Hidden tags offer a way of specifying the location of document fields using invisible text tags in the original document before uploading it. One of the several advantages of hidden tags is the ability to place fields without knowing their coordinates, enabling you to skip manually dragging fields within the Xodo Sign web interface, which is especially useful when working with a large number of varying documents and templates.
A hidden tag is a text element wrapped in square brackets[ ]containing a series of options in a specific order, all divided by|symbols. You can specify a total of 9 options, such as field type, signer ID, required/non-required, field label, field identifier, and more.
If you are using hidden tags to place fields in your document, then you will need to enable them in your dashboard by following these steps: Business Settings > General Preferences > Document Setup & Management > Enable hidden tags > Save changes
You can also add theuse_hidden_tagsparameter separately to your API request and set it to1when creating a document:
[...]
"sandbox"=1,
"is_draft"=0,
"use_hidden_tags"=1,
"title":"Sample Document",
"use_signer_order":1,
[...]
When this has been enabled, the tag will be recognized by Xodo Sign and placed onto your document. However, please keep in mind that enabling this feature may increase upload times.
Below you can find an example of a hidden tag using all available options:
[text|req|signer1|Name|name_1|JonDoe|125|50|letters_only]
In order to skip an option, simply leave it empty without making any changes to the order of other options.
📌 When using multiple hidden tags
Note that there is no "," separator between the tags; therefore, the following example will not be working as expected:
[init|req|signer1|init1], [init|req|signer2|init2], [init|req|signer3|init3]
Rather, no separators should be used:
[init|req|signer1|init1] [init|req|signer2|init2] [init|req|signer3|init3]
Defining Variables
Complex hidden tags can become very long and confusing if they are placed multiple times. In order to prevent having to copy/paste identical hidden tags, you can define a given hidden tag as a variable and reuse it simply by referencing this tag across your document.
Variables are defined by prependingdef:followed by your$variableName.
To find out more about hidden tags, ways how they can be implemented, and to access and download an example PDF document, please visit our API documentation.