When a signer brings someone in, hands the request on, or you need more signatures
The sender's view of signers who ask a colleague to approve or sign first, pass their request on, or a finished document that needs another signature.
Signers sometimes need someone else's say before they sign, or the request reached the wrong person, or a document you already finished needs one more signature. This is what each case looks like from your side. The signer's side is in Bringing someone else in, and more signatures later.
The two switches
Both are on by default. You can turn either off for your organisation under Admin → Signing defaults:
- Signers may ask someone to approve or sign before they do
- Signers may hand their request to someone else
Switch off whichever you don't want your signers to have. The change applies to what signers can do from then on.
A signer brings someone in
On the signing page the signer chooses More options → Ask someone to approve or sign first, gives a name and email, and picks one of two things:
- Approve. The person reads the document and presses Approve. They get no fields and add nothing to the document.
- Sign it as well. SignSpry places one required signature box beside the signer's own mark, and the person signs before the signer does.
What you'll see:
- On the envelope page the helper appears as a recipient at the same step as the signer who asked, tagged Approver (for an approval) and asked by the requester's name. The timeline records that the request was made and how it was answered.
- You get an email when someone is brought in and another when they answer.
- The signer who asked can't sign until every helper has answered. They see Waiting for an answer, and each answer that comes back emails them a fresh link to carry on.
- A signer can have up to three requests open at once, and can withdraw one that hasn't been answered.
- Only an ordinary signer can ask. Witnesses, CC recipients, people in a signing group and people who were themselves brought in can't.
The certificate of completion names each helper and says who brought them in and why ("to approve" or "to sign as well"). If you use webhooks, two events carry this: recipient.helper_added and recipient.helper_answered. See Webhooks.
A signer hands the request to someone else
With Assign to someone else, the signer gives the new person's name and email. The new person takes the place as it was: same role, same signing language, same documents visible, and the same one-time-code check (sent by email, since SignSpry has no phone number for them). The old link stops working and you get an email saying who handed it to whom, with their reason.
It is refused, and the signer is told to ask you instead, when:
- you set an access code on that recipient, because the new person wouldn't have it
- the recipient is a signing group slot
- you've switched the option off
Getting more signatures on a finished document
A second director, a guarantor, a counterparty who joins later: open the completed envelope and choose More → Get more signatures.
- A new draft opens whose document is the sealed, signed PDF, certificate pages included.
- Add the new people and fields, then send it like any envelope.
- The two envelopes link to each other, and the new certificate says Continues envelope with the earlier envelope's number and seal fingerprint.
The new draft starts with your organisation's default expiry and reminder settings, and stays in the same team and folder. Because it is a new envelope, it counts toward your monthly allowance once sent. It only works while the original's sealed PDF is still stored, so it isn't available after retention has removed the documents.