{
  1. Introduction
  2. Service description
  3. Getting started
  4. Authentication
  5. Upload document
  6. Create dossier
  7. Send invites
  8. Dossier status
  9. Dossier download
  10. Error handling
  11. Swagger API documentation

Introduction

CM Sign offers the ability to have end users sign PDF documents online. You can use the CM webapplication or, if you want an integration with your own systems, request access to our API.

Before starting integration of CM Sign into your services, we advise you to read our implementation guide. This guide can be used for a step-by-step implementation of CM Sign.

Download: implementation guide (PDF)

For a full API specification with parameter formats, a Swagger specification is available.

If you need technical assistance, please contact [email protected]

Service description

Dossiers

A dossier is a collection of information related to the signing process of a document. Dossiers consist of:

  • Documents (files): the PDF documents to be signed
  • Invitees: the persons who have to sign or review the dossier
  • Owners (optional): the contact person, who will be informed about status updates of the dossier. If set, the owner's name will be used in communication to the invitees, otherwise the organisation name is used instead.

A dossier automatically expires after 30 days by default, this can be customised when creating the dossier (up to 90 days).

Invitees

Invitees are persons asked to sign a specific dossier. An invitee has:

  • Fields: locations within a PDF document for information to be added
  • Name: the name that will be used in communication to address the invitee
  • Email (optional): the email address that will be used to notify the invitee about this dossier and send the signed document
  • Reference (optional): allows the invitee it to be linked to an ID known within your organisation

Fields

Fields are locations within a PDF document where information will be added. Fields belong to a specific file and invitee and have parameters to configure its position(s) in the document.

The following field types are supported:

  • signature: the invitee is asked for a signature
  • signatureDate: the date the invitee signed the document, automatically determined
  • initials: the invitee is asked for its initials. Initials can be specified for a page range and the invitee has to confirm its initials each page.
  • text: a text field that can be filled in by the invitee
  • textarea: a multi-line text field that can be filled in by the invitee
  • label: a text field that contains a predefined text which cannot be modified
  • checkbox: a box which can be checked by the user
  • radio: a group of radio buttons, of which one option must be selected
  • stamp: the invitee is asked for its stamp/seal (hanko), mostly used in Asia

Invites

An invite is a unique URL for each invitee to view the dossier. CM Sign can send these invites to the invitees or you can distribute the URL yourself, for example by redirecting or sending customised emails yourself.

An invite can have a custom expiration time, specified during creation. Creating multiple invites for an invitee is possible and this might be required if an invite expires before the invitee signed the document.

The following message channels are supported:

  • email: the invite is send to the email address of the invitee
  • sms: the invite is send to the phone number of the invitee (this channel is only available when configured).

Environments

CM Sign provides two environments:

  • Sandbox: https://api.sandbox.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/
  • Production: https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/

The sandbox environment is ideally suited to do your initial experimentation with. Unlike the production environment, it doesn't add a cryptographic signature to the document and you will not be billed for using the sandbox environment.

Please note that the credentials for sandbox and production environment are different.

Getting started

The steps for using the service are roughly:

  1. Upload one or more PDF document(s) that needs to be signed
  2. Create a dossier which references this document. A dossier includes information about the end users who need to sign the document, as well as the location within the PDF document(s) where they need to place their signature and initials.
  3. Create an invite for each invitee to sign/review the document
  4. The end user is directed to the invite URL, for example per email
  5. The end user is presented a web interface where he can read and sign/review the document
  6. The dossier owner is notified of the completion of the dossier
  7. The dossier owner downloads the signed document and audit report

Authentication

Before you can start using the API, you need API credentials. These consist of a Key and a Key ID and can be obtained by registering for CM Sign. This will grant you access to the sandbox environment.

The credentials provided by CM are confidential and should be kept secret.

In order to authenticate you need to use your credentials to generate a JWT Bearer token. The JWT token has to be generated using the HS256 algorithm and your credentials. This JWT has to contain the following attributes: iat, nbf, exp in the payload, as well as the attribute kid in the header of the JWT. This kid attribute needs to contain the Key ID of your credentials.

