Digital Signature Capture & Remote Digital Signature Capture

BUSINESS PROBLEM 

Large organization as YMCA of the North involve much paperwork with its members, customers, and employees. Luckily modern technologies allow for consolidation and automate the agreement signing process avoiding using tons of paper. 

But not only the idea of ​​creating a digital signature is essential for business. The quality and flexibility of the implementation are also important. Signed papers are documents created in compliance with specific rules, so here we have to think about the high level of security.

• Is it possible to sign the documents by digital signature on the location and remote? 
• How to ensure the security of signing documents remotely? 
• How to speed up the process of signing documents and make this process simple for clients and managers?

These are complex tasks for which we have found simple answers.

 

TASK

Developers had three main tasks:

1. To create a digital signature application with which documents can be signed on location.
2. Enable clients to sign documents remotely, which helps to eliminate personal contact in response to COVID-19 safety guidelines.
3. Combine signed documents into a single database, and ensure the security of the process of signing documents remotely.

 

The main requirements for the applications were:

• These should be lightweight and secure web applications 
• They should be securely integrated with the internal service
• They should not store any customer information

SOLUTION

In order to establish a process of fast and secure signing of documents, the ITCare company together with Jet.Dev created Digital Signature Capture (DSC), which allows leaving a signature locally, and Remote Digital Signature Capture (RDSC), which allows signing the documents remotely.

The easiest way to sign documents locally is to sign them with a Tablet. DSC of documents is very common and looks quite simple and secure because the client is on location, can get instant support from the staff, and usually, the transfer of the signature takes a few seconds by Tablet. But If the local signing of documents is not possible, the documents can be sent to the client by Email.

The Remote Digital Signature Capture application allows customers of the YMCA of the North to sign their agreements remotely and securely by receiving the request in their email inbox and providing the signature with a simple user experience. This also helps to eliminate personal contact in response to COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Technical specifications

The user stories created by the team were adapted for the Drupal 9(10)  admin interface to provide a variety of options to modify the email template with the signature request, the look of the application, and the wording. To comply with the security requirements, the application holds the signature request data until the documents are signed and the signature is received from the customer, then all the signature data is cleared once transferred to the internal storage. The signature request has a timeout and can be opened just once.

 As the powerful content management system with the latest customization abilities for the content entities, Drupal 9 has been chosen to run the request procedure and ensure the security of the transferred data. The main Digital Signature Capture service is running internally on Drupal, which makes it easier to integrate the Remote signage website running on Drupal as well.

Version: 

Drupal 9.x (10)

Key modules/theme/distribution used: 

Open Y Community Edition

Integrations: 

Personal Pricing Plan

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen: 

We used Reactjs for developing Frontend application

Drupal is used for API only and for Content management for content pieces, pulled by React app.

 

Remote Digital Signature Capture Workflow

 

As the powerful content management system with the latest customization abilities for the content entities, Drupal 9 has been chosen to run the request procedure and ensure the security of the transferred data. The main Digital Signature Capture service is running internally on Drupal, which makes it easier to integrate the Remote signage website running on Drupal as well.

CHALLENGE

Digital Signature Capture application is designed to be functioning inside the YMCA of the North facilities network only, and it does its work pretty well, but the number of tablets on front desks and manager desks is about 120 devices. This made server load ~ equal to 10 Mln req/day, which is a High Load, because of real-time nature of client-server communication. We are using micro-cache technology here in order to eliminate server load.

 

RESULTS 

The fast and secure signing of documents became possible not only locally, but also remotely. By RDSC, the company was able to overcome the challenges that arose due to Covid-19.

Now, these opportunities are actively used by the organization's customers, who for various reasons cannot come to the office to sign documents. And the ability to use DSC on a tablet has already become a simple routine.

The security principles, that were implemented within this project, are now considered by the team during the development and infrastructure setup so that the services provided and data transfer are safe for the customers and the corporation.

The Remote Digital Signature Capture application can be designed and adapted for any kind of business involving customers or employees signing legal documents. The Digital Signature Capture itself provides a paperless environment for the organization and the Remote Digital Signature Capture application provides an even better and secure experience for the customers and organization.