You are here: Metadata > Digital Signatures > Signing a Document

Signing a Document

Signing a document uses a personal certificate on your computer to authenticate the document and specify that it has been signed by a particular person. Your personal signature uses a certificate chain for validation, which allows other users to verify that the document was signed by you at a particular time, and to determine whether the document was modified since you signed it.

Note: To sign a document, you must have a valid signing certificate in the personal section of your local certificate store in Windows. Your administrator may have already pushed a valid signing certificate to your computer for use when signing documents. If you are not sure how to determine whether you have a valid signing certificate, or to acquire one if you do not, contact your administrator for assistance.

When signing a document, you must specify the signing certificate you want to use. You may have only one signing certificate, or more than one, depending on your computer's configuration and your organization's policies. You can also optionally provide a signing image (such as a scanned image of your signature), and a signing reason. You can also search for documents using this signing information.

Signing Laserfiche documents through Web Access requires the Laserfiche Web Access Digital Signatures ActiveX Control, an Internet Explorer extension. If the control is not currently installed on your computer, Web Access will display a dialog box that allows you to download and install the ActiveX control. No special download is required to sign documents in the Laserfiche Client.

Important:  The digital signatures feature will only be available if your Laserfiche Server is licensed for it. In addition, Web Access only supports adding a new signature to a document through Microsoft Internet Explorer. All supported browsers can view a document's signatures.

Note: If the document is under version control, the following steps will sign the current version of the document. To sign a previous version, see Versions and Digital Signatures.

Signing Certificates

To sign a document, you must specify a signing certificate that you will use to sign the document. The signing certificates available in this dialog box are those that are available in your computer's personal certificate store. If you have multiple signing certificates, you can choose the one you want to use. If you do not have a signing certificate available, or want to use another signing certificate, contact your administrator.

When you choose a signing certificate, you can view the following information about it:

The following information is available about your signing certificates:

Signing Images

When signing a document, you can optionally select a signing image to accompany your digital signature. In most cases, this will be an image of your written signature. You can select any .bmp, .jpg, .gif, .png, or .tiff image for your signature.

Signing images are optional. If you do not have a signing image or do not want to use one, you do not need to.

Signing a Document

To sign a document 

  1. Select a document, then open the Sign Document dialog box in one of the following ways:
    • Open the Metadata dialog box or Metadata Pane. Select the Digital Signatures tab, and then click Sign.
    • Open the Tasks menu and point to Digital Signatures, then select Sign Document.
    • Right-click the document and select Sign Document.
  2. The Sign Document dialog box will open.
  3. Optional: In the Signing Image option, click Select , navigate to the signing image you want to use, and click Open. You can specify any .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png or .tif image file.
  4. In the Signing Certificate option, click Select and choose your signing certificate. To view the details for your selected certificate, click the Details button.
  5. Optional: In the Signing Reason option, type your reason for signing this document.
  6. Optional: If you want to apply your signature as a countersignature to the existing signatures on this document, select Countersign existing signature(s).If you do not want to countersign, clear this option.
  7. Optional: If you previously signed the document with the same signing certificate, you will have the option to remove your original signature. Select Remove my previous signature(s) to replace the original signature with a new signature, or clear this option to sign the document again and keep both signatures.

    8. Note: This option will not remove signatures that have been countersigned.

  8. Click Sign.

To sign a document

  1. Do one of the following:
    • Select a document and from the Tasks menu, point to Digital Signatures, and click Sign Document.
    • Right-click on a document and click Sign Document from the context menu.
    • Select a document and in the preview pane, select the Metadata view, select the Digital Signatures view, and click Sign.
    • Open a document. In the Document Viewer's metadata display, select the Digital Signatures view, and click Sign.

    Note: You must have the Browse and Read entry access rights on the document you want to sign.

  2. The first time you attempt to sign a document with a digital signature, you may receive a security prompt that asks you to verify that the Web Access URL is a trusted URL. Click Yes if you can confirm that the displayed Web Access URL is valid.
  3. If the ActiveX control is not installed, you will see the Install Laserfiche Digital Signatures dialog box. Click the Click Here to Install button in the center of the dialog to install the ActiveX control. Depending on your Internet Explorer security settings, you may be prompted to verify if you want to install the control. Click Install to load the Laserfiche Web Access 9.2 Digital Signatures ActiveX Control setup wizard.

    4. Note: By default, Web Access attempts to automatically start the installation. If security settings prevent the installation from automatically starting, you can click the Click here if your installation does not automatically start link to manually download and run the installation package.

  4. In the Sign Document dialog box, in the Signing Certificate section, click Select to select a certificate from your computer's local certificate store.
  5. Optional: If you have an image file that represents your digital signature, click the Select option in the Signing Image to choose an image file.
  6. In the Signing Reason option, specify a reason for signing the document.
  7. Click Sign to create a digital signature for the document.

Related Topics