Application Form Signing is the process a family goes through from the invitation list to the signed and archived contract. This article describes what the parent sees at each step and the rules that decide whose turn it is to sign.
The invitation list. The parent logs into the portal and opens the page that holds the CMS Widget - Application Invitations widget. Every student of the parent's household who has an invitation is listed with the invitation type and a status. Opening the page also creates any invitations the parent's students newly qualify for, as described in Application Form Invitation Type. The status and the button are specific to the parent who is looking.
- Not started with a Start button: nobody in the household has opened the form.
- In progress with a Continue button: the form has been opened and can be resumed.
- The other parent is signing: the other parent of the household is walking the form right now. The form is locked for twenty minutes after the other parent's last activity.
- Your signature needed with a Sign button: the other parent has signed and this parent's signature is still required.
- Awaiting second signature: this parent has signed and the other parent has not.
- Awaiting other household: this household is done, or it is not yet this household's turn in a split-household agreement.
- Complete: every required signature has been collected. A Download link to the PDF can be shown here.
Starting the form. Clicking Start claims the household's editing lease so that only one parent of the household edits at a time, and, on the first entry, materializes the snapshot: one frozen row per priced widget with the product, price, label, and selection that apply to this applicant, after Application Form Overrides have been resolved. From then on the family sees the snapshot, and changes made by the school to the form do not affect this applicant unless the school uses Reset Snapshot or Application Form Student Overrides. The parent is then sent to the first page of the form.
Walking the pages. The parent moves through the pages with the CMS Widget - Menu and the CMS Widget - Button widgets. Each page saves its fields when the parent moves on. Text typed into a TextBox of the CMS Widget - Updatable Wizard, such as the initials asked for under a policy, is saved with the applicant's snapshot and shown again when the form is resumed. When the menu tracks completion, every saved page is marked as completed. A parent who reaches a form page without an active invitation, for example from a bookmark, is sent to the No-invitation redirect page of Application Form Details.
The signing page. The last page of the form holds the CMS Widget - Submit Summary, optionally the CMS Widget - Deposit (Application Form), CMS Widget - Payment Schedule, and payment widgets, the CMS Widget - Signature Pad, and the CMS Widget - Sign and Submit button. Clicking Sign and Submit performs the following checks and actions in order.
- When the menu tracks completion, every page before the signing page must have been completed. Otherwise the button refuses and lists the pages that are still missing.
- Every required field on the signing page, including a required signature, must be valid.
- When money is due now and the button requires payment, the payment is charged through the selected payment widget before the signature is recorded. A declined payment stops the signing.
- The signature is stamped on the household's endorsement, the drawn signature is stored, the family's selections are archived, financial aid awards are accepted, and the split charges are calculated for each household.
- When the household has now collected every signature it requires, the invoices are posted and the deferred payment is applied. Otherwise the posting waits for the remaining signature.
- When the signature completed the household's contract and the Sign and Submit button carries a Confirmation Email or Payment Received Email template, the confirmation email is queued to the signer, and to both parents of a two-signature household, with the link to the signed contract PDF. Review CMS Widget - Sign and Submit.
- The parent is sent to the Success Link of the button or, by default, to the contract PDF.
Second signatures. How many signatures a household must provide is decided by the Bill on first signature and Second-signer detection filter settings of Application Form Details, and the answer is frozen on the endorsement the first time it is needed. Either parent may sign first. After the first signature, every remaining signer who has an email address receives a signing link email, generated from the correspondence template named Application Form - Secondary Signer Invitation, with the merge fields [[SignerGreeting]] and [[SignInvitationLink]]. The link is single use and expires after fourteen days; the school can resend it from Application Form Invitation. The link opens a landing page of the CMS Portal whose Alternate Id is AFSecondarySign and which holds a Signature Pad and a Sign and Submit button. The link only routes the parent to the page; the parent must be logged in with the portal account of the contact the link was issued to. A parent who is logged in as someone else sees the message This signing link was issued to a different household contact. Please sign in with their account.
Split households. When the student's charges are split across households, each household has its own endorsement, its own signatures, and its own invoice. A household's invoice is posted as soon as that household has collected its required signatures; it does not wait for the other household. The First signer household setting of Application Form Details can require the Bill To or the Primary household to sign before the others are unlocked.
The PDF. The signed contract is rendered from the form's pages as a PDF that includes the drawn signatures, the typed initials, and the pricing tables. Parents open it from the Download link of the Application Invitations widget or from the Reenrollment Contracts widget of the student profile; the school opens it from the same address with an administrative login. An office copy variant, titled with the Pdf Title Admissions of the Sign and Submit button, is available to the school.
Note: A parent whose household holds no endorsement on the invitation sees the stored status of the invitation and no button.