The generated token needs to be passed via the HTTP Authorization header like:

Authorization: Bearer GENERATED_TOKEN_HERE

There are many libraries available for different programming languages that can help you to generate a JWT. See the Libraries tab on https://jwt.io

Example

Assuming we want to create a token that is valid for 60 seconds and we have received the following credentials:

Key ID: 3b438437-04a4-40bb-8389-54bb02766fba Secret: AC4Etykn7jusGR5FwLDAtILtQbiQbTMKedP31szXg4WlSbjGEXyNMZ

We need to create a JWT with the following properties:

JWT header:

{
  "alg": "HS256",
  "typ": "JWT",
  "kid": "3b438437-04a4-40bb-8389-54bb02766fba"
}

JWT payload:

{
  "iat": 1546300800,
  "nbf": 1546300800,
  "exp": 1546300860
}

iat: the time at which the token is generated nbf: the time after which the token is valid exp: the time after which the token will expire

Make sure these are UNIX timestamps in seconds

This results in the following token:

eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImtpZCI6IjNiNDM4NDM3LTA0YTQtNDBiYi04Mzg5LTU0YmIwMjc2NmZiYSJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE1NDYzMDA4MDAsIm5iZiI6MTU0NjMwMDgwMCwiZXhwIjoxNTQ2MzAwODYwfQ.bwqCUHS1d5d8guAPHDsdd9-a8oXxH1q45O0tDP1asTo

Add this token to the Authorization header in the API request.

Authorization: Bearer GENERATED_TOKEN_HERE

The https://jwt.io website provides a way to inspect or validate a token.

Upload a document

Every dossier is started with at least one file, the first step is to upload your PDF.

Request

POST https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/upload

Request headers

Content-Type: multipart/form-data
Authorization: Bearer GENERATED_TOKEN_HERE

Example

curl -X POST \
  https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/upload \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCIsImtpZCI6IjNiNDM4NDM3LTA0YTQtNDBiYi04Mzg5LTU0YmIwMjc2NmZiYSJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE1NDYzMDA4MDAsIm5iZiI6MTU0NjMwMDgwMCwiZXhwIjoxNTQ2MzAwODYwfQ.bwqCUHS1d5d8guAPHDsdd9-a8oXxH1q45O0tDP1asTo' \
  -H 'content-type: multipart/form-data' \
  -F '[email protected]/tmp/Document.pdf'

This is a multipart/form-data request where the file parameter is the key for the file to be uploaded.

Response

{
    "id": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
    "name": "Document",
    "hash": "e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855",
    "contentType": "application/pdf",
    "derivativeOf": null,
    "uploadDateTime": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

The result of this request is a JSON response containing a description of the file as registered within CM Sign. The most important attribute in this response is the id. This id is the unique identifier for this file to be passed along when creating the actual dossier.

Create a dossier

A dossier is the primary container for all information regarding the documents to be signed. It contains the file(s) to be signed, the invitees who will be invited to view and sign or review the document.

Owners

Owners receive status updates about the dossier, for example when a dossier has been signed by one of the invitees, and receive the audit report when the dossier has been completed. Owners are optional and multiple owners can be specified.

Invitees

To define a sign order, set the position attribute on an invitee. For example, if there are two invitees, set position 1 for the first invitee and position 2 for the second invitee. It is possible to set multiple invitees on the same position.

Make sure the positions are consecutive and there is no gap between them.

Sometimes you want a dossier to be reviewed and approved (without signing it) by someone before the you can sign the document. You can set readOnly to true on invitee that needs to review the document.

Fields

For each field, you have to pass the id of the file on which the field will be placed. With the unit point, the locations of fields are determined using 72 DPI. The coordinates are from top-left to bottom-right.

Next to supplying locations, the location can also be automatically determined based on a tag. The tag acts as a placeholder; the range and location of the field will be determined based on the location(s) of the tag in the document. In case of initials, add the tag to every page the field should be added to. The tag should be hidden, for example by making it white.

Fields and field locations can also be determined by using the web interface of Sign. To use this feature set prepare: true in the POST request to /dossiers. The response will contain the prepareUrl field. This url is valid for 60 minutes. Open this url in the browser, add fields to the invitees and submit the page. After the page is submitted the user is shown a success page or you can redirect to your own page by providing prepareReturnUrl to the dossier request. If you use webhooks then you can also enable the dossier.prepared event to be sent.

