[HN Gopher] eSignature for Google Docs and Google Drive (Beta)
___________________________________________________________________
eSignature for Google Docs and Google Drive (Beta)
Author : rc00
Score : 220 points
Date : 2023-08-10 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)
| j_san wrote:
| Is this targeted for the US market or also the EU? Does this
| qualify as a an advanced electronic signature (AdES) under the
| eIDAS regulation?
| hbaum wrote:
| Author of open-pdf-sign here. AdES alone is difficult to do
| without proper signatures and user verification. Besides that,
| if Google would go for advanced electronic signatures, I'd
| expect it showing up in the EU Trusted List, which it isn't. So
| unless Google is not utilizing their own Google Trust Services
| certificate authority, I'd say it's unlikely that they will
| launch with AdES that are compatible with eIDAS.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I don't have any inside info here, but anecdotally, Google
| seems good at meeting regulatory requirements. I wouldn't be
| surprised if it does meet this if it's available in the EU.
| bombolo wrote:
| Being available doesn't mean it's considered legally valid. I
| can sign with the private key on my national id...
| plumeria wrote:
| Many Latinamerican countries also use digital signatures (e.g
| PAdES). I wonder if they support this? LATAM always seems to
| be forgotten by big tech.
| rvnx wrote:
| No it doesn't, not considered as a trusted (certified) provider
| and doesn't meet the level for secure user authentication.
|
| It's like a gadget in Europe then.
|
| But still, it is useful.
|
| It can be used if you want to ask your daughter to promise to
| "Get good grades at school" in exchange for an extra Christmas
| gift, for example.
|
| And make it look like official.
|
| It's like pretending to be signing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In other words: is strictly less useful than a "fake analog
| signature" script that uses imagemagick to paste a PNG/SVG
| with a signature (or a random one from a directory of
| signatures) on the last page of the document, and then to
| apply some or all of random {sub-2deg rotation, tiny gaussian
| blur, tiny non-linear transform, color threshold, strong
| desaturation}, to make it seem like the document was printed
| out, signed, and scanned back.
| 23B1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| As long as this doesn't pretend like a signature is a
| cryptographic tool, I'm generally a fan of doing away with
| nonsense like Docusign.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| The only chance for it to fly among the SMB in Brazil where
| DocuSign and ClickSign are the major players is by adding
| WhatsApp to the signature workflow. Notifications via email alone
| won't work.
| gumby wrote:
| My ID card has a chip in it and can be used to sign documents.
| Why not support that?
| amf12 wrote:
| Because their biggest markets do not? And it's a just
| announced, beta feature!
| s-xyz wrote:
| Bye bye Docusign?
| whitej125 wrote:
| We use DocuSign here and the amount of time I spend hopping back
| and forth (exporting and importing) between Google and DocuSign
| is annoyingly high. If Google were to enter this space... I would
| personally welcome it.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Personally I found the entire design and the organization of
| files/docs/sheets between Google Drive and other apps in the
| Google ecosystem is confusing as hell. There was no way to
| follow a specific hierarchy and the commenting/reviewing system
| felt clunky.
|
| Wish I never had to use this Google suite of products if it
| wasn't for my employer.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You would hate Microsoft 365 then. I find Google Drive
| extremely clean and easy to use.
| namanaggarwal wrote:
| Will this be admissible in court of law ? I know docusign is.
|
| On what basis is it determined that particular signing tech is
| admissable
| jeffbee wrote:
| Varies by jurisdiction of course. Under American law and
| similar systems the admissibility of a type of evidence is
| established by it having been admitted before, and the initial
| admission is based on the judgement of some individual judge.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _American law and similar systems the admissibility of a
| type of evidence is established by it having been admitted
| before_
|
| It's also been statute since 2000 [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_
| Glo...
| mbauman wrote:
| It would also vary by use-case. Some regulated industries
| have specific standards required for an electronic signature
| -- and hitting those standards is typically an add-on cost
| for systems like Docusign.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| It varies by jurisdiction, but examples like this show that
| very little can be needed.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-ruled-thumbs-up-emoji-...
| ew wrote:
| We attempted to create this last year with https://pleasesign.me.
| Definitely a case of waiting too long on a good idea. Ah well, it
| still has some features Google might not launch :)
| jeremycarter wrote:
| Looks great
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Another set of startups that is just a feature on one of the big
| platforms.
| mr_toad wrote:
| For a tiny moment I thought this might be about making
| cryptographic signatures available to the masses. A sign that
| there's still some good left in Google.
|
| I should have known better.
| aFaid7see0ni wrote:
| I was hoping it's this https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-
| blocks/wikis/display/D... but unfortunatey we are not there yet
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| No pricing === you are the product
| sassifrass wrote:
| Google Workspace is a paid-for product?
