Organizations that have strict regulation requirements often need to capture electronic signatures as issues move along the workflow, for future auditing purposes. This is often a part of the CFR Part 11 compliance.
In this recipe, we will look at how to enforce and capture e-signatures when someone tries to transition an issue through the workflow.
For this recipe, we need to have the CFR Part 11 E-Signatures add-on installed. You can download the add-on from the following link:
To start capturing electronic signatures, we first need to create an Electronic Signature custom field:
- Navigate to Administration | Issues | Custom fields.
- Click on the Add Custom Field button, and select the Advanced tab.
- Choose the Electronic Signature custom field type, and click on Next as shown in the next screenshot.
- Name the custom field E-Signatures, and click on Next.
- Select a screen to place the custom field onto. For example, if you want to capture signatures when users resolve an issue, you will need to select the screen used for the Resolve Issue transition.
- Click on the Update button.
Once you have created an Electronic Signature custom field and added it onto a screen, such as the Resolve Issue screen, it will be displayed as two text fields: one for the username and one for the password. The workflow transition can only be completed when the user signs the action by putting in his or her username and password, as shown in the following screenshot:
If the signature verification is successful and the transition is complete, the electronic signature will be stored, and you can get a report by clicking on the new E-Signatures issue tab at the bottom of the web page, as seen in the following screenshot:
The E-Signatures add-on also has a Restricted Mode option (turned off by default), which forces users to sign the operations with their own credentials. You can enable the restricted mode by performing the following steps:
- Navigate to Administration | Add-ons | E-Signature Fields.
- Check the Restricted Mode option, and click on Save.
Once enabled, the username field is automatically set to the current user's username, so you can only sign with your own password.