DocuSign Api - Template with eNotary

Question

We are using the DocuSign eSignature Api to send templates successfully. We are now trying to send documents that require notary, but are receiving this error message:

{
    "errorCode": "NOTARY_SIGNING_HOST_NOT_FOUND",
    "message": "The notary signing host is not found."
}

After some digging we turned up this article from DocuSign, but there is no mention of templates with eNotary: https://www.docusign.com/blog/dsdev-common-api-tasks-using-enotary-programmatically

We tried to follow what the article outline and were met with this error:

{
    "errorCode": "INVALID_REQUEST_PARAMETER",
    "message": "The request contained at least one invalid parameter. 'recipients' may not be specifed when 'templateId' is set. Use 'templateRoles'."
}

And finally when we go looking in the API documentation at the Create Envelope | TemplateRoles fields we find nothing about notary hosts: https://developers.docusign.com/docs/esign-rest-api/reference/envelopes/envelopes/create/

This object specifies the template recipients. Each roleName in the template must have a recipient assigned to it. This object is comprised of the following elements:

email: The recipient's email address.

name: The recipient's name.

roleName: The template roleName associated with the recipient.

clientUserId: An optional property that specifies whether the recipient is embedded or remote. If the clientUserId is not null, then the recipient is embedded. Note that if a clientUserId is used and the account settings signerMustHaveAccount or signerMustLoginToSign are true, an error is generated on sending.

defaultRecipient: Optional, When set to true, this recipient is the default recipient and any tabs generated by the transformPdfFields option are mapped to this recipient.

routingOrder: This specifies the routing order of the recipient in the envelope.

accessCode: This optional element specifies the access code a recipient has to enter to validate the identity. Maximum Length: 50 characters.

inPersonSignerName: Optional. If the template role is an in-person signer, this is the full legal name of the signer. Maximum Length: 100 characters.

emailNotification: This is an optional complex element that has a role-specific emailSubject, emailBody, and language. It follows the same format as the emailNotification property for recipients.

tabs: This property enables the tab values to be specified for matching to tabs in the template.

So how in the world do we send out a template with a notary?

Inbar Gazit Inbar Gazit · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-29T17:00:41

Notary works in a special way when it comes to the API. I would suggest you first familiarize yourself with how it works for just a regular envelope. To that end - see code snippets in my blog post.

The trick is really that you have an InPersonSigner, the actual person who signs, and then a NotaryHost, which is the notary. The one is nested inside the other in the JSON. If you use one of our SDKs - it's easier.

Update: when you use an envelope created from the template, there are two options:

Original template had the InPersonHost and NotaryHost as roles. In that case you just have to add templateRoles and match the roleName.
You create an envelope in "draft" mode and then make another API call to add these recipients.

DocuSign Api - Template with eNotary

1 Answers