Place Fields

After choosing the recipients and setting their roles and responsibilities, you will be taken to a page where you can place signing and other fields.

Types of fields

There are three types of fields that can be used on a document: signature fields, pre-filled fields and regular fillable fields.

Signature fields contain either a signature, initials or a stamp.

Pre-filled fields work for recipients who have a Circularo account- the needed information is taken from the information saved to their account. The fields include name, company, email, phone and job title. Recipients who do not have a Circularo account will have to fill these fields in manually.

Regular fillable fields need to be filled in manually for every recipient.

On the left side of the page, you will find a toolbox containing a variety of signing fields available to yourself and other recipients. These can be placed by clicking on them or dragging and dropping them onto the document.

You can then reposition all of the elements dragged from the toolbox to place them neatly onto their correct spots in the document.

Switch between recipients by clicking on their name.

Copy and paste fields onto the document using the common Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V shortcuts. This is especially useful for documents requiring multiple signatures.

Signature fields

Signature fields are all fields acting as a signature, containing an electronic certificate. They all have the same legal weight and you only need one per recipient on the document to sign it. Which of the fields you use is up to you. Following signature fields are currently available:

Wacom Signature

Availability: Business and Enterprise

Wacom biometric signatures are created using Wacom signature pads. Before using them to sign your documents, you need to install all the required Wacom device drivers.

Signature

Drag the Signature field onto the document and your default signature saved in your Preferences will be added. You can change the signature by clicking on the signature field and selecting the Change signature option on the right hand side directly during the signing process.

If you don't have any default saved, you will be taken directly to the signature designing dialog.

You have the option to either Draw, Type, Upload, use a Wacom pad or Mobile Capture to design your signature. The newly created signature can also be immediately saved as your default.

For Wacom pad signature, you need to have the pad configured with your account.

Initials

Your default initials saved in Preferences will be added to the document. You can change the initials by clicking on the signature field and selecting the Change signature option.

You can either Draw, Type, Upload, use a Wacom pad or Mobile Capture to design your initials and place them on the document.

Stamp

The default stamp saved in your Preferences will be added to the document. You can change the stamp by clicking on the stamp field and choosing the Change stamp option.

You can either choose from saved stamps or design a new one.

It is not possible to edit existing stamps in the eSigning mode.
To edit a stamp, go to Stamps in your Preferences.

Learn more about signatures and stamps.

Fillable fields

Aside from signing fields, Circularo offers many different types of fillable fields that can be placed on a document and filled in during the signing process to collect details from signatories that might be required to successfully complete the sign-off.

Some of these fields will already be pre-filled with information saved in Circularo.
For registered users, it’s the details they fill in about themselves in their Accounts. For external recipients saved as Contacts, their contact details can be pre-filled.

The automatically pre-filled fields include:

• Company - the name of the company the recipient works for

• Name - full name

• Email - email address

• Phone - phone number

• Job Title - their official job title

The content of pre-filled fields can be changed during the signing process by the recipient the field is assigned to.

Other fillable fields include:

• Text - type in text of any length, multiple lines are supported

• Number - A field that only allows numeric inputs. The desired value range can be further specified in the settings panel.

• Currency - A number field that includes a currency symbol of your choice.

• Percentage - A number field that includes the % symbol.

• Date - select a date from the calendar

• Current date - date when this field was added with the option to include time as well

• Check - select values by ticking checkboxes

• Document ID - add a unique DocID containing a verification link anyone can use to check the authenticity and integrity of the document and the signatures within

• Radio button - create a number of unique options and let recipients select one of them to indicate their choice or answer (The Radio button is only available when the person preparing the document is not the first signatory or is not a signatory at all.)

• Link - insert clickable links leading to websites or other documents

• Metadata - embed selected metadata directly into the document for improved transparency

• List - create a custom dropdown menu from which the recipient can select one option (Only available when the person preparing the document is not the first signatory.)

• Comb field - an adjustable, single-line text field for filling in box forms where each character goes in a separate box

• Image - you or the recipient can upload an image

• QR code - place a QR code on the document (not available for external recipients) Availability: Business and Enterprise

Multiple fields can be selected at once by holding the Shift or Command key and aligned together horizontally or vertically on the document.

If you need to quickly go through the pages where a field has been placed, you can click on Toggle thumbnails at the top of the page with annotation tools. All pages with fields will have a little green flag on them- Signed and Annotated for fields belonging to the creator of the document, and To be singed and To be annotated for fields assigned to other recipients.

Recipients can also view these thumbnails during their signing.

Multiple fields vs multipage fields

When you need to put a field onto a document several times, there are two options how to do this. You can put each field separately onto the document, each one exactly where you need it, or you can select multipage option in the settings panel of the field, which will replicate the field. You can set it to be on all pages of the document, or you can customize which pages should contain the field. When you select multipage, all the fields will be in the same position on all pages and moving one moves all of them.

The main difference between the two approaches is what happens during signing. If you place the fields multiple times, the signatory will be guided through the fields one at a time.

For each field, the information/signature needs to be manually input.

This can be used to ensure the signatory sees all the parts of the document they place a signature in. Only after all fields are filled in can the signing process be completed.

If the fields are set to multipage, the signatory fills the first of those fields and in the rest of that multipage field the information is replicated. The guide of the signing process shows them only the first of the multipage fields and doesn’t show them any of the others.

