My employer would like to establish a web based application to allow authorized users to submit pdf documents that will be reviewed, digitally signed if necessary, and then moved offline into our existing CMS.
I've considered SharePoint (we have access to WSS 3.0), and Alfresco, but we aren't trying to create a document repository. We just need a document submission and workflow capability that is web based, as we want to avoid a solution that requires downloading pdf files to a client machine to be reviewed and signed, then uploaded back to the server.
The basic requirements are:
- When a document is uploaded, a unique document ID must be created and provided to the submitter (basically a document receipt).
- Send a notification that a document has been submitted so that it can be processed by the appropriate party ("recipient").
- If the submitted document is a digitally signed pdf, the digital signature must be capable of being verified online by the "recipient".
- If the submitted document requires a signature before further processing, then the "recipient" must be able to review and digitally sign the document online.
- signing credentials need to be stored online so the "recipient" can sign the document without having to use anything on the client machine other than the browser window.
- Once the document is processed (signature verified and/or signature added) by the "recipient," download the to the local network where it can then be moved into the CMS application.
- Provide the capability to produce a pdf online by filling out a form which can then be digitally signed online (I think the Fill PDF module may already meet this requirement).
We would prefer to use an open source solution (budgets are very tight), and I have some experience with Drupal, but online pdf manipulation is not an area with which I am familiar. In my research so far, I haven't found a PHP based option that seems to fit our needs. It seems that iText would work and I know there was an effort to port iText to PHP in order to create a Drupal iText module, but that may have been abandoned.
I'm hoping for some feedback on whether Drupal is a viable option for creating such a submission / workflow application, or if my time would be better spent focusing on a different platform, such as Java. Of course, if someone knows of an existing open source solution that would meet the above requirements, then I'd greatly appreciate being directed to such a resource.
Comments
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Drupal can definitely handle the submission and workflow of uploading and processing pdf files-- you can even process pdf files and display them as images to users with the appropriate permissions. Not sure about the digital signature though-- maybe you could use something like setasign for that.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback. Initially we were planning on applying the digital signatures on the local client, but that means software has to be installed on the client along with downloading, signing, saving and then uploading the pdf files. Signing within the browser would eliminate those issues, however, it seems that online signing has some drawbacks as well. Setasign is something I did run across previously and am taking another look at that software.
Why not just use the digital
Why not just use the digital signature features of Adobe Acrobat?
I’ve run into similar issues
I’ve run into similar issues where the default field setup just feels a bit clunky for the end user. If you're looking for a simple way to let people generate a clean signature file to upload or use as a placeholder while testing the layout, I found Digital Signature Maker pretty handy. It’s a lot faster than messing with heavy modules just for a basic signature graphic.