Common mistakes

This page lists best practices and highlights some common mistakes and pitfalls

Documents have a limited lifetime

Because of GDPR we only store documents for a limited time before they are automatically deleted. You should make sure you download all the signed files before they disappear from our system. When they are deleted we cannot restore them.

Read more about document lifetime and how to retrieve files.

By default the signature is saved asynchronously

In order to make the end-user experience better, the signature data / files is saved and processed asynchronously after the signature has been collected. This means that the document status, packaged files, pades and more might not be ready immediately after the signer is redirected from our application.

The recommended approach

Use our notification API to be notified with webhooks or a service bus message when the document is ready.

If you can't subscribe to webhooks

Alternative 1

Let the signer wait for all the files to be ready. This can be achieved by overriding the default signature settings in the settings API. You can download the file directly after the signer is redirected or you receive the sign success web message.

Alternative 2

Check if the document is ready by calling the document status endpoint. In the response you will see all the completed packages and if the document is signed.

GET https://api.signicat.io/signature/documents/{documentId}/status

Response sample

{
  "documentStatus": "signed",
  "completedPackages": [
    "standard_packaging",
    "pades"
  ],
  "attachmentPackages": {}
}