Assigning Roles to a Template

What a role is

A role is a placeholder for a real person, defined at the template level (for example "Client", "Manager", "HR Rep"). You place fields on the document and assign each one to a role. Later, when someone actually sends an envelope from the template, they fill in a real name and email address for each role — SignFlow does not know who the real signers are until then.

Recipient types

Each role has a type that controls what that person can do:

• Signer ("Needs to Sign") — must complete all fields assigned to them, including any signature/initial fields.
• Approver ("Needs Approval") — reviews and can interact with fields, similar to a signer, without necessarily signing.
• Editor — can fill in fields on behalf of the process.
• CC ("Receives Copy") — doesn't interact with any fields, just receives the final document by email once everyone else is done.
• Viewer — can view the document but can't fill in anything.

Signing order

You also decide how roles are ordered relative to each other:

• Parallel — everyone is emailed at the same time and can sign in any order.
• Sequential — roles complete one after another; the next person isn't notified until the previous one finishes.
• Mixed — some roles share the same step (parallel with each other) while other steps happen in sequence, useful for "both approvers sign at once, then the manager signs last" style flows.

Roles and their order are set once on the template and reused by every envelope created from it — you only choose the actual people (name/email) each time you send.