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Electronic signature: require approval from a signer before a credential is sent

Electronic signature lets you hold a credential for an authorized person to review and sign before it reaches its recipient, so nothing goes out unreviewed. A credential issued from a design with a required signature is not sent right away: it waits in the To Sign tab of Awards until every required signer has either signed or rejected it.

Requesting a signature from a member of your own team, through Request signature, is available to every organization at no extra cost. Only Add electronic signature, which routes the signature to an external provider, is gated: it is a premium feature, enabled per organization. To turn it on, talk to your account executive or write to contact@pok.tech.

Is this the same as the signature in my design?​

Not quite, and it is a common mix-up. Design a certificate is where you add a signature space to a design and decide who has to sign it: Request signature for a member of your own team, or Add electronic signature for an external provider. That article covers setting it up.

This article covers what happens next. Once you issue a credential from a design like that, POK holds it instead of sending it, and this is where the assigned signer actually goes to sign it.

Who can sign a credential​

Signing is a permission, not a role of its own: any member, whether Administrator, Operator, or Reader, can also be made a signer. Only an administrator can grant it, from Team Members: click the pencil icon next to a member, check "Assign signer role," and confirm. See Users: registration, deletion, and permissions for what each role can otherwise do.

Holding the Signer permission does not open every credential in To Sign to you. You can only act on a credential whose design named you specifically as one of its signers when its signature space was set up. If you were not the one assigned, or someone already signed or rejected it, the sign action fails.

How the flow works, from issuing to delivery​

Whether a credential needs a signature is decided by its design, not by whoever issues it. Issue a credential from a design with one or more required signatures, through Manual sending, Bulk sending, or any other path, and POK holds it instead of delivering it: the credential's status reads "Pending electronic signature," and it appears in the To Sign tab of Awards.

Each signer named on the design reviews their credentials from To Sign and either signs or rejects them. A design can name more than one signer; while any of them is still missing, the credential stays in To Sign.

Once every required signature is collected, the credential does not go out by itself: it moves back to the Pending tab, the same place any newly loaded batch waits. Sending it from there is the same action as sending any other pending credential, and only then is it delivered to the recipient.

What a signer sees in To Sign​

Open Awards and click the To Sign tab. If nothing is waiting, it reads "You don't have any credentials pending for signature yet." Otherwise, the table lists every credential in the organization that is waiting on a signature, and each row also shows who created the credential and who has already signed it, labeled Approver. Filter by state to narrow the list to Signature Requested (still pending) or Signature Rejected.

To sign a single credential, click its Sign action. A dialog opens in two steps:

  1. Upload your signature: drag and drop a PNG file smaller than 2MB, ideally with a transparent background. The dialog previews the credential with your signature already placed on it, so you can check it before continuing. Click Continue.
  2. Review the preview once more, then click Sign to register your signature, or Reject to refuse it.

Sign or reject several credentials at once​

Select several rows with their checkboxes, or select every credential across all pages, and click Sign in the toolbar.

  • If everything you selected is actually assigned to you, the same two-step dialog opens directly.
  • If some of your selection is not available for signing, POK confirms first how many credentials you are about to sign and how many of them cannot be signed. Confirm with Sign credentials to continue.

From there, upload your signature once and choose:

  • Sign all: applies your signature to every eligible credential in the selection in one action.
  • Sign one by one: steps through them individually, each with its own preview and its own Sign or Reject action, moving to the next automatically.
  • Reject all: rejects the signature on every eligible credential in the selection right away.

A reminder appears throughout: "To complete the submission, if these credentials require the signature of other signers, they will remain in To Sign until all signatures are completed."

To reject without opening the sign dialog at all, use the Reject option next to Sign in the toolbar. POK confirms how many credentials you are about to reject signatures on, warns that "If you reject the signature, the selected credentials cannot be sent," and asks you to confirm with Reject signatures.

What happens when a signature is rejected​

Rejecting is final for that credential. It moves to the Signature Rejected state and cannot be signed, resent, or recovered afterward: the only action left for it in Awards is to discard it, the same way you would discard any other pending credential. If you need that credential after all, issue it again.

Notify another system with a webhook​

POK can notify an external system through the Electronic Signature webhook, described in Webhooks as "Receive a notification when a credential requires an electronic signature." It fires specifically for the external-provider case: when the only signature still missing on a credential is an Add electronic signature one, whether that was the only kind of signer on the design or the last one left after your own team already signed.

It does not fire for an ordinary Request signature credential waiting on your team: those simply sit in To Sign for a signer to act on directly, with no webhook involved.

I signed every credential, but nothing was delivered​

That is expected, not a bug. Once the last required signature is collected, the credential returns to the Pending tab instead of being sent automatically. Send it from there the same way you would send any other pending credential; see Credential Awards for how sending works.

I can't sign a credential in To Sign​

Two things have to be true at once: your account needs the Signer permission, and the credential's design needs to have named you specifically as one of its signers. Holding the Signer permission does not let you act on every credential in To Sign, only the ones assigned to you. If someone else already signed or rejected it, or you were never named on that design, the action fails.

My signature image won't upload​

The file has to be a PNG smaller than 2MB; a larger one is rejected with "The file is larger than the allowed size." Use a transparent background so your signature sits cleanly on the design instead of covering it with a white box.

A credential stays in To Sign after I signed it​

Its design most likely names more than one signer. POK holds a credential in To Sign until every required signature, whether from your team or from an external provider, is collected, so check who else is still missing before assuming something is stuck.