DocuSign PowerForm Recipient Settings Instructions

A knowledge base article about DocuSign PowerForm Recipient Settings Instructions provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal

Instructions for DocuSign Department Account Administrators regarding PowerForm Recipients settings

Situation

DocuSign technical architecture is designed so that any first recipient/signer of a PowerForm will not see the envelope in their account membership. This is because PowerForms create what DocuSign calls “Captive Recipients” for the first recipients in the PowerForm workflow. Those recipients have their own IDs and that is why the envelopes will not show in the active account the signer may already have. These recipients are considered “embedded signers”.

This architecture can create a problem for those recipients if the sender account settings are not appropriate - not only will recipients be unable to see the envelope in their account, but they might not receive a Completed notification with the completed form. Thus it appears to them that the envelopes have totally disappeared.

Solution

There are two steps that should be taken to prevent this problem for the first recipients.

  1. Uncheck the Signing Setting "Suppress emails to embedded signers" to allow for emails to be sent to signers who are set as embedded. Then click Save. 
  2. Have the PowerForm creators check "Require email validation" on the associated PowerForm.  See more about PowerForm creation and settings here. They will receive the 'Completed' notification.

Additionally, if senders want to send an email notification to a recipient who's currently set to an embedded signer type, senders can remove that recipient completely from the envelope when using the Correct Envelopes function and add them as a remote signer (a recipient with a name and email address with "Needs to sign" as their role type) by clicking "Add recipient" during the Correct process.

Please see these articles for more information.

Notifications (see the Embedded/Captive Signing section): https://support.docusign.com/en/articles/Why-aren-t-my-signers-receiving-DocuSign-Notification-emails

Technical Definition of Captive Recipients: https://developers.docusign.com/docs/esign-soap-api/esign101/embedding/captive-recipients/