Glossary

The words this industry uses, defined plainly and without the marketing.

• Audit trailThe chronological record of everything that happened to an agreement, from upload to completion.
• Certificate of completionThe summary artefact attached to a finished agreement — participants, timestamps, identity checks and a hash of the result.
• Digital signatureA specific cryptographic mechanism — not a synonym for electronic signature, though it is used as one constantly.
• eIDASThe EU framework for electronic identification and trust services, and the source of the simple, advanced and qualified tiers.
• Electronic signatureAny electronic data attached to a record and used by a signer with intent to sign it.
• EnvelopeThe container for one signing transaction: its documents, its people, its fields and its order.
• ESIGN ActThe 2000 US federal statute establishing that a signature is not invalid merely because it is electronic.
• Evidence packageEverything needed to check a completed agreement, in one folder, without the vendor.
• HashA fixed-length fingerprint of a file, which changes completely if a single byte does.
• Identity assuranceHow confident you are that the person who signed is the person you named — and how much friction you accepted to get there.
• Recipient roleWhat a person on an envelope is being asked to do — sign it, approve it, or simply be sent the result.
• Signing orderThe sequence recipients are asked to act in — all at once, one after another, or depending on what an earlier person filled in.
• WebhookAn HTTP callback your systems receive when something happens to a document.

Every definition here describes what the term means and what Pactlyra actually does about it. Where the honest answer is "it depends on your jurisdiction", it says so.