Addressing signers

You may address signers for portal flow in two different ways:

  1. By email and/or SMS

  2. By national identity number

The signed document will only include signatures from the addressed signers, so remember to include signers from the sender side as well, if applicable.

Caution

How you choose to address the signer(s) affects the content and appearance of the signature(s) in the resulting signed document.

1. Addressing signers by e-mail / SMS

When addressing signers by email/SMS, we will not be able to link signers to their national identity number. Therefore, we do not have any way to verify that the correct person is reading and signing. The signers receive an email and/or SMS with a unique code and link to access the document(s) to sign, instead of being required to log in. See notifications to review what the notifications look like.

Important

The signature itself is just as secure and valid as when you address using national identity number, but you as the sender are responsible for ensuring that the correct person reads and signs.

In the case of e-mail/SMS addressing, the national identity number will not be included in the signed document for privacy reasons. Name and any date of birth will continue to be included in the signed document.

See Signing in portal flow with addressing by e-mail / SMS for more information and visual examples.

2. Addressing signers by their national identity number

If you know the national identity numbers of the signers, you can address them using their identity numbers. This is the most secure way to reach the expected signers, since it requires them to log in with an electronic ID in order to read and sign.

Even if the signer is addressed using a national identity number, the signer will be notified and will receive a link to log in by email or SMS – see notification and contact details for more information.

Tip

See signing in portal flow with national identity number for more information and visual examples.

Notifications and contact details

When you select signing in portal flow, emails and/or SMS notifications are sent to the signers.

  • All signers must have at least one email address and mobile number.

  • Sending an SMS is voluntary and can be ordered by the service owner, at a cost of NOK 40 cents per SMS.

  • If a signer has a mobile number and not an email address, an SMS will always be sent.

For private organizations

If the sender is a private organization, you must yourself enter the email address and/or mobile number of the recipient. This also applies if you address the signer using national identity number. Private organizations cannot use KRR.

For public organizations

For public organizations, we obtain the signer’s email address and mobile phone number from The common contact register (KRR) for all signers addressed using national identity numbers. Public organizations may optionally provide custom contact details for a signer instead of the signer’s national identity number.

If signers have opted out of digital communication, the task will be rejected and subsequent retrieval of the status of the task will report an error with details of which signers have opted out. As looking up a person in KRR requires the person’s national ID, Posten signering can not check for opt-out for signers only addressed with custom contact information. Also, signers defined to not be signing on behalf of themselves will not be checked for opt-out.

Caution

Should a public organization wish to address a signer using custom contact details, Posten signering will not be able to verify whether the signer has opted out of digital communication or not. It is thus the public organization’s responsibility to ensure that they do not address any signer who has opted out of digital communication.

Using The common contact register

Further details concerning the use of The common contact register. This is only applicable for public sector organizations.

On sending out subsequent notifications (either deferred activation due to chained signature, or reminders) a new lookup is made in the register to retrieve the latest updated contact details.

If the Lookup Service for The common contact register is unavailable when reminders are sent, the result of the lookup on creating the request will be used.

Opt-out concerning deferred initial notifications: In the scenario where the service owner has set a chained sequence for the signers, and the initial notification is to be sent to a signer who, in the period between creation of the request and sending the initial notification, has opted out of electronic communication, the entire request will fail.

Opt-out concerning reminders: If the end user has opted out after the request was created, but the request has already been activated, no reminders (email/text message) will be sent, but the request will not fail either until any expiry of the signing deadline.

How to use the register in test environments

In test/staging environments it is not possible to use real national identities to sign documents. In order to test signature flows including looking up contact information in The common contact register and performing document signing, artificial test users must be used.

Information on obtaining artificial test users is described here, as well as a set of available “preset” users: docs.digdir.no/docs/Kontaktregisteret/krr_testbrukere.

For a lookup in the The common contact register to succeed, and enabling the signature job to proceed, the artificial test user must have either or both an email address and mobile number. It is also possible to test failing cases where the addressed signer does not meet the necessary requirements in order to participate in a signature job, be it missing contact information and/or have opted out from electronic communication from the public sector.