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _No pricing === you are the product_
|
| True, but is this no pricing? At a glance it appears to be
| available only to Workspace customers, which I believe you have
| to pay for (at least I've been paying for it for years).
| dexterdog wrote:
| With google you are the product whether you pay or not. Some of
| their most valuable data comes from the companies who use
| google for all of their email, calendar and documents.
| rrdharan wrote:
| https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-
| wh...
|
| I'd argue it's the least valuable data. They can't look at
| it, they have regulatory, legal and contractual commitments
| to protect it, they have paying customers that will be very
| angry if it's lost or unavailable, and yet they can't mine it
| or train models with it or monetize it.
| EGreg wrote:
| What is the minimum required functionality to roll your own
| e-signature which would be LEGALLY BINDING under the e-sign act?
|
| Seems all we need is:
|
| Consent to do business electronically -- All parties must agree
| to conduct transactions electronically, either explicitly or
| implied.
|
| Intent to sign -- E-signatures are only valid if the signer
| intended to sign. Signature requests need to be declinable.
|
| Association of signature with the record -- Signers must make a
| visible mark or statement on the e-document.
|
| Attribution -- Whether a name or a unique mark, the signature
| must be attributable to the person signing and only linked to
| them.
|
| Record retention -- Signed electronic documents must be saved,
| viewed, or printed by either party and stored for future
| reference.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The important question is, when is Google going to kill this
| functionality? DocuSign only has to hold out until then.
| geodel wrote:
| Reminds me of Keyenes : _Markets can remain irrational longer
| than you can remain solvent_
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, I asked ChatGPT to make up some HN comments and it's
| classic.
|
| https://chat.openai.com/share/9b69427a-b28c-4080-b097-6a0a78...
|
| The HN/LLM concordance ratio is approaching 1. Eventually, I
| can just remove comments and then fill them in with ChatGPT
| instead.
| hedora wrote:
| I wonder what happens to documents that were signed with this
| thing after they kill the product.
|
| Also, I wonder if the person signing the document has to agree
| to Google's entire ToS in order to sign the document.
|
| Congress could fix both issues with some well-thought-out
| legislation:
|
| - Signatures from these things have to support external
| validation via standard tools (e.g., Google uses PGP or
| whatever to sign the signature + document + metadata).
|
| - If the act of accessing or signing a contract implicitly
| incorporates other contracts, then either (a) the signature is
| non-binding of (b) the incorporated contracts are rendered
| unenforceable, regardless of whether they were agreed to via
| other means.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's funny, this is exactly what I was wondering.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| DocuSign should start working on their "Import from Google
| Docs" feature.
| eclipxe wrote:
| [flagged]
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > Every HN thread.
|
| No, not every HN thread, but "Every Google product".
|
| This is an entirely valid concern borne out by history. Until
| Google goes to extraordinary measures to prove that it will
| be unusually long-lived, you _should_ assume that it will be
| dead in a few years.
|
| "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
| over and expecting different results."
| endisneigh wrote:
| by your logic we should go into every Show HN and say their
| project will be dead. historically most projects and
| companies die too after a few years.
|
| but obviously that wouldn't be helpful for discussion or
| particularly insightful to spam, either.
| hbn wrote:
| Show HN threads don't repeatedly come from the same guy
| popping in with his unlimited amounts of money that he
| used to make yet another side project that some people
| will use for a few years while he gathers your data then
| decides to kill because it wasn't an immediate smashing
| success, or he wanted to redo it cause the other one was
| old.
| ixwt wrote:
| I would agree with you, if every Show HN was from a
| single massive company that is a central point of
| failure.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Most people aren't affected by those vaproware products.
| Most people _are_ tied into Google one way or another,
| and changes they make can affect everybody.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we should go into every Show HN and say their project
| will be dead_
|
| It would be totally fair to ask an upstart DocuSign
| competitor about their wind-down process. The fact that
| I'm more confident they will have thought that through is
| the problem.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Sigh. Every HN thread._
|
| Sigh. Every Google product.
| deegles wrote:
| Why is it unwarranted?
