What the document contains

The document people sign is the page, rendered to PDF inside Atlassian’s runtime by one renderer. There is no second engine and no outside conversion service: the same code produces the PDF you download and the PDF that goes to Dokobit, so the check you make with Download the page as PDF is a check of what will be signed.

Whose view of the page it is

The page is read as the person who started the signing. Confluence draws some content per reader: a Jira work items table lists what that reader may see, and an excerpt from a page they cannot open is left out. A signing started from the page prints your view, even when it runs in the background after you have closed the panel.

A signing started through the REST API prints the view of the service account that made the request. One started by an automation rule prints SignPlus’s own view, because a rule acts for nobody.

What it reproduces

On the page	In the document
Headings, paragraphs, text colour, bold, italic, lists	As on the page, at Confluence’s own proportions, scaled from the body size in export styling
Highlighted text	A tinted badge with gently rounded corners. A highlight longer than 40 characters stays an inline tint, so it can wrap
Info, note, warning, success and error panels	With their colour and icon. A custom panel keeps its own colour and emoji
Status lozenges, dates and user mentions	As the same small rounded badges the page shows
Task lists and decisions	With Confluence’s own check box and decision icons
Code blocks and inline code	In a monospaced face, on a tinted ground
Emoji	As images, beside the text
Images	At the width the author gave them, aligned as on the page
Animated GIFs	As their first frame, in place. A PDF cannot animate
The user profile macro	The photograph, the name and the email address. No REST API gives an app the job title

Tables

Confluence draws three kinds of table, and the document keeps them apart:

Table	Looks like
A table an author drew	A grey heading row and a hairline grid. Column widths the author set are kept
A Jira work items table, or a Jira Assets table	A white heading row with subdued headings, as Confluence’s own datasource table
Confluence’s listings, such as the meeting notes index, and the user list macro	No box: a rule under each row or group

A table of six rows or fewer moves to the next page whole rather than splitting. Longer tables split between rows.

Jira content in a table

Content	In the document
Work type, priority and status	The work type and priority as icons, the status as its lozenge. A long status wraps rather than running into the next column
An Oktul Work Item Selector field	Each selected work item as a card, as the field draws it in Jira: work type, key, summary, priority, status and assignee. Ten cards, then +N more. In a table of more than five columns each card takes two lines
Oktul Work Item Macro for Confluence	As a Jira work items table, with each of its fields drawn as above, Work Item Selector cards included
A Jira Assets object	A chip with the object’s label and key

Attachments

With Include attachments on, the page’s attachments follow the document, each starting on a new page and captioned Attachment: with its filename, so nobody mistakes one for part of the body.

• Images are drawn one to a page, scaled to the margins. A GIF is drawn as its first frame.
• PDFs are merged in, page by page.
• Anything else, a spreadsheet, a Word file or a zip, has no page form, so it is listed rather than left out silently.

Attachments are appended up to 20MB in total, and the document says which were left out above that.

Where a PDF cannot follow Confluence

These are deliberate, and each one keeps the words of the page in the document:

• Merged cells. A cell that spans rows keeps its text where it started, and the rows below get an empty cell in that column. The grid survives, the merge does not.
• Very wide tables. A table of more than thirteen columns is cut into slices, and each slice repeats the first column so a row can still be read across.
• Very tall rows. A table with a cell longer than 1500 characters is printed as a list of headings and values, because a PDF cannot break a page inside a table row.
• An image SignPlus cannot draw. WebP, a corrupt file, or an address that answers with something other than an image prints the image’s alternative text in its place.
• A page with a great many images. Images are fetched against a time budget. Past it, the remaining ones print as their alternative text, because a document missing a decorative image is worth having and a failed export is not.
• Anything interactive. A video, an embedded live board or a macro that only draws in a browser cannot be reproduced. Its link or its text prints where Confluence’s export gives one.

Related

• Style the exported document
• Sign a page
• Install the app

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A problem or a question? Write to support@oktul.com or open a request in the Help Center. Both reach the same service desk, so either way the request gets a reference and an SLA measuring the response.