Publishing online forms is a common way to capture contact information in your CRM. However, sometimes these forms must serve a more formal or legal purpose, requiring the submitter to officially sign the form, and the vendor to capture these submissions in a legal document. These purposes are less about marketing and more about operations, and in some ways more important to the company publishing them. 

Recognizing the importance of this feature to our customers, we're excited to announce that on May 4th Link2forms will include a new digital signing feature that will allow businesses to publish signable forms, and capture these signed documents directly to Act!. This information will be written to existing contacts in Act!, or the contacts will be created, and then have their history updated.

Consider the following use cases:

• Lenders that require their customers to complete an online application where they report all their assets & liabilities, income & expenses, and then have to sign to that information's accuracy. It's pretty easy with written forms, or PDF's, but neither are easy to sign and/or submit once completed.
• Employers looking to capture employment & education information from potential job applicants, and have them sign to the information's accuracy
• Businesses like accounting & legal firms with a formal intake process that requires new customers to submit confidential information where the vendor relies on the accuracy of that information to do their job
• Businesses that loan out their products as part of a trial process, and require the customers to complete & sign a formal application to receive the goods
• Businesses that offer financing for their sale or lease of their products
• Any business that has liability concerns that require their customers to sign waivers before they can provide service

Needless to say, the use cases for these types of signable online forms are endless, with many businesses forced to use cumbersome and time-consuming manual procedures to achieve the same effect.

The Link2forms digital signing process is both easy and secure.

• Under the Questions section in a new or existing Link2form, simply add a new "Signature" field. This field type is "required" by default.
• When published, this field will display like a memo field, but will allow the user to click into and draw their signature with their mouse or a touch screen pen device. Alternatively, they can switch to the "Type" option, and type their name, which will be rendered in a script on screen (see below).
  
• With both options, they will need to type their name again, and click a checkbox affirming they acknowledge this rendering will serve as their formal signature
• Once they click the Apply button, they will be emailed a security code that they must enter to seal the document
• This digitally signed document will then be instantly written to the new or existing contact record, and added to History as a PDF
• Link2forms can be configured to automatically notify you of these submissions, schedule follow-ups, and even create Opportunities
• The applicant will also be presented with an option to download the signed contract on the answer page, and have it emailed to them (requires an email field in the form).

To allow businesses to properly format these forms to include the terms and conditions needed throughout, we've added a new type of field that allows them to enter and format read-only text in the form. Rest assured, all the existing Link2forms design and functions will continue to be available, along with the CAPTCHA security, we're just adding these additional security features.

We think this feature is so important, we're including it to both the Standard and Team tiers of Link2forms, so everyone can implement it into their online business workflow, and feel safer about it.

PLEASE NOTE
Neither Keystroke nor Linktivity offers legal advice as to this service's adequacy or fitness of use.
We encourage all users to seek independent legal advice on this matter.