Allowing for someone to "approve" document without it being registered as "signed"

Question

I have been talking to a lot of people at Docusign both in the support department and in the sales department and it appears there is no solution to this process - so just leaving this here in case someone has a work around or there are any further developments.

I would like to be able to send a document to an internal person for approval, that doesn’t then register the document as “signed” and still allows for corrections - mainly being able to swap out the document.

The reasoning here is once the document is approved and sent to the external client, we often receive requests for amendments, and it’s currently costing us a fortune in having to void envelopes and resend a new one.

Whilst I can take this internal approval process offline and out of Docusign, and instead send the document to the client first, I would really prefer to have the entire process kept within Docusign.

If the “needs to view” function didn’t automatically send to the next in line, this would solve a lot of my problems - but no one I have talked to seems to be able to find a solution to this.

This seems like quite a simple function and I’m confused as to why this is not available, so any thoughts would be helpful!

Christopher.Alpizar · Accepted Answer

Hello @Stclair,Thank you for reaching out to the Docusign Community.Docusign has two features that might be useful for you in this case the first one would be Document markup, which is an advanced feature in Docusign that allows recipients to make changes to documents by covering up existing text and adding new text. Recipients can use a special markup text field to make changes, which can be placed anywhere on the document and scaled as needed. All changes must be reviewed and approved by all signers, and the certified audit trail and Certificate of Completion record all markup events. Email notifications highlight markup changes for recipients, and documents with markup applied are automatically rerouted to all recipients for approval. Allow Signers to Negotiate Changes with Document MarkupThe other one would be to set the fields as Collaborative fields in DocuSign, this allows selected recipients to collaborate on certain fields in a document, such as text, radio buttons, drop-downs, and checkboxes. Recipients can propose changes to these fields, and all changes and approvals are recorded in the secure audit trail. Collaborative fields can be updated by the owner recipient and by all recipients selected as collaborators, and changes made by one signer can be rerouted to all collaborative recipients for review and approval. Collaborative Fields.Please be aware that once a signer of the envelope completes their part, Docusign will lock the document to change it and upload a new one.However, any feedback that can improve our users’ experience is always welcome.We invite you to share your product suggestions and feature requests on our dedicated ideas page (https://community.docusign.com/ideas), where we can collaborate to shape the future of our product together.Note: Some advanced features and options are supported only in specific Docusign plans. Your account plan might not support some of the options discussed in this help topic. Contact your account administrator for more information about which options are available for your account. Or, visit our Plans and Pricing web page for more details on the features included with your plan. Compare eSignature plans & pricing.Let us know if you need further assistance.Best regards,Christopher | Docusign Community Moderator"Select as Best" below if you find the answer a valid solution to your issue.

Stclair · Answer

Thank you Christopher, unfortunately these options don't work for our processes, though I appreciate you taking the time to outline them for me.All the best

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