We build signing envelope via API. We often have multiple signers in our envelope and are currently signing sequentially. We use the TextTabs to put read-only text on the document. And, we are putting those tabs on the lowest order recipient. The tabs, in this case, have a transparent background and overlay nicely on-top of the document. 

Lately, I was asked to parallelize the signing process (i.e. send the document to multiple recipients at the same time). We tried a few things to make this work: 

1. Copy the tabs to all recipient. This caused issues since we were exceeding the Maximum number of tabs in an envelope (we have a lot of documents in our envelope). So, this option was not acceptable. 
2. Use the shared option on the tabs. When using shared, all recipients would see a white background on the tab. Even if required and locked were set to ‘true’. 
3. Use the global option “When an envelope is sent, write the initial value of the field for all recipients”. This was working pretty well for all except the recipient with the define tab. The recipient with the tab always saw the white background even if the ‘locked’ and ‘required’ were set to ‘true’. I also tried with ‘locked’ = ‘true’ and ‘required’ = ‘false’ and got the same result. 
4. Finally, I tried Document Prefill tabs. In this case, all recipients would see the white background. I tried the behavior with the API and from the Web UI with the same effect. 

Option 3 & 4 do seem like bugs to me.

Is there a way to get rid of the white background for those scenarios?

Below is an example of how it looks like. Note that once signed, the white background go away.