Reminders

To increase conversion, it's recommended to use automatic reminders. Automatic reminders can be enabled by specifying the reminderIn field. Its value is the time in seconds after the invite was sent to an invitee, after which the reminder will be sent. Reminders only work if the invite emails or SMS were sent by CM Sign.

Request

POST https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers

Request headers

Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer GENERATED_TOKEN_HERE

Request body

Example with field points, tags
{
    "name": "Purchase contract",
    "files": [
        {
            "id": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82"
        }
    ],
    "reminderIn": 604800,
    "invitees": [
        {
            "name": "Invitee",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "position": 1,
            "locale": "nl-NL",
            "fields": [
                {
                    "type": "signature",
                    "file": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
                    "locations": [
                        {
                            "range": "1",
                            "unit": "point",
                            "x": 500,
                            "y": 750,
                            "width": 100,
                            "height": 50
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "type": "initials",
                    "file": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
                    "tag": "{init1}"
                },
                {
                    "type": "initials",
                    "file": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
                    "tag": "{optionalTag}",
                    "tagRequired": false
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "owners": [
        {
            "name": "Owner",
            "email": "[email protected]"
        },
        {
            "name": "Owner Copy",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "cc": true
        }
    ]
}
Response
{
    "id": "302935b2-8a22-4e25-bffb-fccda8963bd4",
    "name": "Purchase contract",
    "state": "draft",
    "locale": "en-US",
    "completed": false,
    "reminderIn": 604800,
    "owners": [
        {
            "id": "0474a0f6-0901-4ca1-810d-01ea8c830c97",
            "name": "Owner",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "cc": false
        },
        {
            "id": "3a4f3799-4480-4d07-945a-e4e96fd51e4e",
            "name": "Owner Copy",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "cc": true
        }
    ],
    "files": [
        {
            "id": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
            "name": "Document",
            "hash": "a497a1df892b6d2f205460b730b09c3a00c366061fa8975a388ce9672a39e833",
            "contentType": "application/pdf",
            "derivativeOf": null,
            "uploadDateTime": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "invitees": [
        {
            "id": "f6d1afd5-aa6a-4c5e-8348-bf5a5310b5d2",
            "name": "Invitee",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "phoneNumber": null,
            "authenticationMethods": [],
            "identificationMethods": [],
            "reference": null,
            "readOnly": false,
            "state": null,
            "stateChanged": null,
            "position": null,
            "locale": "nl-NL",
            "fields": [
                {
                    "id": "a4542a27-5f93-483e-910d-a520770c9444",
                    "type": "signature",
                    "tag": null,
                    "file": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
                    "invitee": "f6d1afd5-aa6a-4c5e-8348-bf5a5310b5d2",
                    "locations": [
                        {
                            "range": "1",
                            "unit": "point",
                            "x": 500,
                            "y": 750,
                            "width": 100,
                            "height": 50
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "id": "7ead6deb-962a-475c-8a9f-c764b7e55357",
                    "type": "initials",
                    "tag": "{init1}",
                    "file": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
                    "invitee": "f6d1afd5-aa6a-4c5e-8348-bf5a5310b5d2",
                    "locations": [
                        {
                            "range": "1-3",
                            "unit": "point",
                            "x": 341.2251,
                            "y": 775.2541,
                            "width": 30.0294,
                            "height": 30.0294
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "expiresIn": 2592000,
    "expiresAt": "2021-01-31T00:00:00+00:00",
    "createdAt": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Request body

