Docusign objects

Envelopes

An envelope is an overall container for a Docusign transaction. An envelope object contains:

• One or more documents that will be sent for electronic signature
• Information about the sender
• Information about the recipients, including authentication requirements and the areas where they need to provide input
• The content of the email notification that recipients receive
• Status information that tracks delivery and signature progress

Recipients

A recipient is a person who receives a Docusign envelope. Each envelope object must contain at least one recipient. Each recipient has a recipient type that defines their role in the signing process. For example, a recipient might be a signer, witness, or carbon copy recipient. You associate each recipient with one or more tabs, or places in a document where they may provide input.

Tabs

A tab is a place in a document where a recipient may provide input, such as a signature, or where a calculated value (such as a formula) is displayed. Tabs are also referred to as tags or fields. After all envelope recipients complete all of their tabs on all of the documents, the signing process is complete.

There are several types of tabs, each of which is designed for a specific kind of input. For example, a Sign Here tab requires a signature, while a Text tab prompts the user to enter text. For more information, see tab types.

Documents

A document contains the content for a recipient to review or sign. Docusign supports documents in a variety of file formats, including PDF, Word, and HTML. A document object also contains metadata such as the file extension, file name, and document ID.

Templates

A template is an object that stores envelope information, enabling you to use it as a blueprint to create any number of envelopes with that data. Templates streamline the sending process when you frequently send the same or similar documents, or send different documents to the same group of people.

Composite templates

You can apply multiple templates (or combine templates with forms or other documents) to a single envelope by using a composite template.

Account

An account is a container created for a Docusign customer (either a company or an individual) that includes their envelopes, user memberships, templates, app integration settings, and other customer data. An account provides access to Docusign services based on a subscription plan and its associated features. An organization may have one or more accounts.

eSignature administrator

An eSignature (account) administrator manages a single customer account. eSignature administrators can change settings within an account, manage user memberships and access controls, and perform other administrative tasks.

Web form configurations

Each Web Form has one web form configuration that defines the form’s sequence of pages, text and fields on the pages, validation, and conditional logic. You create web form configurations in the Web Forms builder.

Web form instances

After you’ve created a web form configuration and activated it, you can create web form instances from that configuration via Web Forms API requests. Web form instances are displayed in a browser to users, who populate the fields and submit the form instances. Each instance has a unique, secure URL.

The fields in a web form instance can be prefilled with values supplied in the API request that creates the instance. After a user has submitted a form instance, your application can retrieve the submitted field values, whether prefilled or user-populated.

Elastic template

The Click API is built around a core object called an elastic template. An elastic template is an iframe that displays your terms to your customers for them to review and accept. You can display an elastic template as a modal (a window positioned over your page), or inline as part of your page.

Elastic template versions

Docusign Click automatically versions your elastic templates. The first elastic template you create becomes version 1 (V1). Updating an elastic template automatically creates a new version (V2, and so on). You can configure your elastic template settings to prompt users to agree to the updated terms the next time they log in. The version number for each elastic template displays in the Version column on your dashboard in the UI.

Client ID

When you use a elastic template, you specify a clientUserId that uniquely identifies the user. This value can be any identifier that your own system uses to track individual users. Examples include employee IDs, email addresses, and surrogate key values. Click uses this identifier in combination with other information to determine whether a user has already accepted the elastic template agreement, and also to report on user responses.

Organization

An organization contains accounts, domains, and the users within those accounts and domains. An organization administrator can perform operations to add, update, or close any users within any of the organization’s accounts or reserved domains from one place, rather than performing these operations for each account individually.

• You can manage account settings, domain settings, and users within accounts through the organization to which they belong.
• Organizations may reserve domains.
• Organizations may be linked with one or more accounts.

Organization administrator

An Organization administrator manages Docusign settings for their organization, including one or more accounts, domains, and any users within those accounts and domains.

Account

Accounts contain users and envelopes, and have specific settings, templates, brands, billing, and usage. An organization can export settings for any of its accounts, enabling easy auditing, troubleshooting, and sharing setting changes to any other account in the organization.

