Starter workflow for creating self-signed PDF agreements. If you’re working on becoming GDPR compliant, we wrote a quick guide on how you can get prepared.

PactMaker spins up a website with a form that lets your customers self-sign PDF agreements. After each agreement is signed, it sends an email with a copy of the PDF using Postmark. PactMaker is built with node.js, express, and EJS templating.

Configuration

Create an environment variable file(.env) in the project root with the following variables:

POSTMARK_SERVER_TOKEN=''
POSTMARK_FROM_ADDRESS=''
INTERNAL_EMAIL_RECIPIENTS=''
INTERNAL_EMAIL_SUBJECT=''
SIGNEE_EMAIL_SUBJECT=''
TITLE=''

POSTMARK_SERVER_TOKEN

Server tokens can be found under the credentials tab on your Postmark server.

POSTMARK_FROM_ADDRESS

The email address you want to send the email from. You must verify your domain or create a valid Sender Signature on Postmark.

INTERNAL_EMAIL_RECIPIENTS

Comma-separated list of email address you want to send the PDF agreement to.

INTERNAL_EMAIL_SUBJECT

The subject line of the email that gets sent to your team. Available variables: <%= company %>, <%= name %>, <%= role %>, and <%= email %>.

SIGNEE_EMAIL_SUBJECT

The subject line of the email that gets sent to the person who just signed the agreement. Available variables: <%= company %>, <%= name %>, <%= role %>, and <%= email %>.

TITLE

The name of your company or app. This will appear on the page header and footer.

Get started

Before you get started, make sure you have an environment variable file(see above) and that Node.js and npm is installed.

• In terminal, run npm install
• Run npm start or heroku local to run the project locally
• By default, npm start uses port 3000 and heroku local uses port 5000.

Email templates

The email content for the signee and internal email can be found under /emails. Templates are rendered using EJS. Available variables: <%= company %>, <%= name %>, <%= role %>, and <%= email %>.

Agreement template

The agreement PDF template can be found at /views/agreement.ejs. PactMaker comes with basic styles for presenting different signatures.

Autogenerated example agreement

It’s important to let your customers preview the agreement before signing it. PactMaker automatically generates an example agreement at the root URL so that you can link to it. Example values can be found in examples.json.