Session Handling in Express

The purpose of this document is to help administrators and users better understand how Session Handling is used in the Express Platform.

What is Session Handling?

Session handling refers to a series of processes and features to manage multiple requests to update a single source of data. In the Express platform, Session Handling is employed to ensure that there is one single source of truth and prevent signatures or approvals from occurring on stale data.

Where does Express use Session Handling?

Workspace

Company Admins and Publishers initiate a Session upon logging into the Workspace. That session can be ended when one of the following occur:

• User clicks the Log Out button
• User initiates a session for a different user (ie, clicks on a signing link sent to another user)
• Initiates Open as Signer
• Inactivity

When your session has expired, you will be redirected to the Workspace login page and prompted to log in again.

 

Signing and Landing Page Viewers

Session handling is used in the Signing Viewers to prevent conflicts in data entry and signatures. This ensures that updates and signatures are made on the most recent version of document with a single source of truth.

The following dialog appears when a user has multiple windows open with the same document. If the user clicks Open Here, all other sessions with this document will be closed and users can proceed in the current window.

Clicking Cancel will redirect the user to an exit URL.

A Session can be closed due to a number of reasons to maintain data integrity and security:

• Logged out
• Inactive Session
• “Open Here” in the dialog above has been clicked from another window

When this occurs, the user will be informed with the following dialog and clicking Okay will redirect the user to an Exit URL. To access the document again, the user will have to reauthenticate again (ie, click the signing link in their Request to Sign email).

 

For Publishers and Company Admins:

The following dialog may appear for Publishers and Company Admins when opening Draft forms. This prevents multiple users from modifying a document.

When this dialog appears, it indicates which Publisher or Company Admin is also working on the same document. Users can click Edit Anyway to take over the transaction from the other user.

The other user will be prompted with the Warning: Session Timeout dialog above and will have to reopen the document from their Workspace to view the latest version. Unsaved work will be lost.

Alternatively, users can click Cancel and the current browser window will be redirected to the company’s exit URL.

 

Other Error Prevention Dialogs

Additional Warning dialogs may appear when a transaction is updated to prevent signatures or data entry on stale documents. These dialogs may appear for a Signer while they have the document open as a Publisher or Admin user makes up dates in the background.

A few examples can be found below.