Doctavian's Digital Signatures API gives you full programmatic control over the document signing lifecycle. You assemble documents and recipients into an envelope, configure signing fields and rules, send it, and track every action through to completion.
Signatures produced through Doctavian are legally binding and backed by a tamper-evident audit trail, making the platform suitable for regulated industries and compliance-sensitive workflows in any sector.
Doctavian supports three levels of electronic signature assurance, aligned with the eIDAS regulation:
The most accessible signature type. An SES links electronic data to a signing action without requiring formal identity verification through a Certificate Authority. Suitable for low-risk documents where the parties already have an established relationship or where formal identity verification is not a legal requirement.
AES uses a Certificate Authority (CA) to identify and validate signers, and produces an audit trail with evidence about the signing transaction. Use AES when you need documented assurance across authenticity, identity, and integrity — for example, commercial contracts, HR agreements, or financial authorizations.
The highest assurance level. QES requires formal identity verification (via CA, in-person validation, or video), a PKI certificate issued with qualified technology, and produces documentation across all four assurance dimensions: authenticity, identity, integrity, and authentication. Required for the most legally sensitive document types in EU-regulated contexts.
When outputting signed documents as PDF, Doctavian applies PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures) — the technical standard for embedding electronic signatures inside PDF documents. PAdES signatures are unique, secure, and verifiable by any compatible PDF application.
See the FAQ for common questions about signature types and legal validity.
An envelope is the central object in the Signatures API. It groups one or more documents, a set of recipients, and the signing fields assigned to each recipient into a single signing transaction. Every signing workflow starts with creating an envelope.
A document must be uploaded to Doctavian before it can be included in an envelope. Once present, it is referenced in the envelope by its storage identifier. Documents also carry the signing fields — the placeholders that define where and how each recipient must interact with the document.
Recipients are the people assigned to an envelope to take a specific action. You configure each recipient's role, their position in the signing order, whether their participation is mandatory, and any identity verification requirements such as MFA.
Once an envelope is sent, recipients receive personalised email notifications with a link to the signing session. The signing concept covers the full recipient experience — from opening the envelope and completing fields, to attachments, comments, and declining.
Envelope Templates let you save a complete envelope configuration and reuse it to create new envelopes on demand — useful for recurring signing workflows where the structure is fixed but the parties or documents change between instances.
Every action taken on an envelope is recorded in a tamper-evident audit trail — from creation and sending through to every signing action and completion. The audit log can be retrieved or downloaded via API for compliance and legal purposes.
Envelopes move through a predictable set of states from creation to completion. Each state transition is logged in the audit trail and can trigger notifications to the sender. Envelopes can be cancelled, restored, or reassigned at any point before completion.
See the Envelope Lifecycle for the full status list, transition rules, and audit trail events.
Most Doctavian Signatures API requests accept an externalContext object that lets you pass a correlation identifier from your own system:
"externalContext": {
"id": "your-internal-id"
}The value is stored against the object and returned in responses, making it straightforward to correlate Doctavian envelopes, documents, recipients, and fields with records in your own system. It has no effect on processing — it is purely for your own tracking purposes.