How to Embed Document Signing

Problem

You want your end users (clients, candidates, employees) to view and sign PandaDoc documents directly inside your application, without being redirected to the PandaDoc website.

Prerequisites

• A document in document.sent status (see How to Send a Document via API)
• The end user's browser supports postMessage

Solution

Step 1: Create a document and send it

Create a document using any creation method, wait for it to reach document.draft status, then send it with silent: true to skip email notifications:

POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{document_id}/send

{ "silent": true }

See Understanding Asynchronous Document Creation for details on waiting for draft status.

Step 2: Create a document session

Generate a signing session for a recipient:

POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{document_id}/session

{
  "recipient": "[email protected]",
  "lifetime": 90000
}

The response returns a session id that you use to embed the document.

Step 3: Embed the signing experience

Use the pandadoc-signing library for a type-safe integration with region support:

import { Signing } from "pandadoc-signing";

const signing = new Signing(
  "signing-container",
  {
    sessionId: "your-session-id-here",
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
  },
  {
    region: "com", // Optional: 'com' or 'eu'
  }
);

await signing.open();

📘

Legacy Manual Approach

If you have an existing integration using HTML iframes and JavaScript event listeners, see the Legacy Manual Approach documentation.

Step 4: Track signing events (optional)

Use the signing instance's event methods to respond to viewer activity. The library provides events such as document.loaded, document.completed, and document.exception.

For the complete event API, payload structures, and all available methods, see Signing Session Embed.

Important considerations

Signer identity

It is your responsibility to verify the identity of any user who views a document within the signing session. Some use cases legally require Identity Verification to be enabled.

Redirect configuration

Recipient redirect settings do not apply to embedded signing sessions. Use the document.completed event to handle redirection in your application.

Related

• Understanding the Document Workflow Lifecycle -- how embedded signing fits the overall lifecycle
• Signing Session Embed -- complete library API reference
• Embedded Editing -- embed the full document editor
• Embedded Sending -- embed field placement on PDFs
• Embedded Editing/Signing Playground -- try it without an account