have funds or time to develop one.
Anyone else have any ideas on how to send a Notes doc to an external mail, have it signed, and returned to store back in Notes doc?
The only thing you can do is ask them to reply with something specific in the subject or body, to indicate they approve. Then have an agent that handles the incoming email.
You have to think about the lowest common denominator email client out there, that may only display plain text, no HTML etc.
Subject: RE: Any other ideas on how this can be done?
As per the requirement, the customer does not need to take any action on the from/document so we don’t want that client should have the LN Client.
The requirement is just send the form to customer-
Outside customer opens email and sees document either embedded in email or as an attachment. Customer prints document and signs it. Then scans back into computer, attaches to email, and sends back to us. We take attachment and place in Rich Text field of original document.
So Call doc.Send( True, “******@gmail.com” ) will work.
Since your solution must be technology neutral (you can make no assumptions about what the person getting the doc has available), your best bet is wet signatures.
Depending on what risk is associated with the documents being signed, you may want to get back the actual physically signed documents too; if there is risk that someone can paste a scanned sig of any random person onto the electronic doc you send and approve something without the actual signer ever seeing the document, then getting the physical paper back may be important. I’d work this through your legal department.
If, on the other hand, it doesn’t matter if Sue signs for Sara, or if you’re comfortable that the email thread only goes to Sara, then who cares what you get back?
Subject: RE: Any other ideas on how this can be done?
I cannot use a web site because do not have >funds or time to develop one
You provide a custom web link in the email (the easiest is the UNID of the document).
If you built the page in Domino, you could have a website/page up in less than an hour (somewhat depending on your HTML skills, but I am sure you can find a local high school student that can whip one up for you quickly). Use Bootstrap to build a nice page quckly. Put a file upload control on there, read the incoming UNID and then process the submitted data on the server.
Subject: RE: Any other ideas on how this can be done?
With all due respect, a web solution for this requires more than just putting together a quick database. He would have to have an externally-accessible Domino server running the http task, and he might not be licensed for that. He would have to secure the server, and he would have to secure the app properly as well. And given that this we are talking about signatures here, that suggests that this is legally important information and anonymous access may not be a great idea. (Of course, emailing this info around isn’t all that secure either, but in my experience that’s a whole lot less likely to actually run afoul of compliance/security auditor requirements than a web solution that isn’t properly secured.)
Subject: RE: Any other ideas on how this can be done?
This still makes some assumptions that may be invalid. Electronically transmitted physical signatures may be valid (faxed or scanned paper documents that have been signed) as evidence of a contract, etc.; electronic approval may not be.
Frankly, attachment of a scan of a signed document mailed to a mail-in database is the simple solution here; a reply-to address is all that’s required to make it work.