Adobe Acrobat Sign partners with eOriginal to help organizations meet compliance and regulatory requirements by archiving important signed documents in a secure digital vault. Once a document is signed, eOriginal can securely vault it with the highest levels of protection and compliance in a wholly digital environment. Organizations can choose to archive all documents in a particular account, all documents initiated by a specific group (or a subset of users), or individual documents.

When a document is created, the original document uploaded to Acrobat Sign is considered the authoritative copy of the contract. The authoritative copy remains on the Adobe servers throughout the entire signature cycle. Once the signature cycle is complete, the authoritative copy is archived in the eOriginal vault, and the document becomes a legal instrument. A PDF copy of the document remains in Acrobat Sign, but it's watermarked with "Copy of Original" to indicate that the document vaulted by eOriginal is the only authentic version:

How vaulting works

Upon completion of the signature cycle, any transaction enabled for vaulting will trigger the eOriginal vaulting service to initiate the transfer of the authoritative copy. This is an asynchronous call-and-response process in which the vaulting service requests information from Acrobat Sign after receiving a notification, and Acrobat Sign provides the content requested.

These sequential requests happen in near real-time to ensure that the authoritative copy is stored with the vaulting service when the signature process is complete.

After the final signature is applied, the following steps occur in the order presented:

The audit report is updated with the event "Document ready to vault"
- Because the audit report must be completed when an agreement reaches a terminal state, and the vaulting process occurs only after the signature process is complete, it is impossible to update the audit report to indicate a completed vaulting process. The history of the transaction events (stored on Acrobat Sign servers) will indicate the completion of the vaulting process.
The document and all related images are watermarked.
- One unwatermarked copy of the final document is retained for the eventual upload to the eVaulting provider.
- At this point, only the eVaulting provider can retrieve the unwatermarked version using a verified access token
The vaulting service is notified via ping to the Vault Callback that the document is ready for vaulting.
- Acrobat Sign sends the vaulting service a unique identifier for the document, called the Document Capability Key.
The vaulting service requests the document audit trail to create a profile for the document.
Acrobat Sign provides the audit trail
- The audit trail includes the complete record of what happened during the signature process, including the identity of the signers, the date and time of each event, the IP address, and location information (if available).
The vaulting service requests the unwatermarked document.
Acrobat Sign provides the unwatermarked document to the vaulting service.
The vaulting service confirms receipt of the document and notifies Acrobat Sign that the vaulting process is complete.
The unwatermarked copy of the final contract is purged from the Acrobat Sign system.

Note:

The vaulting service only involves the document's final (authoritative) copy and the related images.

The interim versions of the document (before the final signature) are not part of the vaulting process.

These unofficial versions remain on the Acrobat Sign servers in an unwatermarked state unless they are deleted through some other process (such as a retention policy or GDPR action).

At this point, Acrobat Sign only stores a watermarked copy of the final document. Thumbnail images (as viewed in Acrobat Sign) are also watermarked to ensure that there is only one unwatermarked version which is in the possession of the Vaulting service.

Once the document is vaulted, Adobe no longer maintains any unwatermarked copies of the final document.

How users configure an agreement to be vaulted

The option to configure an agreement to vault or not is only visible to the users after the configuration of the service within the account is complete.

Users can control if an agreement is to be vaulted by checking or unchecking the Vault this agreement option in the Agreement settings section of the agreement configuration interface (Options in the classic experience).

The default value for the Vault this agreement option is defined in the service's configuration. Acrobat Sign support can help change the value if needed.

The Request Signature page highlighting the "Vault this agreement" setting in an enabled state.

Note:

Modifying an agreement that is flagged for vaulting can only be done in the classic Send page environment. Agreements originally created in the Request Signature experience will load the classic Send page if they are opened for modification.

Modifying an agreement flagged to vault in the new Request Signature environment will be introduced to the new Request Signature page in an upcoming release.

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e-Vaulting with eOriginal

Archiving Adobe Acrobat Sign documents through eOriginal vaulting services

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How vaulting works

How users configure an agreement to be vaulted

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