Electronic signatures

Summary

The Regional Operations Center (ROC) must verify the valid signatures on documents before Microsoft can accept them.

Details

At Microsoft, we're always working towards improvement and compliance. As part of our continuous improvement process, we identified a need to enforce digital signature verification to assure compliance. As a result, you might see requests for you to provide updated signatures that can be verified for some of the documentation that you submitted. To provide you with clarity, we compiled the following guidance. We'd like to ask our partners to help and apply the same level of assurance. The ROC can verify the valid signature on documents that Microsoft can accept. The following are acceptable types of signatures:

• Wet signature: This method refers to a signature done via "ink on paper" that can then be scanned and submitted via email in soft copy format or sent as a hard copy.

• Electronic signature by a trusted e-signature platform (preferably, Adobe Sign, DocuSign, or any other widely known platform): In some situations, we're unable to verify all signatures in the e-signature platform. This is why we'd like you to download the audit trail at the time of each signing event and submit this with your final document.

Microsoft cannot accept any of the following signatures:

• Images inserted in a PDF
• Signatures done with Paint or any other drawing tool
• Other signatures that have no verifiable audit trails

Note: The ROC received documentation where different signing methods were used in the same package. This causes verification issues. We recommend agreeing on and using the same signing method for the whole package to avoid future problems. If signing methods are mixed, provide the audit trail for each electronic signature.

Next Steps

Make sure to submit your documentation with acceptable and verifiable signatures.