| jader201 wrote:
| Maybe not necessarily unwarranted, but certainly unhelpful.
|
| It doesn't really add to interesting/thoughtful discussion
| in the spirit of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Particularly:
|
| > Don't be snarky. Converse curiously
|
| > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet
| tropes.
|
| These subthreads never really go anywhere, other than fan
| the flames of Google hate.
|
| Again, not necessarily saying they're not warranted, but
| for folks looking for interesting discussion, it can
| certainly add noise to the signal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Signatures aren't a move-fast-and-break-things domain.
| Google's culture is bad at maintenance and wind-down. I
| would react negatively to someone sending me a Google
| e-sign without having considered these questions.
| rvnx wrote:
| Inside Google, you usually get more easily promoted if
| you launch new products, than if you just maintain
| products.
|
| Let's see the moment when Google launches Twitter-bis.
| It's a matter of time before it's done.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Maybe people would stop pattern-matching about it if there
| wasn't such an obvious pattern.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| "people" don't. This is largely just a hn-ism which I've
| pretty much never heard outside of this bubble. In any
| case, repeating a cliche response on any news out of Google
| isn't any kind of substantive contribution to the
| discussion and makes for a poor hn comment even if it was
| true.
| packetlost wrote:
| ... did you not read any news at all covering Stadia?
| Like... any of it? At all??? Google's propensity for
| killing projects is absolutely in the mainstream mindset.
| duringmath wrote:
| Yeah wouldn't want it to go the way of Google Toolbar, that
| thing would definitely be relevant today.
| krasin wrote:
| > Yeah wouldn't want it to go the way of Google Toolbar, that
| thing would've definitely been relevant today.
|
| Hm... I briefly was a part of the Google Toolbar team back in
| 2008. How would it be relevant today? All of the features
| that I remember, are now a part of the browser itself
| (whether it's Firefox, Safari, Edge or Chrome/Chromium).
|
| That said, the eSignature for Google Docs feature would
| definitely benefit from some strong (preferably, legal &
| irrevocable) commitment to keep it alive for 40+ years or
| more. Otherwise, I fail to see how it's useful.
| duringmath wrote:
| Exactly. I was pointing out that not every app/service has
| to be preserved and supported forever.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Anyway, just thought that whipping out "Google kills
| products" meme for a mere feature was a bit much.
|
| I know I'm beating a dead horse^W^W^W _dead Google
| products_ but, they really do kill a lot of popular
| products
|
| https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| That being said, if they add eSig for Google Docs I
| agree; I don't see why nor how they'd kill that
| individual feature unless they kill Docs all-together.
| Which, hopefully, they won't do for many years yet.
| duringmath wrote:
| Some popular products,sure.
|
| Much of the listed "casualties" were throwaway wrapper
| apps that have perfectly fine webapp replacements, apps
| for platforms that no longer exist, duplicates, and stand
| alone apps that are now features of bigger apps etc.
| delecti wrote:
| A great many of their killed products ended up being
| merged/evolved into other ones (Duo into Meet). A great
| many more weren't even "killed"; over the past 20 years
| their in-gmail chat program has evolved from Talk to
| Hangouts, and then from Hangouts to Chat. It has kept the
| same chat history throughout the past 20 years, but
| "killed by google" lists Talk and Hangouts as two killed
| products.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| but the other part is even when they replace services the
| new one lacks the same features or ux that made the
| original special.
|
| inbox vs gmail play music vs youtube music
| delecti wrote:
| They certainly kill services, my point is the "Google
| Graveyard" is very overblown.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It has kept the same chat history throughout the past
| 20 years_
|
| So how come I can't access chats from before mid-2013?
| Not even by Google Takeout?
|
| (It so happens that some of the most important
| conversations in my life happened in 2012, so I'm to date
| super annoyed that, for no good reason, 2013 is some kind
| of cut-off date.)
| delecti wrote:
| You seem to be right. I'm pretty confident in my memory
| that the history persisted from Talk to Hangouts, but the
| Talk history may not have persisted again from Hangouts
| to Chat. That would line up with your data, as the Talk
| to Hangouts switch/rename happened in 2013.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Makes sense. For Google implementing this is probably regulatory
| mainly, not technical. Given how expensive alternatives are, this
| will be a boon for small contractual actions, though I doubt any
| huge enterprises will (immediately) switch.
|
| Major limitation for now though is:
|
| > Non-Gmail users: the ability to request an eSignature from non-
| Gmail users
|
| Hopefully it's addressed sooner (September/October) rather than
| later (November/December).
