Biometric (fingerprint/hand scan) to approve/sign a Sharepoint form or field

Question

This is a slightly creepy subject, I know. At work we already have a hand-scanner for clocking-in and out, so what the heck! My question is this - is there a fingerprint app (or hand scanning app) available that could be used in a custom form in Sharepoint? The purpose would be to sign off against a field or signing off a form.

Another of my questions concerned users signing off training records by signing on a tablet - their signature would be validated vs a stored signature database - some add-in software have been needed to validate whether or not the signatures matches. But I've decided the technology seems too unreliable.

Background

We currently use infowise electronic signatures for electronic signatures and the people being trained (production operatives in a factory) need input their username + password to sign a training form. The trouble is, we don't use them very often and people forget their passwords. It would be simpler and quicker with a fingerprint/hand scanner.

The trainee and the trainer would scan their fingerprint to 'sign off' the training as complete. Obviously, every fingerprint is unique, so no need for usernames + passwords any more. I would be looking to use a tablet, so sign-offs can be done on the factory floor immediately. The tablet would be used to upload the form to Sharepoint.

Is this possible to do this in Sharepoint and using a biometric tablet? Is there an app that can do this?

Answer 1

I am not aware of any application in SharePoint that would fulfill this requirement, and there would be a lot to overcome to deliver this. I am coming from a life sciences background working with 21 CFR Part 11 / Annex 11 (ERES) compliant systems, so how I would need to approach this would vary from yours.

My assumption is that you are using this signature system to meet a compliance regulation to ensure employees have read and understood their SOPs, which is available upon request during audit to provide evidence of training. You want to remove the username/password combination and replace it with the ability to use a handprint/fingerprint to complete the authentication.

I've been looking at some ERES products and I'm not seeing many that support biometrics - DocuSign is one of the largest in the game and they do not seem to have any indication of supporting a hand/fingerprint scanner. Almost all of them use username/password combinations to complete the handshake and apply the digital signature.

Your other post indicates you are on premise, so you have a lot of options for implementing custom code to support this functionality. If you wanted to get your hands dirty you could develop this on your own utilizing a web service if your scanner has an API to leverage by capturing the result of the scan and using that to update the list item.

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To end this with my 2 cents: Make sure you are working with your IT Compliance/QA team prior to starting on this. Introducing a change to the way a signature is captured would alter the 21 CFR Part 11 assessment for a clinical application, and we would need to re-do that assessment and determine the impact prior to accepting into production. Depending on your industry this could be a very time consuming process.

If your workers are only logging in to complete training then it may just be easier to put them in a separate OU that permits simple passwords, or permit the training facilitator to have AD access to reset passwords.