Generic/Departmental Accounts Please note that only the generic eID owner may request account creation or elevation. As with all standard end-user accounts on the VCU DocuSign domain account ID#11599208, there is no cost associated with a generic/departmental account. Generic account requests must be submitted by the eID owner at https://go.vcu.edu/ramscentral using one of the DocuSign Request forms. Please thoroughly review the Record Retention/Envelope Purge process and plan for the lifecycle of your DocuSign agreements and contracts. If the generic eID owner leaves VCU, the abandoned generic account will be CLOSED, and all templates/PowerForms owned by the account will be purged from DocuSign. Generic eID owners are urged to transfer ownership of the generic eID prior to leaving VCU. If templates are purged, there is no restoration possible, and the affected department will have to recreate them manually. Ensure that your generic eID’s email account is monitored by someone. If your generic account is the PowerForm sender, then the associated email account is the account that will receive email delivery failures, recipient questions or replies to email notifications, and notifications of any recipient use of the Comments feature of your DocuSign form. Your recipients must be able to contact a monitored account. Otherwise, ensure that you have valid contact information displayed on the form. Access, including Shared Access, to the Generic Account It is expected that only the generic eID owner would be signing in directly (that is, by using the generic eID and eID password) to the generic DocuSign account. DocuSign is a Category I system: https://knowledgebase.vcu.edu/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?interface=sa&solutionid=250212180646427 “4. Category I Information Authentication and Access Requirements:b. Access to Category I information must be authorized by data steward or designee and authenticated by unique credentials assigned to each individual.”
Computer and Network Resources Use, https://vcu.public.doctract.com/doctract/documentportal/08DA32A63EDBCB19E7EB6A357AF5AB2F Access to VCU DocuSign is via the VCU Central Authentication Service using the eID and eID password. Sharing the generic eID password would grant access to all VCU systems accessible to the generic account, not just to DocuSign. Do not share the generic eID password. Other designated individuals who require direct access to the account must use Shared Access. The generic eID owner may control Shared Access to the account through the Preferences of the generic’s DocuSign account. Please review the VCU DocuSign Training Roadmap for more information regarding Shared Access. It is important to bear in mind that all correspondence sent from a generic account is presumed to originate from the generic eID owner. The generic eID owner is the responsible party for all envelopes sent from the generic account.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security rule, among other regulations, requires unique user identification. This is relevant to you if: - your department is one of VCU's HIPAA covered entities
- your form is collecting/sharing protected health information (PHI)
- you are collecting and executing forms containing Category I data in general
If the generic account is assigned to an individual and not shared with a group, then this may be OK, as we can still associate DocuSign activity from this account to a unique individual. However, the generic account cannot be a shared account. If the account is shared and the DocuSign form has HIPAA-related or other Category I data, acceptable uses are: - as the initial Sender of envelopes to send on behalf of your department
- as the designated Sender account of PowerForms
- as the owner of templates
- capturing the completed document into another system for long-term storage
- API integrations
If the account is shared and the DocuSign form has HIPAA-related or Category I data, prohibited actions are: - monitoring envelope status
- correcting, approving or voiding envelopes
- accessing or downloading PowerForm data
Why would I use a generic/departmental account for DocuSign? Departmental business can be centrally managed/accessed in a departmental/generic account. This is not possible if each individual is issuing departmental envelopes from their personal VCU DocuSign domain accounts. If each individual in your department is sending envelopes for signature for departmental business, then only the individual who sent the envelope can check the status or issue a Correction, and any staffing changes would then result in the department having to request a custody transfer to gain access to departmental envelopes from those individual senders. VCU DocuSign administration does not recommend Shared Access to a personal DocuSign account, because that account may contain a wide variety of personal information. Shared Access to individual, personal accounts is rather problematic, given that shared access grants access to all envelopes in the account. Thus, any other personal business (payroll, HR, financial aid, grievances, disciplinary actions, research consent, etc.) that you have