| theogravity wrote:
| Docusign stock doesn't seem to have taken a hit (yet):
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DOCU/
| xmly wrote:
| Bad news for DocuSign
| danielrhodes wrote:
| First this is a great idea. Finally there is some movement on
| making Google Docs better.
|
| I haven't used the feature, but from reading the blog post it is
| sad to see how poorly Google executes on products, even at the
| beta stage.
|
| Some context:
|
| I've built such a product before and eSigs are more simple than
| they seem as long as you do a few things. 1) You need to verify
| somebody's identity. Sending them an email with the request is a
| valid way of doing this. 2) You need to make the final signed
| document easily accessible (e.g. emailing all parties a copy of
| the signed document. 3) You need to not obscure what the person
| is signing (they need to be able to easily see the entire
| document if they wish) 4) You need to make it possible for all
| parties to verify the validity of a signature, which is done with
| an audit trail appended to the back of the document. 5) Some
| types of contracts are not valid to be signed with eSign. 6) The
| parties need to agree to do business electronically, but this is
| mostly up to them.
|
| You do not need to create fake wet signatures, cryptographically
| sign a document, or do encryption beyond what is necessary for
| normal compliance. Those are all UX or marketing features: they
| don't hurt, just that according to experts I have spoken to, they
| aren't a factor when going to court.
|
| And then we have what Google is offering:
|
| From the screenshots, I think it is only a fake wet signature.
| I'm not sure how valid that is.
|
| Apparently you cannot ask for an eSignature from non-Gmail users
| right now. But how are you supposed to know they are Gmail users?
| Can Google not send people a simple email with a link? This alone
| makes the feature almost worthless, and for something that seems
| so trivial.
|
| They also said they will only be adding an audit trail later this
| year. This is really sketchy because I believe it means you, nor
| anybody else can actually verify if it has been signed. Again,
| this is quite trivial: you store the audit trail in a database,
| and you append the log as pages onto the back of the PDF
| document.
| jsnell wrote:
| The article links to the help page for the feature:
| https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12315692. It seems
| likely that it'd be a lot better at answering your questions
| than looking at screenshots.
|
| > They also said they will only be adding an audit trail later
| this year. This is really sketchy because I believe it means
| you, nor anybody else can actually verify if it has been
| signed.
|
| From the help page it seems obvious that both the sender and
| signers are able to check whether the contract has been signed.
| "1. Open the respective PDF file in Drive or through the link
| in the email notification. 2. Click View details in the upper
| right corner of the PDF to open the right side panel and view
| eSignature details."
|
| Are you saying that the only possible valid implementation of
| an audit log is one appended to the contract pdf?
|
| > Can Google not send people a simple email with a link?
|
| Obviously they could. But equally obviously from your
| description, this is not a feature where sending one email with
| one link is sufficient. Based on the help page the final signed
| contract is "saved in your Drive", an operation that's not
| meaningful for a random email address that won't have an
| associated Google Drive. It seems likely that this is a feature
| that would be blocked on e.g. embedding the audit log in the
| pdf as per the discussion above.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > > Can Google not send people a simple email with a link?
|
| > Obviously they could. But equally obviously from your
| description, this is not a feature where sending one email
| with one link is sufficient. Based on the help page the final
| signed contract is "saved in your Drive", an operation that's
| not meaningful for a random email address that won't have an
| associated Google Drive. It seems likely that this is a
| feature that would be blocked on e.g. embedding the audit log
| in the pdf as per the discussion above.
|
| None of this really matters. I totally agree with the parent
| comment: having an e-signature product that is only usable by
| other Gmail users (and of course their is really no way to
| know if any particular email address is a Gmail user) makes
| it useless. What, so if I need some docs signed I'll get half
| of them signed with DocuSign and the other half with Docs? Of
| course not, I'll just use the product that works with anyone.
|
| Google used to have this same "can only share docs with other
| Drive users" feature, though it's improved somewhat. In
| general I think the enterprise doc sharing features are so
| bad in Drive that the only way I can wrap my head around it
| is to think that Google is scared of antitrust concerns if
| they too closely tried to emulate features from the likes of
| Dropbox, Box and others.
| nextos wrote:
| > Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs better.
|
| Recently, they have also improved the UI on Google Docs and
| Gmail making it much less laggy.
|
| On my old NUC computer, it makes a big difference.