• Accounts are linked to an organization.
• You can perform operations to add/update/close account users, and change account settings within your organization.
• An account can only have one organization.

Domain

Domains are organization-specific reserved internet domains, such as @exampledomain.com. You can define policy settings for users of each reserved domain within your organization, export lists of domain users for audit purposes, and manage domain users.

• Domains may be claimed by an organization.
• When a domain is claimed by an organization, all users within that domain are added to the organization, even if they have trial or free accounts.
• You can set domain controls for all users of the domain.
• You can export information about your organization’s users that are associated with your reserved domains.

User

Users represent individual Docusign users in your organization. Users may be present in one or more accounts and may be associated with a reserved domain.

• Users must be members of at least one account within an organization.
• Users may be part of a domain reserved to the organization.
• If a user is a member of multiple accounts, their information is present in each account.
• If a user is part of a reserved domain then they are a user within the organization.
• You can query, add, update, or close users through their associated account or domain.

Rooms

A room is a secure workspace in the Docusign Agreement Cloud that is associated with a specific transaction. Rooms enable you to streamline complex agreements that include multiple parties, documents, and stages.

Users

Users are individuals who are invited to your company, or to a room. There are two types of users:

• Company users: Your organization’s internal staff. Company users can be added to specific regions and offices.
• Room users: Users who have been invited to a specific room, as well as the creator of the room. They can either be external or internal users. For example, you might invite an external real estate agent or buyer to a room.

Roles

A role defines a set of permissions for a user within a room. You can define custom roles for users that are either internal or external to your company, or use any of the preconfigured rules that come with Docusign Rooms.

Room templates

A room template holds room information and tasks for room participants. By specifying a template when you create a room, you can automatically import this data. You create room templates in the UI.

Documents

A document contains the content for a recipient to review or sign. Users can add documents to a room to share with others, if they have the appropriate permissions.

Forms

The Docusign forms feature enables you to add standard association forms to a room. Docusign Rooms provides access to forms from industry associations, such as the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors, via integrated form libraries. These libraries enable you to add these forms to your rooms directly by using the Rooms API.

Room task lists

A room task list holds a checklist of steps for a common transaction type. By specifying a task list when you create a room, you standardize the tasks that must be completed for the transaction. The assignees must check the items off the list before a room can be closed.

Events

Docusign Monitor tracks account activity across your organization. This activity is made up of events resulting from the actions taken by users, administrators, and APIs connected to your organization.

Alerts

When specific sets of events occur in your organization (typically events that indicate possible suspicious activity), Docusign Monitor can trigger an alert. When an alert is triggered, the activity that caused the alert is recorded in Monitor or your SIEM system, and the appropriate administrator or security operations team member is automatically notified.

ID Verification (IDV)

ID verification is a recipient authentication technology that verifies the identity of recipients based on government photo IDs (such as a driver’s license or passport) and electronic IDs. IDV verifies authenticity via visible security features, watermarks, and machine-readable barcodes. By default, no personal data is stored with IDV. The only data that is stored is the status of the ID verification, transaction number, and the name of the third-party ID verifier.

Events

A category of ID Evidence API call that handles logging state changes to an envelope’s recipient during the ID verification process. Selected text-based data, such as name, date of birth, and more are stored.

Media

A category of ID Evidence API call that retrieves configured ID verification image data that was captured for a corresponding event. For example, media is stored for an event that is generated as a result of a recipient’s passport verification.

Notary pool

Each organization account that uses Notary API has a list of notaries that can be easily included to witness signing, called a notary pool. Your organization’s notary pool contains a set of users who can serve as a notary in a remote notary session initiated by your organization.

Jurisdiction

The Notary API tracks the jurisdiction state in which each notary session is completed. This enables you to record which requirements and processes were used for notarization. The API also supports (but does not enforce) jurisdictional requirements for these states, such as using digital signatures or varying notarial seals.

