DocuSign + Microsoft = Greater Productivity

By Mike Smith, Solution Engineer, DocuSign

Microsoft takes advantage of DocuSign’s eSignature and digital agreement technology across more than 300 processes worldwide. For Microsoft customers, this amounts to improved turn-around times on business actions and much better visibility and compliance.

When it comes to accessing DocuSign from within the Microsoft product suite, there’s a variety of options for users to send and sign with Microsoft products like Dynamics 365 CRM, SharePoint (Online and on-premise) and Microsoft’s personal productivity solutions including Office 365, Word and Outlook.

Let’s take a look at some of those options now:

DocuSign and Microsoft Flow: Integrate almost anything.

Microsoft Flow is designed to provide a simple way to create integrations and workflows which span multiple applications, e.g. Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Outlook and non-Microsoft products like DocuSign and Dropbox.  With Microsoft Flow it’s possible to take a document from SharePoint, route it via DocuSign for internal approval and customer signature, and then store the document in Dynamics 365 CRM Business or other applications like Google Drive, Box or One Drive.  There are already 159 connectors available for Microsoft Flow.

DocuSign for Microsoft Flow provides developers with actions and triggers to programmatically create an envelope, add recipients and send, then at completion download documents and certificates and retrieve both envelope custom fields values and tab values from within the documents themselves.

Here are some of the templates already created for using DocuSign with Microsoft Flow: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_docusign/docusign/

DocuSign and Dynamics 365 CRM: Improve Sales Productivity

Dynamics 365 CRM is the key Microsoft application for many people working in sales, service and support.  By eliminating email or paper processes, your sales team can get documents like orders and quotes signed more quickly, reducing time to revenue.

DocuSign for Dynamics 365 CRM is an application that lets you easily sign or send documents for signature directly from records in Dynamics 365 CRM.  Out of the box, DocuSign is configured to work with Account, Opportunity, Contact, Lead and Quote records. And, your Dynamics Administrator can easily enable other entities in Dynamics CRM if needed.

Users can easily sign or send for signature from the Ribbon menu in Dynamics 365 CRM.

DocuSign also automatically adds a suitable recipient from the record like the contact for an opportunity or Primary contact for an account, simplifying the process for the user. Additionally,  DocuSign supports template matching, comparing the document being sent with existing DocuSign templates to enable the appropriate signing workflow and tags, like signatures, to be applied easily with a single click.

Introducing DocuSign Custom Activities and buttons for Dynamics CRM workflows.

As part of DocuSign’s ongoing enhancement roadmap, DocuSign now supports Dynamics Workflows.
With workflows you can now easily automate complex sending and signing scenarios using DocuSign as part of a Dynamics Workflow or custom button.

Potentially, the most exciting features available with DocuSign’s support for workflows is the ability to use merge fields and AutoPlace in your templates.  You can now populate your Dynamics 365 CRM data into a DocuSign template using merge fields and automatically place tags such as signatures, names, initials and dates into your documents via AutoPlace.

Completed documents are returned to Dynamics CRM 365 automatically and you can easily check the status of sent documents at any time.

DocuSign and SharePoint: Internal Collaboration and External Customer Satisfaction

Organisations often choose SharePoint to facilitate internal collaboration, and as a centralised content repository. It makes sense from a time, cost and efficiency point of view that you can use DocuSign for internal sign off and approvals before sending approved documents to customers for signature.

DocuSign offers connectors for both SharePoint Online and on premise SharePoint installations (2013/2016).  Both support the standard DocuSign ribbon, allowing users to quickly and easily sign and send documents for signature, check the status of those documents at any time, and have them automatically returned to SharePoint.

To support more complex workflows, on premise installations can take advantage of SharePoint Designer Workflows. These automate the customisation and sending of documents via DocuSign, and then extract and update DocuSign envelope information back to SharePoint.  Now with DocuSign’s support for Microsoft Flow, SharePoint Online users have the ability to easily create and automate sophisticated SharePoint and DocuSign workflows, and even integrate other applications into the workflow.

DocuSign for Outlook: Sign and Send Agreements from your Email

Many of us still receive and send documents via email using the ever popular Microsoft Outlook.
With DocuSign for Outlook it’s easy to sign and reply to documents you are sent directly from within your email.  There is no need to print, then sign on paper and then scan back to your email.
Once you’ve signed, DocuSign lets you reply via email with the signed version of the document or you can simply save a copy for your records.

DocuSign for Outlook supports a wide variety of file types including Word documents, PDF documents, Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, images and more.  So you can quickly sign and send almost any file for signature.

Sending is just as simple.  You can simply click the Request Signatures option to upload and send your documents to one or more people for approval, review or signature.  All DocuSign web functionality including template matching and branding is supported.

DocuSign for Outlook is supported on Windows (2013 and 2016), Office 365 (Browser) and Outlook For Mac (2016).  DocuSign for Outlook supports sending and signing in Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, and Spanish

DocuSign for Word: Sign and Send within a Familiar Word Interface.

A significant portion of the documents created within organisations are created using Microsoft Word.  The ability to easily track changes and comments has made it a key tool for functions such as Legal within many organisations. Often the finished document needs to be signed off or approved by internal stakeholders, or sent externally for signature by customer and partners.

DocuSign for Word allows you to easily sign or send documents right from within the familiar interface of Microsoft Word.  With DocuSign for Word you can easily upload documents, specify recipients, use a template and get sign off both internally and externally (even in the same workflow).  All DocuSign web functionality is available including templates, complex workflows, branding and more. Completed documents can be automatically saved to One Drive.

DocuSign for Word is supported on Windows with Microsoft Word 2016, Word 2016 for Mac and Word Online.   DocuSign for Word provides multi-lingual support for sending and signing including Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, and Spanish.

Click here to learn more about Microsoft’s integration with DocuSign.

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