You know the drill: you receive an application form by email, are supposed to fill it out, sign it and send it back by email. So you print it out, fill it in, sign it, scan it and email it. Your grandparents once filled out forms with a typewriter, to make sure everyone could read them. And today?
Despite so much frustration with the legibility of hand-written documents, it’s a wonder there are so many forms that are still filled out manually. As a DocuWare user, you can make your life easier and anyone on the receiving end of a form a whole lot happier. And it's simple:
- Place the received form in a DocuWare basket. Either drag the attachment onto the Windows desktop and then put it in the basket. Or you can use our email connectors and copy the mail directly into a basket.
- In the basket, open the form via mouse click in the DocuWare Viewer.
- With the text tools offered with document display, simply fill out all the fields in the form – just place your cursor inside each field and start typing.
Setting Up Signature Stamps
So how do you get your signature on a form? You just need to set up a signature stamp one time within DocuWare Administration. Choose the option “Bitmap” within the Stamp Wizard.
You may also copy your own scanned signature into this stamp. When you activate the option “Password required,” you’ll make sure that no one is able to use your stamp from your computer when left unattended.
A short tutorial shows you how to set up signature stamps in only three steps.
Pasting The Signature Into The Form
The stamp is now available for you to use at any time during document display. So just click anywhere on the document to place the stamp in the right spot:
If you want to send off your signed and completed form, simply choose the email feature in DocuWare and then the option “Send as PDF with annotations.” Then your recipient will receive a complete, legible and signed form.
"Is this kind of signature legally accepted?" The answer is: "Generally Yes." As a so-called "simple" electronic signature in the sense of signature laws, it is not legally equivalent to a handwritten or a qualified electronic signature. But if your business partner accepts and scans the completed form by email, the simple electronic signature should be sufficient. According to our experience, this is true for 90 percent of cases.
Easily Managing Forms with DocuWare
Have you noticed? With DocuWare, you didn’t have to print out or scan anything in this process. Which means you can comfortably do this kind of work while travelling.
And if you want to make form filling easier for your business partners, you simply use the features of DocuWare Forms. With this new module, you can provide your existing forms online, so that they are available to fill out and then be added automatically to your workflows.