sent directly from or received in your DocuSign account, or that you will submit/complete in the future, would be accessible by anyone to whom Shared Access is granted. Be mindful of the sort of information (SSNs, bank account information, class grades, home phones/addresses, grant applications, etc.) that could conceivably be exposed in any envelope in your account, which includes all of the information you might submit by attachment to a DocuSign envelope (family financial information, health or disability information, thesis, religious information, personal statements in various applications, etc.), or that your student child might submit via DocuSign and address to your @vcu.edu address. Bear in mind that all completed envelope contents (e.g., documents/attachments) issued by VCU DocuSign accounts are only retained for 18 months. The envelopes themselves, however, which include sender information, recipients, email subject, history, and Certificate of Completion remain in DocuSign permanently for legal purposes. How does my department get a generic/departmental eID? Your department may already have a central email account used for departmental business (e.g., a central contact email address on your department’s web page), and your department may elect to use that account for DocuSign correspondence. As an alternative, you may wish to specifically request a generic/departmental account for managing departmental DocuSign correspondence. If you need to request a generic account, please review the information here: https://collaborate.vcu.edu/generic-accounts/ How do envelopes become accessible to the generic account? There are two main options your department could employ to have departmental envelopes in your departmental account. - If you are using PowerForms, change the PowerForm sender in any PowerForms you create/have created to the generic's account so that any envelopes generated by the PowerForms will be sent by, and completed notices delivered to, the generic account. Please remember that this also means that every email delivery failure generated by the PowerForm will be sent to the generic email address, and that every failure will be seen in the generic’s DocuSign account. The generic owner (or personnel who have been granted the specific level of access via Shared Access) will have to issue any Correction on such envelopes.
- In the signing order for your envelopes and templates, add a role of Receives a Copy for your departmental account. Once all signers have completed the signing process, a copy of the envelope will be available in your departmental account.
Note that if the generic eID owner has provided Shared Access to other individuals (e.g., departmental staff, student workers, etc.), then anything sent while using Shared Access to the account would also originate from--and be centrally managed in--the generic account. How do I transfer ownership of templates I’ve created to the generic account? Please review the information regarding Transfer of Template Ownership. I have a generic eID. How do I directly log into DocuSign with it? Please note that if you are attempting to log into your generic account, but you have already logged into any VCU system under your personal eID in the same browser, the VCU Central Authentication Service will likely redirect you to your @vcu.edu DocuSign account and not to the generic address’ DocuSign account. This can also occur if you have stored your credentials in your usual browser. To confirm which account you have accessed, please click the profile icon in the upper right to verify the name of the account. As with personal DocuSign accounts, generic DocuSign accounts are created either by the generic eID owner signing into DocuSign using the generic eID and generic eID password for the first time, or by the generic eID owner submitting an IT request on the DocuSign Request Account form https://go.vcu.edu/ramscentral for the generic eID’s DocuSign account to be created (the generic eID must already exist). Please remember that the VCU DocuSign domain is @vcu.edu, not @vcuhealth.org or other formats. If signing into a VCU DocuSign generic account, you would use the eID@vcu.edu format. To log into your generic account, we recommend you use a different browser (for example, if you are currently signed into any VCU account--email, Banner, etc.--in Chrome using your personal eID, or if you have stored your personal eID credentials in Chrome, you will likely need to use Edge or Firefox or Opera to sign into your generic address’ DocuSign account). An incognito window may also work; however, if you have stored your personal eID credentials in the browser, then an incognito window may still direct you to your @vcu.edu account, and not to the generic’s. We recommend using a different browser from your usual browser to log into your generic account. For any issues regarding authentication or the VPN, please contact https://go.vcu.edu/ramscentral or 804-828-2227, as VCU DocuSign support cannot assist with authentication issues. Template Creation Permissions Requests for elevated access to create templates, PowerForms, and Bulk Send must be made by the generic eID’s owner. |