|
| It seems that middle-management is becoming a bit less
| sclerotic.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Chrome improvements might be helping there too.
| nextos wrote:
| Maybe, but this is something I experienced on Firefox ESR.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| In Europe, including the UK and EEA, there is the eIDAS
| regulation, which outlines the requirement for eSignatures
| (amongst other things).
|
| In order for a signature to be recognised, it has to meet one
| of three trust levels
|
| 1. Electronic signature: this is basically something that puts
| a distinguishing mark on a file.
|
| 2. Advanced electronic signature: these use cryptography
| according to the specifications set out in the regulation, but
| anyone can make them. There are some requirements about how a
| person's identity is linked to their signature.
|
| 3. Qualified electronic signature: these are advanced
| electronic signatures which have been produced with a
| recognised trust service provider. Each country has a list of
| trust service providers, and each other country mutually
| recognises their trust lists.
|
| It is a bit more detailed than that, but in general, simple
| transactions can pretty much use any electronic signature (but
| this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The uk generally
| doesn't need anything fancier than docusign). In order for
| something to be completely watertight, it needs to be a
| qualifying electronic signature.
|
| In order for these features to be useful in Europe, google will
| need to meet the requirements of the regulations, and specify a
| trust level.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| what is the legal name for "monopoly company requires ID and
| location to view common document" ?
| angry_octet wrote:
| Capitalism.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This isn't the case for most agreements. Most agreements have
| no 'form' requirements - ie. you could write it on a napkin
| at a restaurant. As long as both parties believe they are
| making a legally binding agreement, then they have made a
| legally binding agreement.
|
| Use of technology doesn't change that. The only time a court
| would throw out a signature made online is if the online
| platform was somehow deceiving the parties - for example by
| showing different text to each side when they click 'i
| agree'.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| Ultimately where this matters is if one party contests the
| validity of a contract. I'm not sure how it works in the EU,
| but in the US that would mean a court would ultimately make
| that decision. To that end, they could decide that two people
| agreeing in an email thread is enough. It's all about your
| risk appetite.
|
| However, notice that Google has not said they are compliant
| with _any_ regulation.
| josefx wrote:
| As far as I understand it is mostly relevant when the
| electronic signature is already explicitly required
| beforehand. For example some government projects might
| require a valid electronic signature on offers among a
| million other things. In this case the electronic signature
| isn't important because it is a signature, but because it
| is a requirement and missing any requirement can get your
| offer and even already signed contracts thrown out if a
| competitor catches wind of it.
| pkaye wrote:
| Apparently in Canada a thumbs up emoji is valid as a
| signature for a contract.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/canada-
| judge-t...
| viscountchocula wrote:
| Not is: can be
| bbarnett wrote:
| Not a signature, just that he accepted the deal. And note
| that he had accepted deals the same way before.
|
| Accepting the terms, just as a handshake, on a deal, can
| bind one.
| angry_octet wrote:
| It's more than a handshake deal -- they are making their
| mark on a contract. This stems from the time before wide
| literacy and the ability to write, where people would
| make an X mark on the paper. Sometimes neither party
| could not read the actual contract, which was written by
| scribes. So the emoji is a mark.
|
| https://www.swanngalleries.com/news/autographs/2023/01/th
| e-s...
| ct520 wrote:
| As someone that consults in this space I more or less agree
| with you. Requirements are derived from interpretation of UETA
| and ESIGN Act. Itext has a good write up and great library to
| leverage when taking on project like this. Docusign has a good
| writeup on esign/UETA. ESRA is the goto body on the subject,
| and if you need legal opinion DLA Piper is the goto in the
| industry. This stuff is fairly simple once you know it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Finally there is some movement on making Google Docs
| better._
|
| I just find these comments to be so strange. You can look at
| all of the articles in that blog to see all of the feature
| improvements that have launched in Docs over the past 2 years.
| It's a lot of stuff.
|
| Maybe they're not features that matter to you, some are
| available only to paid customers as opposed to free tier, or
| maybe you just haven't bothered to even notice. But they're
| there.
|
| It's nothing about Google specifically -- I see people make
| these comments about _so much_ software, where they assume a
| project is or has been dead, just because they can 't even be
| bothered to look at the changelog. It baffles me.
|
| It's like, unless it's a radical total UX overhaul, people
| don't notice the work developers are putting in on actual
| features. And if it is a radical total UX overhaul, people
| complain about the change because they assume it's superficial
| rather than actual features.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You've both summed up everything wrong with design churn and
| also justified it. Truly a cursed comment.
