Get a signing URL without sending the email

A package must be "sent" before you can have anyone sign it. You don't have to send email notifications though. You just need to contact support to get the auto emails turned off for your account.

So changing the status to "sent" would work as long as auto-email isn't turned on?

Yes. With the .NET SDK, you'd just call eslClient.SendPackage(packageId) to send the package. After you've contacted support and gotten the setting changed on your account to not auto notify signers that they have a package to sign, you'd just create your sessionToken and load the signing session in your iframe after sending the package. Let me know if you have issues.

But then how do we send via email if we want to use the email? We need to have both email/and signing url only functionality.

Ah. Okay. You should be able to do something like one of these to manually send the notification to a particular signer, roleId, or groupId:

eslClient.PackageService.NotifySigner(PackageId packageId, string signerEmail, string message);

eslClient.PackageService.NotifySigner(PackageId packageId, string roleId);

eslClient.PackageService.NotifySigner(PackageId packageId, GroupId groupId);

I will test it out, to be sure, tomorrow when support is in and I can get my account settings changed. I'll also check out if there's a way to do the opposite (turning off notifications for an individual signer/role/group. I'll let you know.

Ok that appears to be working as described. Now question. If a customer of ours is using Silanis web front end for more advanced features we are not going to put in our package (entering QA, and some other options), then they click "Send" on the web front end, will it actually send an email OR just set the status to sent since we turned off auto-notification? We are thinking what if our customer is using Silanis enterprise wide and not just in our application.

It appears that there is not currently a way to disable notifications for a particular package or a particular sender on an account. It is truly an account level setting. So, you would need to set up two accounts: one for your signer-initiated, embedded application and one for your other use cases. We have put in an enhancement request to have the ability to change this on a sender or package basis, but for now, the above would need to be done. Hopefully this answers your questions. You can always post your request for this in the Enhancement Ideas forum, as well.