The university recently signed an enterprise services agreement with Barracuda Networks for a new e-signature service called U-M SignNow. The agreement covers the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses, and Michigan Medicine.
“The first service pilot has begun already,” says Bob Sabourin, U-M SignNow project lead. “Enrolled participants include the Alumni Association, Athletics, College of Engineering, Conference and Event Services, Michigan Medicine, Shared Services Center, and U-M Flint.”
U-M SignNow is a cloud-based service that allows users to prepare, send, sign, and return documents from any device. Nearly 50 users involving 5,000 document transactions are expected to use the service during the initial pilot.
According to Sabourin, the second pilot—beginning this fall—will see an increased scale of the service, encompassing more units, departments, and users. The plan is to fine-tune compliance with accessibility standards as well as integration with document workflows and content management systems.
The addition of 150 new users during pilot two will bring total participation to 200 users, representing 40,000 or more document transactions expected annually.
“During the pilot phases of U-M SignNow, the project team will limit communications about service availability to key business partners and IT community members,” says Sabourin.
The service will carry the MBeta brand, which is the recommended university brand that services in pilot now use. The goal is to do university-wide communications with the full brand in early 2018, once both pilot phases have been successfully executed and the service is operating at full capacity.
Participants and those interested in learning more can visit the project website for service, registration, support, and training information. Questions the site does not answer should be sent to the U-M SignNow project team at eSignHelp@umich.edu or Bob Sabourin at rsabes@umich.edu.
