For businesses that handle document storage and management, electronic signing is now considered standard practise. That Google Workspace now offers an open beta for its newish eSignature feature shouldn’t come as a surprise. For individual and different group accounts on Google Docs and Google Drive, the new capability will be accessible.
For Solopreneurs and Small Firms
The new feature is intended for solopreneurs and small firms as a simple way to gather and track digital signatures directly in the document without printing, signing, scanning, and sending to obtain a signature. It had previously been in a limited alpha release.
The business announced the new functionality in a blog post. “To help streamline this workflow, we’re natively integrating eSignature in Google Docs, allowing you to request and add signatures to official contracts, directly in Google Docs,” it said.
Really, it’s nothing fancy. You can only add an electronic signature field to the document. The ability to deal with multiple signers and send documents to people outside the Google Workspace ecosystem, as well as the ability to capture an electronic signature in a pdf of the document, are additional features that are anticipated to be added later this year.
Following the Market
In 2021, Box introduced Box Sign, which had a comparable feature. 2019 saw Dropbox buy HelloSign, although unlike Box and Google, it does not bundle the service.
With this decision, Google is simply following the market, according to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and chief analyst at Deep Analysis and a longtime observer of the document management industry. By making it available for free, Google is also providing users the chance to integrate it into their workflow. Digital signatures will soon be included as included features, as has been planned for some time. Box offers it by default, and now Google. Dropbox and Microsoft are likely to follow suit in the future or at least offer a substitute for third-party choices, he predicted.
Over the next 15 days, the business will push out the new service to each Workspace user without charge. By requesting that their Workspace admins apply for the Beta, various group participants can take part.
Additional Details
Google will add support for the following fresh eSignature features later this year:
- Audit trail: A report on the audit trail will be included with every completed contract.
- Multi-signer: The capability of requesting signatures from several users.
- Non-Gmail Users: The ability to request an eSignature from users that do not use Gmail.
- Starting an eSignature on a PDF file: This feature lets you start an eSignature on PDF files that are saved in Drive.