| 30minAdayHN wrote:
| At this point I'm worried if Google will sunset their new
| features. Does anyone else have similar worries? At a personal
| level, I got bitten couple of times, or may be even more... (one
| was for the Inbox - or zero email gmail concept and second time
| with Google Domains)
| hintymad wrote:
| The top items in my wishlist are spreadsheet-like formula
| anywhere in a gdoc, spreadsheet-like tables, and support of Latex
| or MathJax. That is, keep up with Quip.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| RIP Dropbox
| wanderingmind wrote:
| The main thing about eSignature is the willingness and ability to
| go to court to defend your tool and process. For the org that
| can't be be bothered to have a barebone customer service, I'm not
| sure how this will workout.
| tadfisher wrote:
| It's not like DocuSign does any sort of identity verification.
| I signed up for a free account and they validated my email
| address, that's it. That would be the only identifier
| associated with my signature, so Google actually has more
| information than them.
| amf12 wrote:
| There is customer service available to paid workspace accounts.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Everything which takes away from DocuSign is a win!
| notfried wrote:
| 14 months in testing, followed by a beta, is really moving too
| slow.
| summerlight wrote:
| This is normal for Google, especially when some legal matters
| are involved.
| [deleted]
| danpalmer wrote:
| The alternative is launching too soon, getting it wrong, and
| being accused of killing everything.
| rvnx wrote:
| 14 months in testing, 0 support of eIDAS, the main electronic
| signature regulation and platform in Europe.
| btown wrote:
| Given that there are entire research papers titled things
| like "Analysing the impact of the GDPR on eIDAS" I'm not
| surprised that they launched without support...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not when it's a legal feature designed for enterprises.
|
| A partner company willing to test it is going to take 3 months
| to review and choose to adopt it, another 3 months trying to
| convert a few internal flows, and another 6 months to observe
| how it changes processes and whether it's an improvement or
| not.
|
| The point here is to get it right, not to get it quick.
| Enterprise software is the literal opposite of "move fast and
| break things".
| candiddevmike wrote:
| This is enough for me to upgrade from Workspace Starter to
| Standard. DocuSign is extremely expensive for what you get.
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| This isn't a DocuSign killer yet and won't be for a while until
| Google get its enterprise story right. DocuSign is deeply
| integrated with third party workflows in large organizations.
| That's where the big bucks are and you can build a sticky
| business.
| [deleted]
| drewda wrote:
| Yeah, I've been surprised to learn how DocuSign is used by some
| large corporations and government agencies. It's the system
| that manages all sorts of forms and workflows within the orgs,
| not just contracts going outside the org.
| krona wrote:
| Third party workflows like... Google Docs?
| aodin wrote:
| Like Salesforce
| tootie wrote:
| DocuSign shmocusign. Digital signatures is the most bizarrely
| anachronistic technology on the Internet. Even credit card
| vendors gave up on signatures.
| danpalmer wrote:
| On the one hand this is true, however there's another side to
| this that makes it quite compelling.
|
| IT sign-off and buying new IT services is hard in _many_ large
| businesses. This means that it 's almost always worth using a
| built-in feature of software you already have, than going for
| external software. Add to this the fact that companies almost
| never have one company account, each team re-buys the same
| software because services are hard, and the fact that most
| companies already use DocuSign matters a bit less.
|
| Much of Slack's growth has been built on this[^1]. You can sign
| up for a free account and start inviting your immediate team.
| Paying for a small team is well under the typical auto-approved
| expenses limit, and when you've sunk your cost, got a bunch of
| people onboard, and proved the value, only then do you go to IT
| to get it rolled out across the business.
|
| Individuals using this sort of thing, termed "shadow IT", is a
| good way to grow usage. This feature of docs seems well
| positioned to grow that way even if DocuSign is available.
|
| [^1]: I worked on a team that was required by the business to
| use MS Teams. While we waited for the Teams workspace to be
| provisioned and all the authentication crap to be sorted out we
| signed up for Slack, invited everyone, and got work done for
| the 6 months it took to get a working Teams workspace.
| themagician wrote:
| [flagged]
| akulbe wrote:
| [flagged]
| xnx wrote:
| Happy to see more useful features added to tools I already use.
| Along with improvements to Google Forms, I expect a lot of light
| DocuSign and JotForm users will cancel their subscriptions.
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