What is Text Tagging?

When you send a contract out for signature, you may want to tag that contract so that information previously captured in a webform is merged onto your contract. For example, you may want to begin the contract with the salutation: Dear Requester. The catch is that when you send out this document, you want the word requester to be replaced with the name of the person who requested the contract. In a contract that you send out for signature, you will want to merge text fields onto your final document and also provide whoever receives the contract with a place for them to sign. How do you merge information from form fields into documents, and how do you include places for eSignature? Let’s find out.

Where do Text Tags come from?

The first thing to know about tagging documents is where we’re going to be pulling our information from. TAP has the ability to merge data from your web forms right onto document templates using the form fields’ element IDs (pictured below).

The naming convention for the tag needs to follow a few rules.

1. Spaces must be replaced with underscores “_”
2. The element ID cannot start with a special character or number e.g. 1_name

How do I merge information from my webform onto my word document?

Populating a word document with information from the webform will change depending on whether your eSignature provider is Adobe Sign or Docusign. Determine which provider you use and then follow the appropriate directions below.

Tagging with Adobe Sign:

The syntax for merging webform data will depend on whether you are dealing with a text field or a signature field.

Text fields

Text fields syntax is very simple. You simply surround the name of your corresponding element tag with curly brackets. For example, if you are pulling information from a form field that captured the name of a person requesting a new contract, you may have labeled that form field with the element tag “Requester_name_1.” It does not matter how you label an element tag, as long as you do not use spaces and you remember what form field your element tag corresponds with.

As such, if we want to pull into our word document information from a form field labeled name, we will simply type into our word document {{Requester_name_1}}.  With this simple notation of {{element}} we can tag any word document with all of our text fields.

What if you want the merged text field to be read only? Simply add an exclamation mark before the beginning of your element tag. For example: {{!element     }}.

Signature Fields

Signatures are a little different from merged text fields. Whereas a merged text field pulls information from a previous webform, a signature field will be used by the signer who will then add his or her signature. The notation for adding a signature field is {{sig_es_:signer1:signature }}. Let’s look at a quick diagram.

Adding signature fields into Word documents is easy – you just need to know the proper syntax.
 
The same rules apply when merging information into a PDF. However, while the bulk of the syntax is the same, the curly brackets are no longer necessary.

Pre-merge Text Fields

It will be important to note that the length of your form field is designated by the amount of space between your two curly brackets. If the name of your element tag is short, like the word “name,” the space in which the name will merge into the field may be too small.

In order to solve this problem, activate the “pre-merge” function in eSignature Support. While setting up your eSignature support select the checkbox “Pre-merge field data.”

Doing so will use TAP functionality to perfectly format your text tags in your documents.

Tagging with DocuSign:

When tagging with DocuSign in Word, you will use different syntax for tagging text fields, signature fields, and signature date fields.

There are two simple methods of adding element ID tags to your document template:

1. White Out method – copy the field element ID and paste it into the appropriate spot on your document template. Thereafter, white out the text of the element ID. This is required as the system will merge the data over the element ID.
2. Curly Braces/Brackets method* – paste the field element ID between double opening and closing curly braces/brackets in the appropriate spots on the document template

Text box Tags

Text box tags work as mentioned above. For example, {{Requester_Name_1}} will appropriately merge form field data. Please note, however, that in order to do so you must define this process in the API section of eSignature support.

Signature Tags

To add a place to sign onto a document, add the following tag:
Signer1 – for the first signer
Signer2 – for the second signer

Signature Date tags

To add the signing date to a document, add the following tag:
Date1 – for signer 1 date
Date2 – for signer 2 date

Pre-merge Text Fields

It will be important to note that the length of your form field is designated by the amount of space between your two curly brackets. If the name of your element tag is short, like the word “name,” the space in which the name will merge into the field may be too small.

In order to solve this problem, activate the “pre-merge” function in eSignature Support. While setting up your eSignature support select the checkbox “Pre-merge field data.”

Doing so will use TAP functionality to perfectly format your text tags in your documents.