Quick start: Create document and request signature by email

This API how-to will guide you through requesting signatures or data input from your clients, employees, or partners.

And here's text step-by-step text instruction 👇

1. Create your free sandbox account

If you haven't yet created your Sandbox account, it's time. It's fast and free forever. Here's a quick link

2. Verify your email address

Check your inbox and follow the confirmation link to activate your account. This is essential for the ability to make API calls. Please note the email may fall into Spam. If you can't find it, you always may resend it from your Profile

3. Create or select a template

To create a document, you can either upload a file or create it from a custom Pandadoc template.
You may select template from the pre-made ones, or create one from scratch.

Templates cannot be created via API, so first, you need to configure a template and only then proceed with API document creation.

Simple API Sample Document is the template we've prepared for you to test our API in a flash

4. Download our Postman collection

PandaDoc API Reference Postman collection to help you get started even faster.

5. Generate and copy Sandbox key

Go to the Configuration page and click button to generate a Sandbox key.

6. Authorize in Postman with Sandbox API key

The collection supports both API keys and OAuth 2.0 authentication. Sandbox works with the Sandbox API key only.
Select the header you need in the request that you are going to use:

7. Pre-set other variables in Environments settings:

Template ID

You may get the template by visiting the Template page. Just copy the template UUID from the URL.
We encourage you to use the sample template first.

Recipient email

Enter the test email to check the incoming document.

Click Save in Environment settings.
Now you're good to go!

8. Go to “Create document from PandaDoc template” endpoint

Select “Documents API” folder -> POST Create document from PandaDoc template.
As you can see, almost all template data is prefilled with the sample payload.
The Template ID and Recipient email will be filled out from the Environment settings.

9. Click Send and wait for the response

Once you see the "document.uploaded" status, you've sent the request successfully. Please keep in mind that document creation is an asynchronous operation, so you need to check for the status first before proceeding with the next steps

10. Check the Document status to make sure it’s created successfully

Document creation may take some time or even fail, so it's important you make sure it's ready for sharing.
Go to GET Document status and send a request to retrieve the status. Document data is inserted automatically by Postman collection.
Once you see "document.draft" status, it's success!

11. Send document

Once the document is created, you may proceed with sending it via email.
As previously, the document data will be inserted automatically

Voila! Your first Document has been created and sent via API.

You can check how it looks like on Documents tab:

All Sandbox documents are marked with "test" tag; and all documents created via API are marked with the respective tag.