Creating a foolproof Workflow?

[Former Community Member]

Hi there. I'm new to Designer and have been given several tasks by my company. One of which involves moving to a PDF workflow for manufacturing. I have set up our process flow by making a series of tables with all the information operators will need for each manufacturing step. Users will complete the steps by digitally signing the step(s) they worked on.



My questions are (in order of importance):



1. Is there a way to make it so the signature block in step 2 (for example) can't be signed until someone has signed the block in step 1, to help insure steps aren't done out of order (this flow has 18 steps total)?



2. Each table also has a cell dedicated to an AutoCAD drawing used for that particular step. Is there a way to add hyperlinks to these drawings?



Thanks in advance,

Justin

[_Aandi_Inston_]

You should consider carefully that digital signatures always apply to

a document, not to a portion of it. The position of a signature field

is almost arbitrary in that world. It might be that what you are

describing is going to be a too-strained adaptation of a paper based

workflow (where signatures can be considered to be localised).



But not everyone may agree with me.



Aandi Inston

[Former Community Member]

The document itself will be controlled but we need some way of indicating that steps were done and a better way than digital signatures escapes me. The processes in question are for gov't/defense related work where the password authentication and watermark associated with the signatures is a plus. I'm not sure whether this is even possible, but again it would be nice to make it "foolproof"so that the steps must be signed off in sequence.

Thanks,

Justin

[Former Community Member]

You can do it with tools other than Adobe Acrobat.

[Former Community Member]

Well one of the requirements is that the documents be PDF and use digital signatures for security/compliance reasons. The document is made and the concept works, I was just wondering whether that level of redundancy could be built in somehow.



Any advice on hyperlinks to the .dwg files?



Thanks,

Justin

[Former Community Member]

To Question 1



Could you not hide the signature fields with the next one appearing as the previous one is signed, have not tried but just a thought is all.

[Former Community Member]

Hi,



First for the hyperlinks, I am not sure I understand your problem, but anyway I created a word file with a table, in one of the cells I wrote "file://c:/tmp/doc1.doc" (without the quotes).

I converted the .doc file to PDF, and the link was preserved. I clicked the link, and WinWord was opened with the file. If this is what you meant, I can send you the file as a sample, I guess it will work the same with DWG files.



As for the workflow. We have a solution to what you are looking for, but as it is a non commercial site, I prefer giving you more details on a private channel



Tal

tal@arx.com

[Former Community Member]

Stephen,

Thanks for the reply. This would seemingly do the trick. I just don't know how to set the signature fields to do that. Do you think you might be able to post a "how to"?

Thanks so much,

Justin

[Former Community Member]

I just thought of something that may or may not work. Hopefully someone can refute or validate my thought. If I create a collection associated with each signature box and "lock all fields in collection" (or "not in collection"), will this achieve my goal?



Do collections only apply when blocks already have signatures in them? If so, the idea won't work.



Thanks,

Justin

[Former Community Member]

The signature should not necessarily be part of the collection, but as far as I know you can lock fields in a collection as a result of signing a specific signature field, but your challenge would be to unlock one specific field, each time

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for the insight. If this is true, all I should have to do is have a unique collection for each signature block leaving the next successive one open each time. Fingers crossed!

[Former Community Member]

As for the links, I can now add a link to the cell(s), the problem is its trying to open the .dwg files with Internet Explorer. Any thoughts on this (the file type is registered correctly with my .dwg viewer application)?

Thanks,

Justin



PS for what its worth, it is defaulting to an HTTP Submit Button in order to accept the path/link to the file.