Formstack Sign API Overview

Who is this for: Account Admins.

Integrate Formstack Sign with your CRM/agency, management/workflow software for digital signature. Along with our API documentation, utilize the Integration Overview to prepare your Formstack Sign integration.

 

Build your integration

Locate the API Access under your Formstack Sign’s Account tab and select API Access from the available options.

NOTE: If you don’t see the API Access, you will need API Access enabled on your Formstack Sign account. 


 

Note for Partner Customers: Once you complete your Formstack partner profile, we will provide you a Formstack Sign partner license that you can use to build your integration.

 

As an integrator, choose “Auth code - multiple Sign accounts” which creates your Group, Integrator ID, Client ID, Client Secret, and lets you set your callback URL (which is used to bring the user back to your application - wherever you are initiating Formstack Sign from). 

Approach

The typical approach is that within your webpage/application, your end user will provide their login/password, and you will use the AUTHORIZATION_CODE API credentials to authenticate. Once authenticated, the end user will be able to use the Formstack Sign integration. 

For Formstack Partners: Your users will sign up for their own Formstack Sign accounts from either:

• Direct billing to Formstack: Sign up for individual Formstack Sign Accounts - we’ll provide you a referral link to track these signups or
• Reseller subaccounts: f you also want to sell Formstack sign accounts, we have the option to set you up on a parent account/subaccount model to manage these signups. 

In either case, each of your customers will get a Formstack Sign account that in turn can have multiple users added.

Integration Components

There are three steps to the integration: 

1. User authentication 
2. User initiates document for signature 
3. Bring the signed document back into your system  

 

User authentication

Use the recommended go-to approach mentioned in the above section. Once authenticated, the end user will be able to use the Formstack Sign integration. 

Your URL will be formatted like this:

https://sign-auth.insuresign.io/login?response_type=code&client_id={client_id}&redirect_uri={callback_url}

Hitting the authorization code endpoint returns the below screen. 

If the user is already logged in, it will immediately direct them to their callback URL.  If they are not logged in, they will be redirected to the  login screen instead:


 

User initiates document for signature

There is flexibility in how to initiate the integration —common ways these are initiated include adding a button on a document to route it for signature (if the document already exists in your system)] or allowing the user to upload a document by dragging it into the webpage.

As part of your Formstack Sign integration, you will pass over the  information to Formstack through the API:

• The document with Sign tags  (discussed below) 
• Document name
• Subject line 
• Participant data (name, email, mobile phone number/optional) 

Depending on your use case, take different actions with the information like:  

• Automatically trigger an email with the document for signature. This is a good choice when the user initiating the document for signature does not need to sign. For this experience, the user doesn’t need to ever use the Formstack Sign interface and all is automated. 
• Get a sign link to present to the user. This link will open in a new tab if you present it in your interface.  This is a good choice if the user initiating the signature also needs to sign, and you don’t want them to have to jump over to an email to do so. 
• Bring the user to the Formstack Sign interface in a new tab. This should only be necessary if there is custom tagging that the user needs to do beyond your template. For this experience, the user will complete the signing setup and send for signature using Formstack Sign. 

 

Bring the signed document back to your system

You are able to use the API to bring document statuses back into your interface for the user. To do this you can subscribe to event types (e.g. Document View, Document Signed, Document Finalized). 

To bring the signed document back into your system, when you get notified that the document is finalized (with the Document ID & finalized status), then you can go get the document content and save it back to your interface. 
 

Set up your Sign Templates

Signing tags can be placed within your documents to simplify field placement, rather than using x,y coordinates.  For example, if the Create Document call uses the parameter of useTextTags = true, and [sig|req|signer1] is placed as text within a document, Formstack Sign will automatically know where to place the signing field for participant 1.

 

Multiple Environments

If you have multiple environments, we still recommend connecting to our Production environment so that you are using the production version of our API when testing.

 

Manage your API access

Once you have set up your API access on your Formstack Sign account, you have the ability to review, manage, and remove API credentials from your Organization. 



From the Account tab, select API Access. Here you can copy the whole code or copy and paste the following credentials: 

• Integration ID
• User ID
• Group ID
• Client ID
• Client Secret (select the eye emoji to reveal)
• Callback URLs

Or select Remove Credentials to delete the API access. If removed, you will no longer be able to access Formstack Sign's API but new credentials may be generated at any point.