Implementation Considerations

Note these Implementation considerations for the technologies you use with digital signatures:

• Adobe Acrobat product (.pdf): To use Adobe digital signatures, the contract documents will be converted to PDF. This requires Office Word 2007, or later version, to be installed on the windows machine. Previous releases of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Supplier Contract Management software required Adobe Acrobat to be installed on the same windows machine. This enables you to prepare a .pdf document for signature purposes from a Microsoft Word document. Internal and external users can sign documents using Adobe Reader.

  Note:

  If you are using Microsoft Word 2007, you need to download a Microsoft add-in.

  See Setting Up Document Comparison and Rendering

  When documents are ready to be prepared for digital signatures, the document administrator clicks the Prepare for Signature button on the Document Management page. This renders the document as a .pdf file on the server-side, and then launches the PDF document on the client so that the document administrator can enable and certify (sign) the document. Each document administrator must also have Adobe Acrobat on the client in order to enable usage rights on the document so that others can sign it using the freeware Adobe Reader.

• Microsoft Word (.docx): You can prepare a signable Microsoft Word 2007, or later version, document instead of a PDF. This method uses Microsoft Word to prepare a signable .docx file of the document instead of a PDF. The .docx file version of the document is intended for signing purposes only. Because this option requires all internal and external users to use Microsoft Word 2007, or later version, for signing purposes, you might find that it is more limited than using a PDF where the Adobe Reader is more readily available to all internal and external users.

• Internal and external signatures: PeopleSoft Supplier Contract Management enables the collection of internal and external signatures. Depending on the organizations needs the document administrator can determine when to prepare documents for signature and when to collect them. For example, for a given document type, you can specify to collect internal signatures before, during, or after approval. And, likewise, send documents to contacts and dispatch documents to collect external signatures before or after approvals, and before or after internal signatures.

• Online external signatures: As part of setting up digital signatures, you can also optionally define a framework that includes suppliers in document collaboration and online review and approval processes including the ability to sign the document. This requires that you have a supplier-facing web site available for external users to access contract documents for collaboration, review, and signatures. You can also choose to configure the system so that external signatures are always collected when sending or dispatching a PDF using an email attachment. If you select this method, external users sign and send the PDF back to the administrator, who then uploads the signed document on behalf of the external user.

• Visible and invisible signatures: Visible signers are those signers whose signature labels appear on a contract document. You can only see an invisible signature in the signature properties of the document, and not in the document itself. You can use an invisible signature, for example, when you want to track a signature for non-repudiation purposes, but do not want to show the signature within the document itself.