Updated User Interface and Signing Improvements
Safe4 has made significant updates to its signing experience and the user interface to make it easier and faster for users to share and exchange information securely and with a full audit trail. Everything you do today works the same way; it’s faster, cleaner, and now works properly on mobile.
What’s New: Refreshed user interface, improved mobile support, signatures in documents and simpler watermarking.
Safe4 has provided secure document exchange for over 16 years. The system has deliberately followed a familiar folders and files approach to displaying the contents you want to share with your internal users, business partners and clients. Earlier this year we made some significant performance improvements and some minor cosmetic changes – including a new logo and colour scheme. This was always planned to be a first step of a much larger update.
We are now ready to release the next phase of updates to the system. This release is a much larger set of visual and working changes and we wanted to give you a preview of what is coming shortly once final testing is completed in the next week or so.
User interface changes
General changes
The appearance of the user interface has been updated across all our pages to a more modern style to give you a fluid and simple user experience.
Depending on your permissions you can now more easily access the Folders, File Index, Client Users and Messages relating to the vault using the tabs in the banner.
The display of folders on the left is faster, and the state of open/closed folders and the current folder is remembered between sessions so you re-enter a vault exactly where you left it. In addition if the folder hierarchy is too narrow, it is possible to easily make it wider by simply dragging on the border between the tree and files. The system will remember exactly where you left this as well.
Functions relating to individual files continue to be on a drop down menu at the right of the file row, visible only when over the row to reduce clutter on the screen and make it easier to ensure you click the right row. Commands to act on multiple files are only displayed once files are selected instead of getting a prompt telling you to select files first.
The ability to download multiple files from the vault is also improved, it can now handle larger numbers of files, and can also include folders, so it is now possible to download a folder and all of its children (and their children). This function has always been permission controlled, and permissions are fully respected at any depth of folders.
Home page
If you have access to multiple Providers, or multiple Vaults then the home page has been updated to show more information about each of the vaults on the screen. Clicking on a vault will show more statistics and details in a drawer on the right. To enter a vault you now simply click on the “Enter” button.
Messages
The messages screen has been improved and now can show messages that you have sent as well as those you have received. Messages about a specific vault are also now available directly in the vault page, by clicking on the Messages tab in the banner.
Mobile
Users are increasingly looking to work on mobile devices and we have also been working to improve the experience there as well, all of the screens now work reliably on mobile and follow familiar conventions for mobile applications.
Unlike the previous version almost the full functionality of Safe4 is available on a mobile interface, including all of the provider functionality, user management, permissions, folders, uploads and downloads.
Data Rooms and Watermarking
Safe4 is also a powerful tool for establishing secure Data Rooms. Safe4 already already let you watermark PDF files that have been viewed and downloaded.
This example has two watermarks on the page – the diagonal text in the background, and the footer containing the viewer’s name and the date the file was viewed.
We have simplified the configuration of the watermarking options – which can be text or images. Text can include the date and time, user details of the person viewing or downloading the file. This helps ensure that information is clearly marked when it is downloaded and improves the security position for the most sensitive of transactions.
The above example shows the configuration of the “For internal use only” text on the background of the page.
In addition to watermarking it is also possible to password protect files that are downloaded for extra security, and to control what can be done with the files once downloaded, for example to disable printing, or copying of content out of the documents.
Watermarking is applied on individual folders and different folders can have one or more watermarking options applied giving you very fine control that is centrally managed and is easy to configure.
Watermarking is applied to files however you access them, using the Web UI, on mobile, over WebDAV or using the multiple file download feature so you can be assured that your content is protected.
Signing improvements
Signatures can now be placed directly within the document, not just on an appended page – one of your most-requested features.
Safe4 has supported digital signatures for many years. The signing system is very powerful and gives you the ability to invite one or more people to sign one or more documents. You can control whether people sign at any time, or you can specify an order for them to sign. Documents can be signed individually, or as a batch. Once everyone has signed the signatures are placed on a new page which is appended to the end of the document. For some time Safe4 has supported people uploading a scan of their signature – and this is used on the signing page if present.
Feedback however has been that it can be confusing to setup and one of our most requested features is that the system allows signatures to be embedded in the document itself instead of being on a final appended page. This update brings this major enhancement, as well as making the whole process simpler for the person requesting signatures and the person being asked to sign.
A key enhancement is the new Signing Requests Received page, which collects all of the documents a user has been requested to sign.
The improved signing system now allows you to place signatures into the pages of the document itself, when setting up a signing request simply indicate where you want each person’s signature to go on the documents. Each person can sign in more than one place in a document if required. The same options for signing in order and sign as a batch still exist, but the final result is a document with signatures embedded in the actual document itself.
Summary
Safe4 is used in many different ways, and some of you reading this will only ever receive or sign documents that one of our customers has shared with you. If that’s you, there’s nothing you need to do – you can carry on exactly as you do today. And if you’d ever like to explore using it within your own organisation, you’re welcome to get in touch or take a look at what Safe4 offers.
We appreciate the support of all our users and hope these improvements make Safe4 easier, faster and more accessible to you and your clients on whatever devices they want to use. No action needed on your part, no migration and your logins and vaults are all unchanged.
