Participants is a feature which is a restructuring of our current e-signature workflow to support some of your most highly requested features that allow for more flexibility and less restrictions when creating your form flows. We term it Participants because one of the great benefits is that you don’t have to be a signer to be a part of a flow or process.

To highlight just a sample of the added functionality with Participants, you now have the ability to:

Previously, you would go into the Edit View on a Doc (Uploaded PDF) form and click on Signers then Manage Signers, but now you will have a new button labeled Participants.

Here is the button you've been clicking previously to set up a Signature Workflow:

Now moving forward you will start in the exact same place but the button is labeled Participants:
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To start you will want to open the Edit view for a Doc (Uploaded PDF) form from your lobby by either double clicking on the title of the form, or by clicking once and then clicking on the Edit button in the top right.
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Once you’re in Edit Mode you will click on Participants as shown in the screenshot previously and this will bring up a new window where you will be setting up the flow for your form:
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You will always start off with a Submitter who is just the first Participant to complete the form. By default this starts off as someone who does not need to sign, but just simply fill out or submit the form. Previously you were required to be a signer if you were the first person to fill out the form and you wanted to have later participants or signers but now you can have someone submit without requiring a signature.
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If you leave this as is without making any changes then a user will be able to open the form and submit it without signing while still being able to fill out fields.
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If you want the first person filling out the form to sign, you will drag your first Signer type into the Submitter field so that they will now be first like this:
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Adding Participants to a Form
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To create a new Participant you will click on Add Participant in the bottom left hand corner:

There are three types of Participants you can add:

Unknown Signer - Someone filling out the form whose name and email you don’t know. This is what you want to be the first Participant on any forms that you are going to post publicly, or make available to all staff, so that anyone can fill them out.

Known Signer - This is where you know the Name/Label and Email Address for this particular Participant.

Known List - This allows for a list of Participants when there may be different participants needed for different responses to forms. For instance you can take an internal form that anyone has to submit to their Department Head and make a list of all Department Heads so that the Participant can choose. You can find more information on how to set up a Known List within this article but we have also created a separate page with more details.
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​Customizing Your Participants
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Once you have added a Participant you can then customize each Participant with a variety of options starting with the first page which are the main details of the user starting with the view of an Unknown Signer:
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You will need to provide a label for the signer just like you might have in previous forms and then you customize three options:
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​Submission Association - This means that the submission will appear to the user when they log-in at a later time. This is great for any scenarios where you want users to be able to see the progress of a form or access it in the future. For more information on Associations please read our article on the various methods available.
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​Don't Display Signature on PDF - This is for when you don't want to require a Participant to sign as part of the flow. Effectively this will allow them to just be an approver and not a signer on the form. Note that you will need to have a Signature Field added onto the form, even though it won't be populated.
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​Allow Same Screen Signing - This will allow you to progress to the next signer in the flow without sending a signature request link but rather take you directly in as the next signer of the form. This is great for use cases where two or more people may be signing the same document in person together like a Marriage License.
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Then the next tab over will allow you to customize, or turn off, specific email notifications to the Participant:

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The toggle to the right of each will determine if that email is sent or not, for instance if using Same Screen Signing you will likely not want the next signer to receive a Signature Request email.
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​Signature Request emails contain the link that the Participant would need to click to open the form and complete their portion of the process.
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​Document Completion emails are sent once the process is fully complete and the last Participant has either signed or submitted.

Signature Confirmation is a notification sent to the signer of the form to confirm that they have signed and submitted and will be sent to the email they use to sign with.
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Then you can edit and customize each email:
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After you have customized and saved your Participant you can drag and drop it around to determine the order of the flow:
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As shown above, the next signer on this form is a Known Signer (meaning a Participant whose name/label and email address we know) which will have some additional customizations available that an Unknown Signer does not:
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​Require Login - This will require the user to log-in with a registered user profile before they can sign. Note that this does not require a license, as they can instead be a visitor user.
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​Can Delegate - This allows the Participant to choose someone else to either sign or submit in their place in the order. For instance if I'm on vacation I might receive request to sign a document but I can choose to delegate it to the person I have in charge of my responsibilities while I'm out of the office.
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Then finally we have a Known List where you can have a list of potential Participants that a previous Participant in the flow would choose from.
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To make a list you will type in your Participants in the following way: Label <email address> then press Enter. In the screenshot above you can see an example of how this will look. You are not required to have a label for each of the Participants, but rather could have their email address display.
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You can even copy and paste a full list of Participants by using the structure above and separating each participant by a comma.
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​Note that the limit for the number of participants in a Known List is 150.
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​Who Identifies Participants?
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Whenever there are Unknown Signers and Known Lists in a workflow the participant prior to them in the flow will need to either type in the email address and label for the Unknown Signer or choose from a list of options in the case of a Known List. You now have the ability to identify which Participant in the flow will choose them:
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For instance if I have an internal HR form that a staff member will submit to HR and then be approved by a specific HR representative next chosen from a Known List, I only want that option to choose the representative to be seen by HR so that the Staff member isn't confused and thinks they might need to make that selection. If I choose HR as the Participant who identifies who in the Known List is chosen then the Staff member will never see that list when they're submitting.

​Adding Signature Fields to the Form
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This will be an identical process to those who are used to setting up Signature Workflows but it's important to remember that any Participate who will be signing the form will need to have a Signature Field on the form itself where the signature can be displayed.
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After you've saved your Participants flow you will then be back in the editor and in the list of field options on the left you will see Signature:
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You will click on Signature and then drag the element to the place on the form where you will need the users signature to be. After you've dropped the element in place a menu will appear which will show you all Participants and ask you which is the one that you need to sign in that place:
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After choosing a Signature Field will be added to the form where the user's signature will go:
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After that you've successfully created a new Participants flow and you can continue to go about customizing your form.
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