Who is this article for?

Who are using Form Designer.

Administrator who has permission to design a form.

Release 57.5.0.0

The Annotate (Signature) field in Forms Designer now supports a mandatory setting, allowing administrators and form designers to enforce signature capture before report submission or closure.

Enabling the mandatory signature setting

To enable the mandatory signature behaviour:

1. Open Forms Designer and select the Annotate (Signature) field in your form.
2. Turn on the Mandatory setting from the field toolbar.

3. Publish or use the form as normal.

   

Note: By default, the field is set to Not Mandatory. If you do not enable it, the Annotate (Signature) field remains optional.

Understanding how the feature behaves

The mandatory signature setting affects different areas of the platform:

Forms Designer: A new Mandatory toggle is available on the Annotate field toolbar, allowing designers to decide whether a signature is optional or required.

Report form: A mandatory signature field displays an asterisk indicator, making it clear to end users that the signature is required.

Validation: If no signature is completed, submission is blocked and a validation message is shown, preventing reports from being submitted with missing required signatures.

Close Report flow: Missing mandatory annotation is included in the existing validation and warning flow, prompting users to resolve the issue before closing the report.

Understanding what this improves

• Stronger compliance controls: Required signatures can now be enforced at form level
• Better data quality: Reports are less likely to be submitted with incomplete sign-off information
• Consistent user experience: The Annotate (Signature) field now follows the same mandatory behaviour pattern as other required fields in CORA
• Clearer validation: Users receive immediate feedback when a required signature is missing

Tip: This feature is especially useful for workflows that require formal acknowledgement, approval, inspection sign-off, or operational confirmation.

Configuring both required settings correctly

Two settings work together to enforce a signature. For a signature to be enforced, both must be switched on for the same field:

• Annotation — enables signature capture on the field
• Mandatory — makes that signature required before submitting or closing

Important: If Mandatory is switched on but Annotation is not, the field has no signature to validate, so the report can still be submitted or closed. This is deliberate behaviour that allows you to submit the report rather than blocking submission. This is a form setting that an administrator can change. Web and mobile behave the same way.

Recommended check: After enabling Mandatory on a form, also ensure Annotation is enabled. This confirms both settings are correctly paired.

The field indicators use the following colour coding:

• 🔴 Red: This field is mandatory
• 🟢 Green: This field is an annotation image