Adding independent witnesses

Hello @jasminetait ,

Welcome to the Docusign Community and thank you for posting your concerns!

I understand you would like to know if there is a way to prevent a recipient that has been added as a Witness to show up again in the signing order.

To be able to provide an accurate answer, can you provide more information?

• Would this be as a normal recipient or as the Witness of a different recipient in the same envelope? 

For more information on eWitness, please view: Set Up Witnessed Signing for a Recipient

Let us know if you need further assistance with this.

Best regards,

Nathaly | Docusign Community Moderator
"Select as Best" below if you find the answer a valid solution to your issue!

Hi Nathaly, 

Thanks for your response! I believe this would be showing up later in the signing order as the Witness of a different recipient in the same envelope. 

What happened in our situation was: 

• X and Y were both parties to a deed, with other counterparties A and B. Therefore, X, Y, A and B all had to sign (and have witnesses present) 
• The order of signing went A, B, X, then Y. 
• A & B completed their signing for one side of the deed, and then the deed went to A for signing. 
• A had to allocate their own witness and allocated B, who they worked with. 
• However, after B had witnessed A’s signature, they could not sign their own signing block. 

I appreciate that when the sender allocates the witness as someone who is already a recipient, an error pops up - but how can this be avoided on the signatory’s end when they are allocating their own witness? 

Thanks

Hello @jasminetait,

Thank you for reaching back and for the further clarification.

I see what you mean, you are right the sender does get an error when trying to add a witness that is in the signing order as a signer. If you can allow me some time to investigate if what you are experiencing is by design or a flaw of the feature. 

My apologies, I will get back to you as soon as I have further information. Also, at the moment there isn’t a way to prevent this other than informing the signer directly that the witness can not be one of the recipients that are already part of the signing order.

Let us know if you need further assistance with this.

Best regards,

Nathaly | Docusign Community Moderator
"Select as Best" below if you find the answer a valid solution to your issue!

Hello @jasminetait ,

If you found my response to be a useful solution to your question, please mark it as the best answer by clicking “Select as Best” to make it easier for other users to find.

Best regards,

Nathaly | Docusign Community Moderator
"Select as Best" below if you find the answer a valid solution to your issue!