Keep the Contract Process Moving with DocuSign eSignature and Envelope Sharing
Many organizations are facing the challenge of managing workloads and processes with fewer resources. Driving efficiency is particularly important when it comes to agreements and contracts. Accelerating the contract process has a direct impact on mission critical business processes including closing sales, onboarding and supporting customers, and expense processing.
DocuSign eSignature includes several features that help streamline the sending process to help employees keep the contract process moving even when key stakeholders may be unavailable or out of the office. One such feature is envelope sharing, which is included in our Standard eSignature plans and above.
Envelope sharing allows users to view, correct, resend, void, forward or copy envelopes on behalf of someone else. Admins can turn this feature on temporarily for out-of-office coverage or on an ongoing basis for teams that need this type of support, such as administrative assistants managing contract review on behalf of an executive.
When should you use envelope sharing?
- Administrative support. Executives are busy and may not have time to make changes to an existing document or contract once created in eSignature. Envelope sharing makes it possible for assistants to make corrections to any fields, recipient information or routing order and then send or forward documents to keep the contract process moving.
- Paralegal support. Attorneys need to focus their time on reviewing contracts and negotiating strategic contract terms. Envelope sharing makes it possible for their paralegal team to make routine corrections and resend documents as needed.
- Vacation coverage. When key stakeholders are away from the office, the contract process can come to a halt. By enabling envelope sharing for vacation coverage, a delegate can correct, resend, void or forward a document without having to wait for the employee to return to work.
- HR recruiting. In situations where multiple stakeholders manage a contract process such as HR offer letters, envelope sharing can help to ensure all information is accurate or quickly make corrections to avoid the bottleneck of a single reviewer for a high volume of documents.
Why should you use envelope sharing?
- Improve productivity and collaboration. Sending documents for signature is often part of a larger process that can involve multiple departments and systems. Envelope sharing helps improve productivity by keeping the process moving even when key stakeholders are unavailable.
- Increase visibility. Add additional viewers to your documents in eSignature to increase visibility so you can check for errors, make corrections and resend or void the document.
- Mitigate risk. Adding additional eyes on the process ensures you avoid mistakes or errors that can lead to risk.
- Reduce bottlenecks. Avoid the delays that can occur when a key stakeholder is out of the office. Keep the contract process moving by adding additional employees who can monitor the contracts in a manager’s queue while they are absent.
You can be confident using envelope sharing because every eSignature envelope includes a complete audit trail of every viewing, printing, sending, signing or declining activity, including key event timestamps.
How to use envelope sharing
Follow these steps to enable envelope sharing in your account:
1. Sign in to your DocuSign account and click on “Settings”
2. Under “Users and Groups” select “Users”
3. Locate the user you want to manage sharing settings for and click on the “Actions” button
4. Select one of the following options from the Actions menu:
5. Share envelopes with user- grants the select user access to someone else’s envelopes.
- Share user’s envelopes- grants someone else access to this user’s envelopes
- TIP: If it’s helpful, mentally replace the work “user” with that person’s name: “Share envelopes with Rachel”
6. Select the user(s) and click “Assign”
For more information on how envelope sharing works, check out these support articles:
Take advantage of the superior sending experience that DocuSign eSignature offers. Get started accelerating your contract process and improving employee productivity with envelope sharing. Log in today to try it out.