Journaling

Notaries are typically required to maintain a record of their official actions. The Notary API enables notaries to create journal entries for recording the actions of a notary session, which are saved and archived for your organization.

Notary recipients

Notaries are a specialized type of recipient that is new with the Notary API. To include a notary as a recipient for a document, include them just like you would any other recipient, but in a collection of type notaries (rather than signers or carbonCopies).

A notary, together with 1–4 signers, is called a notary group. Currently, only a single notary group may be used for an envelope.

Workflows

A workflow is an object that represents your end-to-end agreement workflow, including all pre- and post-signing Steps. You can add and order steps as necessary for your workflow and add conditional logic to create branches within that workflow.

Participants

A participant is a person or entity involved in your agreement process. Participants will typically correspond to roles in the eSignature template you use for your signing step.

Variables

A workflow variable holds a piece of data used by the Workflows Steps.

Steps

Steps are the individual tasks executed in Workflows. Steps invoke functionality from Docusign modules such as eSignature and web forms or Extensions to call third-party platforms that an admin has authorized for your account, such as archiving a file to a cloud storage site or verifying bank account data.

Branching rules

A branching rule is a step that branches your workflow into one of two different paths, depending on the result of an if/else step. You can add a branching rule before or after any app step (such as identity verification or a web form), and then define the next actions to take if the branching rule is met or not.

Agreement

An agreement is a commitment between two or more parties that creates an obligation to perform (or not perform) a particular duty. Typically, agreements will contain a lot of other data, such as documents that describe the agreement being struck, parties who are involved in the agreement, dates defining the boundaries of the agreement, and many more.

Document

Documents are artifacts associated with agreements that typically define the terms of the agreement to be made.

Parties

A party is a person, entity, or group of entities who take part in an agreement. Typically, this means agreeing with other parties to do something together, although it can include other stakeholders.

AI Insights

Whenever you upload documents in Docusign Agreement Manager or complete a Docusign envelope, those documents are added to your account’s Agreement Manager repository. Agreement Manager then uses AI to analyze your documents and apply sets of Insights to them, automatically populating metadata about the agreement based on the contents of the documents.

Category and type

An agreement’s category object identifies the general purpose of the agreement, each of which is associated with a set of agreement types. For example, an agreement might have a category of Business services and a type of order form or a category of human resources and a type of offer letter.

Provisions

An agreement’s provisions object contains a list of properties that define the agreement parameters.

Connected fields

A connected field is a field whose type is mapped to a corresponding object type in your system of record. The values for this type can be verified by data verification or connected fields extensions defined in your account. You can verify the inputs to your connected fields by creating a connected fields extension app and defining the verification logic on your system of record (for custom data models) or using a data verification extension app (for supported standard data models).

Connected fields extension app

A connected fields extension app is required to verify custom field values. See Connected fields for details.

Custom data verification

Custom data verification is a feature, provided by the Connected Fields API, that enables you to implement verification logic for custom fields, rather than only for fields that map directly to data verification extensions, such as Bank account verification.

Data verification extension app

A data verification extension app is required to verify supported generic field values. See Supported extensions for details and a list of supported types.

Workspaces

A Docusign Workspace is a digital hub where you can bring the people, agreements, and information together that you need to execute a complex flow.

Envelopes

An envelope is a container for a Docusign agreement. An envelope object contains:

• One or more documents that will be sent for electronic signature
• Information about the sender
• Information about the recipients, including authentication requirements and the areas where they need to provide input
• The content of the email notification that recipients receive
• Status information that tracks delivery and signature progress

Envelopes are used to secure agreements in a workspace just as they are used generally through the eSignature API.

Users

Users are individuals who are invited to collaborate together in a workspace for an agreement. Users must be assigned a role as either a manage or participate user.

Roles and permission levels

A role defines a set of permissions that are applied to users in a workspace.

Documents

A document contains the content for a recipient to review or sign. Docusign supports documents in a variety of file formats, including PDF, Word, and HTML. A document object also contains metadata such as the file extension, file name, and document ID.