How to Use DocuSign for SharePoint for Legal Agreements

Legal departments often wonder how to make DocuSign work seamlessly together with SharePoint for contract signing. In many cases, documents are saved within SharePoint but are sent to DocuSign for signing. From a technical point of view, this process sounds quite modern and advanced.

However, in reality, such an approach operates as nothing but an upload shortcut. First, documents are moved from SharePoint to DocuSign to be signed, and after completion, they are returned as a finalized PDF.

How Does DocuSign Work with SharePoint for Contract Signing?

In the absence of workflow logic, it is hard to keep control of the status of contracts in the signing process. Documents end up sitting in inboxes, and it is admins who have to monitor the non-response of signers.

Thus, the relevant question is not about using digital signatures. It is rather about how to combine SharePoint with DocuSign in an effective manner.

Properly configured workflows in Microsoft 365 allow for the seamless movement of documents between signers, as well as their automatic routing, tracking, and archival.

Why Does the Process of Signing Contracts Require a Pause Prior to Moving Forward?

Automation is efficient but not always flawless. In many workflows, contracts are set to be sent out for signing as soon as the process of completing the document is initiated. Although this allows one to avoid wasting precious time on further actions, it eliminates the necessity of conducting the final verification of the document.

The more appropriate solution is to include a pause within the workflow. Rather than initiating the sending of the contract at once, the user would create a draft of an envelope with all the needed fields pre-populated in it. The document would stay in this state until its content is verified by another person.

As a result, Power Automate would still pre-populate all the necessary data from SharePoint. However, this process would have an additional stop prior to moving to the next step.

An even short review will allow avoiding typical errors. Lawyers will check the correctness of names, dates, and contract value. They can also ensure the right people are involved in the signing sequence.

Templates are key in this automation process. The Word-based templates should contain placeholders like {Candidate_Name} and {Contract_Start_Date}. As soon as the workflow starts, SharePoint automatically replaces placeholders with the correct information.

After that, DocuSign reads the fields and places signature blocks in appropriate places. Such an approach allows integrating automation and human intervention to speed up contract signing without compromising accuracy.

How Can Signatures Be Processed in Multi-Participant Contracts?

Most contracts involve multiple participants. The internal approval happens before the document goes to the customer. If there is no routing system, the document can be sent to the wrong person at the wrong time.

Sequential routing offers an easy solution to that. This feature indicates the order in which each participant will be presented with the document. So, for instance, the Human Resources department can be asked to examine the contract initially. Then the document is passed on to the legal team, which confirms its legality. Finally, it goes to the head of the company and then to the external entity.

As a result, each signer can know exactly where he stands in the line.

The second important element is the use of visual identifiers by DocuSign. Each person is allocated their own color for the purposes of highlighting the relevant information. Such coloring allows people to understand what they have to do when filling out the document.

Some signers are required to add their signatures, while others just initial the papers.

The second scenario is when the contract length changes during negotiations. It can get longer because of increased addresses, larger clauses, and new sections. In such situations, signatures will not be aligned properly.

There is an effective solution called anchor tagging. Anchors are hidden markers on your template that determine where each signature line will be placed on the document. No matter how long your agreement becomes – from one to three pages, your signatures will stay right in their places.

What Next?

Companies tend to pay attention to the signing process but neglect other actions after signing. Once the final signer signs the agreement, admins need to download the signed PDF manually and place it back to its initial location.

Automation can save you this effort. The final signoff event will trigger the automated workflow, which will move the signed document back to the same SharePoint folder.

This automatic process ensures that all contract information is recorded automatically, thus ensuring that there is no extra work required on the part of the administrator to document this contract information manually.

In some cases, the signing process can even collect information entered by the signers themselves. For example, some signers will input their personal contact information, such as phone number or title.

Rather than keeping the information within the contract, this information is extracted and saved within columns in SharePoint. This means that the system becomes much more efficient for searching, filtering, and analyzing contracts.

Why Is This Workflow Beneficial for Compliance?

Often, compliance is made easier through consistent practices. Digital signatures maintain comprehensive documentation through every signing process. The most relevant document is the Certificate of Completion by DocuSign.

The certificate contains data regarding all the participants, the time when the signature is made by each participant, and also the actions that have taken place during the process. In other words, the certificate can act as a receipt.

Since the signed document will be sent back by the automation process into SharePoint, it can be stored along with the contract. Thus, an organization has everything documented from the signing process.

As a result, legal departments do not have to find any evidence themselves since everything is done automatically within the process.

How Can Legal Teams Create a Scalable Signing Process?

While digital signatures constitute just one of many processes in a contract lifecycle, the signing process itself can make the whole legal operation more efficient.

SharePoint, Power Automate, and DocuSign can be used to develop a workflow for signing contracts. This means that contracts can go from being drafted, to approval, to signing, and finally to archiving without requiring constant intervention.

The system makes it easier to handle documents and allows legal departments to spend more time analyzing contracts than handling paperwork.

Companies that have adopted Microsoft 365 already have the tools needed to design such a workflow, but the difficult part is integrating these tools into the actual contract process. For companies seeking more automation, they can consider investing in contract lifecycle management software.

Dock 365 is a contract lifecycle management platform based completely on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. With the help of Dock 365, users can automate the processes related to contracts, including requesting, approvals, negotiation, and signatures.

Legal departments can manage their agreements without switching out of their current Microsoft environment. If you are looking for an automation solution that can assist you in managing your contract processes in Microsoft 365, schedule a demo today!

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