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Overview of Send in Bulk

 

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Overview of Send in Bulk 

The Send in Bulk (SiB) feature allows users to create a one-use "parent" template of an agreement and supply a list of recipients. A "child" agreement is generated for each recipient record when the Send in Bulk transaction is sent. Up to 1000 child transactions can be effected, and all child agreements are discrete agreements and autonomous insofar as the other agreements generated.

However, because the child agreements are all created from the same parent template, users can review the Send in Bulk parent transaction on the Manage page and review the overall status of the child agreements.

There are two methods to add the list of recipient records to the template:

  • Manually - In this use case, the sender manually types (or pastes) in the user email addresses. 
    • This option limits the number of recipients to one external recipient,
    • The sender can be included as an optional recipient after the external recipient signs. 
  • Comma-Separated Value (CSV) file upload - The CSV is a spreadsheet where each row is a recipient record, and the various columns define properties of the agreement, each of which can be personalized for the recipients of the agreement. This gives the sender much broader control over how the agreement can be customized for the recipients. The advantages of the CSV file method are:
    • You can have multiple recipients. (Up to 100 per agreement.)
    • Per recipient personalization:
      • Recipient name
      • Role
      • Authentication method
      • Private recipient message
    • Agreement level customizations:
      • Agreement name
      • Localization
      • Global agreement message
      • Expiration deadline
      • Signature flow
    • Custom merge fields where the CSV inserts a value into a field on the agreement, allowing recipient-specific details to be added to the agreement, such as a street address, list of goods or services, prices, and discounts.

Availability:

Send in Bulk is available for Acrobat Pro and Acrobat Sign Solutions license plans.

Configuration scope:

The controls for Send in Bulk can be enabled at the account and group levels.

Reporting for Send in Bulk

There are several options for generating report data for the agreements included in a Send in Bulk. The option used will depend on the type of information you want to collect.

All reporting explicitly tied to the Send in Bulk parent object can be accessed on the Manage page by selecting the Bulk Sends filter and then opening the specific Send in Bulk parent template you want to review.

If you want to review only the base completion rate or drill down to find an individual agreement, the Agreements summary table is available in the Actions list.

A printable table of all child agreements can be generated using the View Activity Report action.

A CSV-based definition of the agreement, along with full field-level input per recipient, is available using the Download Form Field Data action.

The standard reporting environment can produce printable charts and graphs and provide field-level data in CSV format.

Download all completed child agreements from the Manage page

After a Send in Bulk transaction is sent and recipients have started completing the child agreements, the sender can download the completed agreements related to the parent transaction from the Manage page.

When the download is triggered, only agreements with a Completed status are downloaded. Canceled, declined, expired, and in-progress agreements are not.
Up to 1.5 GB of data can be downloaded per request.

The Manage page displaying a Send in Bulk transaction with the "Download Completed Agreements" action highlighted.

The download will deliver a zip file to the local system of the user requesting it. The file name is based on the name of the Send in Bulk transaction, with a transaction number appended to the end.

The completed agreements will be inside the zip file. Each file is named based on the transaction ID of the individual child agreement. Audit reports are not attached when downloaded from the Manage page but can be requested if the download is initiated via API.

An example of the zip file, highlighting the name, and an inset of the actual PDFs inside the zip file.

Note:
  • Don't navigate away from the screen or perform other actions during the download process, as this will cancel the download.
  • Downloads taking longer than six minutes are automatically canceled. Try to reinitiate the download at least once, and if the error persists, the workaround is to download each item individually.
  • There currently is no reporting for the downloaded agreements. If you discover that some agreements have not been downloaded, attempt the download process again.

Best practices

Use well-tested templates for your base documents. This is particularly critical if you have multiple recipients. A few rounds of field-level testing to ensure the fields are properly assigned and capturing the correct content with useful validations takes significantly less time than canceling hundreds of individual agreements.

When building your templates, use meaningful field names so your reporting returns meaningful column headers. 

Configuration considerations with regard to Data Governance

Send in Bulk has a property called the "roll-up" that dictates how many notifications the sender receives with regard to the number of child agreements created by the SiB template. The default value is three, meaning the sender is only notified when three or fewer child agreements are generated. The roll-up setting isn't exposed to customers and may only be altered by the Acrobat Sign support team.

Data Governance dictates how soon an agreement is deleted from the Acrobat Sign system after it reaches a terminal status (Complete, Canceled, or Expired).

Customers who need to interact with completed agreements sent through a Send in Bulk process may want to extend the roll-up number (possibly to an "unlimited" value) to ensure they receive the "Completed" notifications of child agreements before they are deleted automatically from the system by Data Governance.

Tip:

It may be worth investigating the Power Automate integration to automate any post-completion activities to reduce both the manual work of users and to safeguard against gaps where an agreement might be lost to data governance rules.

Things to know

  • The new Send in Bulk interface is still in development, and more options are anticipated in future releases (e.g., additional authentication methods, agreement-defined CC'd parties, agreement-defined reminders).
  • The option for Sender Signs First found in the classic version of Send in Bulk is currently not in the new version but is expected in a future release for the manual process. Customers that are using the CSV upload method must add the sender to the CSV as a recipient in each record where the sender must sign.
  • Changing the group selector does not change the logo on the sender's page. The subsequent emails and signing experience do use the correct logo for the group from which the agreement is sent.
  • Canceling all child agreements of a Send in Bulk transaction at the (parent) template level is only possible if no child agreements have been signed. If any child agreements are signed, the Cancel activity is removed from the template's interface, and existing agreements must be canceled at the agreement level. 
  • The CSV file option has a lot of optional fields, but only an email is required. Getting familiar with the CSV process will make the more advanced field options (like merge fields) less daunting and open up the more valuable possibilities that the CSV offers.

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