I have taken a deeper look at PD’s handling of cloud integration and documents and would like product managers and engineers have a deeper look at this issue. We all need to deliver lawful, sustainable, and user-friendly services. To meet these goals, some work seems necessary.
- By default, PD stores any documents created or uploaded to PD on its standard cloud services (I believe AWS). Documents can be accessed from the PD application. As of now (correct me if I am wrong), there is no automated document backup scenario that users can control. You can address documents’ hyperlinks via PD standard API, but not download anything automatically.
- PD has introduced a feature called “Smart Docs” allowing users to prepare template-based documents (contracts etc.) which can be automatically populated with contact and deal data and integrate in a very nice e-signing process. With Smart Docs, you can deliver a fully digital contracting process. For this to work, users need to integrate their Microsoft OneDrive or, alternatively, Google Drive accounts. These accounts will hold directories with the templates and automatically created folders, labelled with the clients’ full name, in which files (contracts) are stored under their file name. Or rather they not, because while those folders do contain the Word file with the clients’ data, while the signed pdf and audit trails files are not automatically transferred to this location. This really needs attention, for obvious reasons.
- There are third party applications, e.g. Pandadoc, which offer not only a suite for e-signatures... (More)
