Existing Businesses are quickly replacing existing paper forms and workflows can be wasteful and stifle productivity. Replacing them manual workflows with fully automated e-forms and workflows increases productivity and drives down electronic workflows for many reasons such as increased productivity, less error prone and much easier to track/audit. All of these reasons help drive down business costs. Often your existing paper forms require one or more signatures. frevvo  workflow enables easily routing your e-forms thru a simple approval process to collect all the required signatures. When making the transition from paper to electronic signatures our customer customers often ask "Are these electronic signatures as legally binding as their paper counterparts?".

The Uniform Electronic Transaction Act (UETA Act) and Electronic Signatures and National Commerce ACT (ESIGN Act) establish the basic framework for a legally binding system based on electronic signatures. has all the features you need to deploy web forms and workflows with legally binding signature. This white paper discusses the supporting technologies and features in context of the legally binding electronic signature framework described in both the UETA and ESIGN Acts.
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This white paper covers each of the following important requirements:

• Reliable Identification of Parties
• Disclosure and Consent
• Electronic Signature Capture
• Electronic Transaction Secure From Tampering
• Transaction Document Retention
• Transaction Document Access
• Audit Trail for all Transaction Actions

Reliable Identification of Parties

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• offers multiple options for identification and authentication including an out-of-the box option as well as several options for integrating with external systems such as LDAP. 
•   offers flexible access control configuration of forms and flows to allow configurable sets of authenticated users runtime access to forms and flows as well as the resulting submissions/transaction documents. 

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Once the electronic transaction has been signed by a party, the relevant data must be secured against tampering and any tampering that might occur must be immediately apparent and detectable.

•   allows the designer to protect all or some of the transaction document with digital signatures.  These digital signatures employ a digital hash of the relevant data that is encrypted using public-private key technology.  The digital signature is applied simultaneously with the application of a handwritten signature, which is itself also protected with the digital signature.  The accurate date and time of the signature is also automatically recorded and protected by the digital signature.

• A transaction document may be configured with multiple sections, each of which may be protected with a digital signature requiring a handwritten signature from different parties to the transaction.  The potential combinations available to designers are endless and very flexible.

• Any tampering of the digitally signed data or electronic signature can be immediately detected and in fact in a workflow application, Live Forms continually re-checks digital signatures for tampering and immediately notifies users.

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Electronic transaction documents must be retained for somewhat obvious reasons, including later accessibility, compliance with laws and regulations, later enforcement, etc.

•   offers flexible options regarding the system of record regarding record retention.  Transaction records may be stored within Live Forms or all transaction record data can be sent to 3rd-party systems.  Live Forms includes several built-in connectors that facilitate this integration with no programming required.

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The resulting electronic transaction “document” must be available to all parties.

•   flexibly provides options for the designer to make the resulting transaction document available.  The designer may optionally allow read-only access to the resulting transaction submission to all parties or a subset of parties.  

• The designer may also configure the system to create alternate non-proprietary document forms of the transaction such as a PDF or various image formats.  These may be stored with the transaction data and retrieved as needed.

• Handwritten signatures are captured as images in Live Forms. These signature images are stored along with the data that represents the electronic transaction and are included as part of the read-only data that may selectively be made available to parties of the transaction. The captured signature images are also affixed to any generated alternate document forms (PDFs, etc.).

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Each action must be recorded in order to be able to prove who did what and when they did it.

•   comes with built in auditing in workflows. This audit records who processed each step and when they did it.

• The audit trail itself can be made available to all participants or configured for selective access by particular parties to the transaction.

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1. ESIGN Act of 2000
2. Uniform Law Commission on UTEA ActAct