Using both Text Tags and Text Anchors

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for your post! For the text anchor part, if you are only adding three text fields, which approval/signature did you add them under? - I guess that's the reason why you are not able to sign this signature.

From the high level, it's possible to use text tags together with text anchors. But as stated above, fields and signatures extracted by text tags and text anchors are relatively isolated - you can't add fields extracted by text anchors under the signatures extracted by text tags, or the other way.

Duo

I'm attaching the approvals for that form that are provided at the time the package is created - it's for the Signer1 role.

Once the Text Tags are extracted it looks like there's a second approvals element for the same role. However, that element contains only the Signature item, with the other text tags having been merged with the Text fields. I've also included what the that looks like.

I would guess that having the 2 separate approvals items is the reason for the 2 signatures being listed, however, I'm not sure why everything but the signature is merged with the approvals I provided.

Hi Thomas,

According to the JSON after extraction, the first approval node has 6 fields (3 fields extracted by text anchor and 3 fields extracted by text tags), but none of them is with type of "SIGNATURE" - that's because your input JSON didn't include such signature field. Without referring to a concrete signature field with size and location, you won't be able to sign this approval. 

To avoid merging fields extracted by text tags, you can specify which signature this field binds to, with below syntax:

{{esl_Signature1:Signer1:Signature:size(150,30),offset(0,-10)}}   

{{esl:Signer1:SignerName:size(150,30),offset(0,-10),signature("Signature1")}} 

{{esl:Signer1:SignerTitle:size(150,30),offset(0,-10),signature("Signature1")}}           

- "_Signature1" defines the ID and the name of the extracted approval (a signature field will be automatically created with the same ID and name)

- "signature("Signature1")" is the attribute which links the field to the signature

- when a field has multiple attributes, use comma to separate them like "size(150,30),offset(0,-10),signature("Signature1")"

Duo

Hi Duo,

Thanks for the reply. Below is the text tag that is already being used for the signature field. The text tags for SignerName, Title & Signing Date all match the same format, yet they were placed into the same group as the Text Anchors.

{{*esl:Signer1:Signature:size(345,45),offset(0, -30)}}

However, based on what you're saying, the other text tags must be linked to this signature field? How do you link the text anchors to the same field group then? Or maybe a better question is to ask why there needs to be two approval groups at all, when all of the fields have been assigned to the same role? I'm also going to run into an issue with the text tags being so long that they will run into each other or have to wrap, even at font size 6, which is the smallest I can go at the moment.

Thanks,

Tom

Hi Tom,

Unfortunately, OneSpan Sign document engine adds all signatures and fields in the JSON first (that includes the 3 fields extracted by text anchors), before adding signatures/fields extracted by text tags. That's why you can't keep only the one signature extracted by text tags, and link fields extracted by text anchors to this signature.

So a more practical approach is to ONLY use text anchors to lay out all signatures and fields in this PDF. I understand that it's not reusing those text tags, but this is the only way to add all these fields in one call and keep the field validators.

Duo