We are working with IT to find an easier way for coordinators to manage and track pending forms. Please stay tuned. We appreciate your patience and your good work in using DocuSign.
1. What happens when you start a form and then click “Finish later”?
- This will cause you to exit the process, saving any information entered.
- You will receive an email with a link to re-access the form. The form is not saved in a draft queue and can only be accessed by clicking on the link provided in the original email notification.
- Please note that the email notice looks the same as any other email notice for a completed form.
- You will need to keep track of the email and the link provided in it to access the form again to complete it
2. Link Expiration Notices: The link to the DocuSign form that is provided in the email notification message expires quickly - after 5 clicks or 48 hours. (This is for security purposes) However, the first time you or your faculty member click on an expired link it will auto send a new email notification and present a page advising that the link has expired and that a new notification has been sent.
Subsequent attempts to access an expired link will lead to a page where you can request "Send new link." When clicked, this will send a new notification with a fresh link to the email address entered by the coordinator. Alternatively, the user can sign into DocuSign via Single Sign-On and view the document there without needing to request a new link (this is only possible if the user logs in using his/her active directory @ucsd email address).
3. Tracking forms via email: In order to track your pending forms, we recommend keeping track of the original email notice you received when you initiated the form. When you click on the link in the email it will take you to a "live" version of the form. As signatures are added, the form that you see will update.
4. Clarification on entering email addresses:
- When inputting faculty email addresses, please use the university/institutional email address for verification purposes. For UC San Diego faculty it does not need to be the active directory address as they should not need to access a DocuSign account. They only need to link to the form, sign it, and exit.
- However, an active directory email address is needed if the signer wants to log into his/her UC San Diego DocuSign account. See below (and see #6),
- This will be important for department/program chairs/directors who are required to sign multiple forms. Instead of waiting for each individual link provided in the email notifications, they may prefer to log into their account and see a list of all pending forms (see #6).
- For coordinators it is important to use the active directory email address since coordinators do need to log into their DocuSign account in order to track forms that have been created. We realize there are issues with this functionality and we are working on it.
5. Clarification on Final Report Form vs Dissertation/Thesis Signature page
- Students who complete a dissertation or thesis also need to send a DocuSign form called "Dissertation/Thesis Signature Page." This should not be confused with the Doctoral or Master's Final Report Forms. Please let your faculty know that they can expect to receive these 2 forms for each committee they are on.
- The subject line for the signature page is: "Dissertation/Thesis Signature Page - Student Name"
- The subject line for the final report forms are: "Doctoral Final Report - Student Name" and "Master's (MA/MS/MFA) Final Report - Plan I/III Thesis - Student Name"
6. Direct access to DocuSign for required faculty signatures
- Once a DocuSign form has been sent by the coordinator, faculty may access it directly by logging in using their active directory credentials at docusign.ucsd.edu (this will only work if the email address used in the form is the AD address - see #4 above).
- The faculty will see a list of pending documents when they click on "Action Required" as shown below
Additional resources on DocuSign can be found at the links below.
Regarding the expiration of links: https://support.docusign.com/en/articles/Do-envelope-notification-emails-expire
The quick expiration of the links is a security measure. To extend the expiration we would need to implement user authentication measures which would require faculty to authenticate themselves via phone, SMS, or SSO login. We did not want to implement this additional barrier to accessing the forms. https://support.docusign.com/en/guides/ndse-user-guide-recipient-authentication