Field placement via web interface
{
    "name": "Purchase contract",
    "files": [
        {
            "id": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82"
        }
    ],
    "invitees": [
        {
            "name": "Invitee",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "position": 1,
            "locale": "nl-NL"
        }
    ],
    "reminderIn": 604800,
    "prepare": true,
    "prepareReturnUrl": "https://example.com"
}
Response
{
    "id": "abb39845-421b-479a-a384-2e07580c0f0b",
    "name": "Purchase contract",
    "state": "draft",
    "locale": "en-US",
    "completed": false,
    "owners": [],
    "files": [
        {
            "id": "3fa4ddab-56a4-48bb-9072-8a61b422ea82",
            "name": "Document",
            "hash": "a497a1df892b6d2f205460b730b09c3a00c366061fa8975a388ce9672a39e833",
            "contentType": "application/pdf",
            "derivativeOf": null,
            "uploadDateTime": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "invitees": [
        {
            "id": "51b45bd2-5a1a-4375-9799-a19c58fa9924",
            "name": "Invitee",
            "email": "[email protected]",
            "phoneNumber": null,
            "authenticationMethods": [],
            "identificationMethods": [],
            "reference": null,
            "readOnly": false,
            "state": null,
            "stateComment": null,
            "stateChanged": null,
            "position": 1,
            "locale": "nl-NL",
            "redirectUrl": null,
            "fields": []
        }
    ],
    "reminderIn": 604800,
    "prepareUrl": "https://www.cm.com/app/sign/prepare/abb39845-421b-479a-a384-2e07580c0f0b?t=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1Qi...",
    "expiresIn": 2592000,
    "expiresAt": "2021-01-31T00:00:00+00:00",
    "createdAt": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Send invites

Once you have a complete dossier, you will have to send out a link to the invitees who will have to sign these documents. CM Sign can send emails automatically if you set email to true. If you don't set the email option, the link can be retrieved from the response of the request. In this case you have to redirect the user to the inviteUri yourself. Invites have a configurable expiration time in seconds, the default is 30 days.

Please note if you place fields using the web interface this step first needs to complete before you can send an invite.

Request

POST https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers/{dossierId}/invites

Request headers

Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer GENERATED_TOKEN_HERE

Request body

[
  {
    "inviteeId": "80692813-3493-40e9-86c3-d3b6f7378929",
    "channel": "email",
    "expiresIn": 2592000
  }
]

Request body (with custom message)

[
  {
    "inviteeId": "80692813-3493-40e9-86c3-d3b6f7378929",
    "channel": "email",
    "emailConfig": {
        "message": "Custom message here"
    },
    "expiresIn": 2592000
  }
]

Response

[
    {
        "id": "22b33b45-bde6-45f4-a45a-ec1fa53ffffa",
        "inviteeId": "80692813-3493-40e9-86c3-d3b6f7378929",
        "inviteUri": null,
        "readOnly": false,
        "identificationMethod": null,
        "channel": "email",
        "reminder": false,
        "emailSentAt": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00",
        "expiresIn": 2592000,
        "expiresAt": "2021-01-31T00:00:00+00:00",
        "createdAt": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
    }
]

Retrieve status callback

A webhook URL can be configured for your Key ID so you get notified about status updates for the dossier.

Webhooks can be configured via the API. Check the Swagger documentation for more details.

POST https://yourwebserver

Request headers

Content-Type: application/json

Request

{
    "id": "b041a287-bc92-4469-801e-ae1a39c08f6e",
    "type": "dossier.state.updated",
    "dossier": {
        "id": "b659c273-954e-43cf-893a-0f74a7f87153",
        "state": "completed"
    },
    "created": "2021-01-01T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Response

The status code should be in the 2xx range (between 200 and 300), the response body doesn't matter as it's ignored. In case of an unsuccessful status code (4xx, 5xx), the webhook will be retried.

Download dossier

Once the dossier is completed, you can download the documents.

Please note that the dossier can only be downloaded until the expiry of the dossier set by the expiresIn field.

Document

To download the signed document, specifying the type=file query parameter.

GET https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers/{dossierId}/download?type=file

When there are multiple documents per dossier you will need to specify the file id.

GET https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers/{dossierId}/download?type=file&file=8d817359-7eb8-4b6e-9030-17ac286b7dc0

Audit Report

The audit report contains all info and events related to the dossier for evidence purposes, specify the type=auditReport query parameter.

GET https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers/{dossierId}/download?type=auditReport

Full ZIP

The ZIP file contains all signed documents and the audit report.

GET https://api.cmdisp.com/sign/v1/dossiers/{dossierId}/download

Error handling

When an error occurs, you will receive a JSON message describing the error. Please make sure to handle these errors.

Example:

{
  "status": 400,
  "message": "Error message"
}

Swagger API documentation

For a complete technical documentation with specifications for all field types, JSON objects and methods, you can consult our complete swagger specification.

Swagger API docs