The signatory will thus not be guided through all places on the document containing this field, creating a possibility a signature will be placed somewhere the signatory would not wish to sign. The signatory can of course go through the document manually and see all the pages containing the field, but with long documents with many pages that can be cumbersome.

Field settings panel

Placed fields can be edited and adjusted in various ways. Once you’ve placed a field, click on it to open the Field settings panel on the right side of the screen.

Common settings

Text

Here you can set what the text in the field will look like, including font, alignment, color, and background color.

Layers

Layer multiple fields on top of each other and choose which ones you want to bring to the front or send to the back.

This setting is not available for Signature fields, as they must always be the top layer.

Multipage

Tick this box if you want to add this field to multiple pages. You can then set it to all pages or just specific ones.

Recipient

Reassign the selected field or a group of fields to a different recipient.

Custom ID

If processing the document via API, you have the option to add a custom field ID to be able to find and locate the field later. 

Remove

Removes selected field or fields from the document.

Required

By marking a field as Required, the signatory has to fill it out before they are able to finish signing a document. All fields are marked as Required by default.

Placeholder

Write custom placeholder text for the recipient to give an example of how to correctly fill in the field.

Tooltip

If placeholder isn’t enough, you can also create a custom tooltip with instructions on how to fill in the field for the recipient.

Field reassignment

Select one or more fields at once (using the Shift or Ctrl command key) and reassign them to a different recipient - especially useful when using the Automatic Field Recognition feature, as you can assign groups of fields to different recipients.

Specific field settings

Certain fields have some more settings that can be adjusted.

Signature fields

• Timestamp

Adds a timestamp to the signature field.

• Change signature / initials / stamp

Redesign your signature, initials, or stamp. You can create your signature via a completely different method, change its color, size, etc. When it comes to stamps, you can either select a different saved stamp or create a completely new one.

Learn more about creating signatures and initials here. More information about designing stamps can be found here.

Numeric fields

The Number, Currency, and Percentage fields have several specific settings available:

• Decimal

Tick this box to allow decimal numbers. In practice, this enables you to enter a dot (.) or a comma (,) into the field which only allows digits otherwise.

• Separate thousands

When dealing with large numbers, you might want to check this box to minimize mistakes and achieve greater clarity (100,000 or 100 000 instead of 100000). You can also set which separator you want to use.

• Min and Max values

Here you can set the minimum and maximum value for the field. The recipient will only be able to enter a value within the range.

• Currency symbol

Enter the currency symbol you want to use and adjust its position before or after the amount.

Text field

• Number of lines

You can add multiple lines of text to the document by clicking on the text field and defining the number of lines on the top of the page. The textbox size will adjust accordingly.

This is useful when preparing the text field to be filled in by the recipient and defining the desired number of lines for them.

Circularo offers full support for the Arabic language and left-to-right writing in text fields. It is even possible to add bilingual text that combines English and Arabic writing if needed.

• Input masking

For fields that require a very specific format (such as ID numbers, bank account numbers, etc.), there is an option to add a custom mask to a text field, specifying the exact desired layout and distribution of alphabetic, numeric, and other characters for the recipients.

How to create a custom mask for a text field:

1. Find a Text field in the field selection and place it on the document.

2. Click on the field and find Custom mask in the panel that will appear on the right side of your screen.

3. Create the mask according to the instructions below

4. If you would like to provide an example of what should the recipient enter, fill the Example field with a hint

Input masking legend:

• Use a to represent an alphabetical character

• Use 9 to represent a numeric character

• Use * to represent an alphanumeric character (= can be a letter or a digit)

• Use [ ] to make a character optional

• Other characters (such as simple brackets, commas, or slashes) and spaces can be used to represent themselves

Example 1:

The new US passport number begins with a letter, followed by eight numbers, for example E94817893. To represent that, we would create the following mask: a99999999

Example 2:

Emirates ID number consists of 15 unique digits divided into groups. To represent Emirates ID, we would use the following mask: 999-9999-9999999-9

Example 3:

A Czech bank account number looks like this 000019-2235210247/0100. The first part is optional and many accounts don’t have it. The second part always has 9 or 10 numbers. The third part always has four numbers.

To make sure the recipient enters their bank details in the correct format, we would create the following mask: [999999]-999999999[9]/9999

Example 4:

The IBAN consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters (minimum length is 5 characters), as follows:

• country code using two letters,

• check digits – two digits, and

• Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN) – up to 30 alphanumeric characters that are country-specific

In Ireland it looks like IE12 BOFI 9000 0112 3456 78 and in Switzerland like CH56 0483 5012 3456 7800 9

To represent an IBAN format that accommodates any country, we would create the following mask:

aa99 *[*** **** **** **** **** **** **** **]

• Advanced input masking

Dynamic masks

Dynamic masks can change during input. To define a dynamic part use { }.

{n} => n repeats

{n|j} => n repeats, with j jitmasking

{n,m} => from n to m repeats

{n,m|j} => from n to m repeats, with j jitmasking

Also {+} and {} is allowed. + start from 1 and empty start from 0.

JIT masking - Just in time masking. The mask will only be visible for the user-entered characters.

Alternators

The alternator acts as an OR statement. The mask can be one of the choices specified in the alternator.

Example:

a|9 => a or 9

(aaa)|(999) => aaa or 999

(aaa|999|9AA) => aaa or 999 or 9AA