How To Add an Electronic Signature in Google Forms?

You can be an accounting firm, a law firm, or even a student organization conducting an experiment that requires data collection. The most common way for the process to move forward is to make a Google form. A Google form is the most common way of data collection and analysis since it records all responses on an Excel sheet for easy accessibility.

Each day, there is another reason for you to collect information, from hiring, experiment data, polls, or just a simple question-and-answer game. Teachers have also moved into using forms to conduct multiple-choice tests. The easiest way is to circulate a Google form to collect all the information. Sometimes data also needs to be verified when collected, for that, a method would be to use Digital Signature On Google Forms.

What are Digital Signatures?

Digital Signatures are mathematical techniques that can authenticate any sort of digital document, software, or message to establish its validity. It is similar to a handwritten signature, just with far more inherent security. The signer can solve the problem of impersonation and tampering by using Digital Signatures. They can be used to trace the origin, date, and the signer's IP address as well as to acknowledge informed consent of the person signing.

A Digital Signature is considered legally binding in a lot of countries. It aids in the time-saving of manual labor of physical signatures, copy storage, and exchange of documents. Cost savings happen for businesses by reduction of paper, storage space, and management of documents. It also aids in traceability by digitally storing information lessening the possibility of misplacement or misinformation by the record keeper. Digital signatures are mainly used in healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, and cryptocurrencies.

How do Digital Signatures work?

Digital Signatures are based on asymmetric cryptography called public key cryptography where two linked keys are generated using a public key algorithm when a digital signature is made, one is a public key and the other is a private one. Through this, the creator encrypts the signer’s data by encrypting it with the private key and the data can only be decrypted with the public key.

If the public key does not work to decrypt the data, then we know that there is a problem with the document or the signature, this whole process becomes the authentication of the signature. Digital Signatures require all parties to place trust in the person creating the private key to the digital signature. If anyone else has access to the private key, it can be used to create fraudulent signatures and threaten the security of confidential data. The Certificate Authority issues digital signatures and is a trusted third party that issues, authenticates, and maintains digital signatures and removes the possibility of fake digital certificates of signatures.

Why do you use Google Forms?

Google Forms is the easiest and most free way to collect data of any kind by customizing the form to your liking. It also removes the possibility of paper wastage and the arduous process of collecting data by printing forms and circulating them by hand. Data is also collected in one place without the possibility of misplacing it which always happens with data collected on paper.

How do you verify the validity of the Google Forms?

The easiest way to verify anything is to have the owner’s signature on it. This is a simple guide for you to add a Digital Signature On Google Forms to verify the owner and the owners to verify the signature of the responder. Just like pdf signatures, Google Forms also has the option to add a signature on the form through a third-party signature app like BoloForms Signature.

How to sign a Google Form?

Since the electronic signature add-on for Google Forms does not have a native signature-adding feature, we normally use third-party add-ons to add a Digital Signature on it. Here is a simple task guide to help you add your Signature For Google Forms using BoloForms.

• Open your Google form and select the puzzle piece on the top right corner of your screen.
• Select Add Ons and type “Signatures from BoloForms” in the search box, select it, and install it.
• Then, you move on to adding the number of signatures you need, clicking on Multiple Signatures or Add Single Signature if you only need it from one person. It will ask you to fill in an acceptance message as well as a greeting message to the people who you are sharing the form with.
• Once the form is received by the recipient, they see a numeric and alphabetical code in place of the signature with a link on the top left corner of the screen that redirects them to a signing page, where they can sign the form and submit it.
• On the form creator’s page of Google Forms, under the responses tab, there is a spreadsheet that records the responses of the form recipients.
• There is a separate column on the spreadsheet that links the signature included Google form, which can then be used to print the signatures of the recipients with the form.
• This entire process creates a Digital Signature on Google Forms for each recipient and allows access to the creator, thus easing the process of collecting Signatures For Google Forms.

What are common templates for Google Forms to take Signatures?

BoloForms offers four categories of templates Human Resources, School Forms, Sales, and Finance, which offer you customizable templates for different purposes, like appointments, complaints, expense reports, surveys and other templates that might be required in the type of setting you are in. There are multiple options to choose from and you can easily customize all questions and options according to your choices.

The human resource category provides forms measuring multiple employee-related issues and complaints that start from the onboarding of an employee to product surveys of the company to help with the growth of the products of the business.

The Sales and Finance categories explore all the money-related templates like invoice forms and reimbursement claim forms

The School forms include event approvals and field trip permissions for the students.

BoloForms includes general templates for all kinds of purposes for all firms to use templates according to what they need.

What would be the possible problems with this process?

The installation process for the app is arduous and clunky, as well as the fact that it might not be as foolproof as other apps that allow digital signatures. Electronic signature in Google Forms does not provide the identity of the person signing the form in any way and neither does it guarantee the protection of the legal and private information of the user.

If you do not receive any confirmation about how the signature was created or even an added graphic to prove that the person did indeed sign the form, you risk collecting fraudulent e-signatures, like false claims of not knowing what they were signing by the signees or people backing out of contracts.

How to add a signature in Google Forms?

To collect signatures inside your Google forms you can make use of the Signature extension by BoloForms. It is an electronic signature add-on for Google Forms.

Step 1: Install the Signature extension

Step 2: Add the extension to your Google Forms

Step 3: Add the signature field as the last question of your form by syncing your form with BoloForms

How to use Google Forms for important data?

Signature For Google Forms is not the only way to work with signed forms for data collection. It also might not be the best option if you are collecting legally binding data to protect the privacy of responders as well as the firm.

BoloForms Signature allows you to work on Google Forms itself to work with your data, especially when it comes to Signature For Google Forms as that would be a verification of the responder.

All in all, data collection has become an important part of our lives and its verification is just as important, the use of Digital Signature On Google Forms is just as important to help validate your data as well as keep an easy track of your information.