SignatureAPI now emits a new webhook event, recipient.released, that fires the moment a recipient becomes ready to receive an invitation. This closes an important gap for teams that want to orchestrate signing workflows programmatically instead of relying on SignatureAPI to send invitations automatically.
What It Does
The event fires when a recipient’s status transitions from awaiting to pending. That transition happens after all previous recipients in the routing order have completed, or immediately for the first recipient when the envelope starts. In short, recipient.released is the signal that it is now this recipient’s turn.
The payload includes the envelope ID, the recipient ID, and the recipient type, so your backend has everything it needs to decide what to do next.
{
"id": "evt_xxxxxxxx",
"type": "recipient.released",
"timestamp": "2025-12-31T12:00:00.000Z",
"data": {
"envelope_id": "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx",
"object_id": "re_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
"object_type": "recipient",
"recipient_type": "signer"
}
}How to Use It
Subscribe to recipient.released from the Dashboard or API, alongside your existing webhook events. When the event arrives, your system knows it is time to create a ceremony for that recipient, authenticate them through your own flow, and deliver the signing link through the channel of your choice, whether that is SMS, an in-app notification, or a custom branded email.
This is particularly useful when paired with manual ceremony creation, custom authentication, and short ceremony URLs. Together they let you keep full control of how and when recipients are contacted while SignatureAPI handles the signing process itself.
For more details, see the Recipient Events and Webhooks documentation.
