Secure Seamless Signatures
TLDR;
Collabora Online now supports electronic PDF signing, bringing secure and legally recognized document authentication to your collaborative workflows. We’ve taken a major step forward by integrating eID Easy, enabling Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES)—the strongest form of electronic signatures.
Key Benefits of PDF Signing in Collabora Online
With this new feature, you can:
• Create legally recognized electronic signatures within your documents.
• Ensure privacy—only the document hash is sent to the external service, keeping your data secure.
• Seamlessly integrate with platforms like Nextcloud without requiring additional installations beyond Nextcloud AIO.
• Enhance security by combining signing with features like Secure View.
• Use WYSIWYG visual signing to place a visible signature widget anywhere in your PDF.
While our sample integration focuses on Nextcloud, the feature can be extended to other platforms as well.
How It Works
Step 1: Read-Write Digital Signatures Dialog
We upgraded the signature viewer in Collabora Online to support read-write digital signatures, maintaining compatibility with collaborative editing. Key enhancements include:
• Automatic signing of document macros to prevent errors in the signing order.
• Asynchronous signature removal, allowing users to confirm before deleting a signature.
• Improved UI that reflects signature status dynamically.
• User-specific signing certificates to prevent unauthorized signatures within the same document.
Step 2: Automated Signature Configuration
With WOPI extensions, integrators can configure signature settings at the user level and pass them to Collabora Online only when needed. We also introduced a new UI button in the notebook bar, allowing users to add signatures even to previously unsigned documents.
To ensure reliability, we introduced Cypress tests and have updated our SDK documentation, making it easier for developers to integrate digital signing into their applications, including Nextcloud.
Step 3: Enabling PDF Signing
Having established digital signing for ODF documents, we turned our focus to PDF – a format widely used for finalising documents. This led to the integration of eID Easy, which enables privacy-conscious electronic signing through a five-step process:
1. Extract the document hash locally.
2. Send the hash to the electronic signing service.
3. Open a popup for user authentication via passport, ID, or another secure method.
4. Retrieve the signed hash from the service.
5. Embed the signed hash back into the PDF with a stable timestamp.
This approach ensures that the signing process remains secure, verifiable, and compliant with electronic signature regulations.
Addressing the Complexity of Digital Signing
Traditionally, digital signing has been complex, requiring users to navigate certificate authorities, PEM files, and cryptographic security settings. Our goal was to simplify this process while maintaining robust security.
We started by implementing digital signing for ODF files with an intuitive signing dialog. Now, we’ve expanded this capability to PDFs while ensuring that user privacy is respected—your documents remain private, with only cryptographic hashes shared externally.
User Interface Enhancements
To make electronic signing intuitive, we added a new option under the Insert menu, allowing users to:
• Choose their country and an available eID provider.
• Both in-context and redirect-based providers are supported (similar to online payment flows).
• Complete the signing process without leaving the Collabora Online editor.
Whilst the user interface for this process is all embedded within Collabora Online, sensitive credentials, such as the eID signing “secret” is never sent to the Collabora Online frontend, but remains securely on the server, following best security practices.
Visual Signing: Drag-and-Drop Signatures
We also introduced a visual signature, as a visual confirmation of the digital signature enabling users to:
1. Insert a signature widget onto any page of a PDF.
2. Complete the signing process with the usual eID authentication popup.
This enhances usability, making it easy to create visible, legally binding signatures within documents.
Ready to Try It?
Collabora Online can now integrate electronic signing – test it today! Want to integrate electronic signing into your application? Contact us for support, or check out our updated SDK documentation to get started!
