# Start, confirm and remove sealings

A sealing is the digital signature under a target agreement. It runs as a round: an authorized person starts it, every signer confirms individually, then the step is completed and the signed state is kept as a PDF. Everything happens on the target agreement's detail view in the **Process steps** area.

## Who may start?

The signers marked with **May initiate** in the step configuration may start, and HR users always may. Whoever is authorized sees the start button on the target agreement as soon as the step is up; they also get an email prompt.

## Start a round

1. Open the target agreement and scroll to the **Process steps** area.
2. Click the start button on the active sealing step and confirm the prompt.

Three things happen at the start:

* The current state of the target agreement is frozen as the **Sealing document (PDF)**. This exact state is what gets signed.
* All signers of the first stage receive their signature request by email.
* If the step has write protection enabled, the target agreement is locked from now until the round ends.

## Confirm your signature

The sealing box below the step lists every signer with the status of their signature.

![Sealing box with signers and the confirm button](/attachments/ziele/versiegelung-starten-bestaetigen-und-aufheben/versiegelung-box.png)

1. In the box, click the button next to your name (by default **Confirm Sealing**, possibly labeled differently).
2. Review the displayed document.
3. Confirm with your easyreview password or via SSO login.

The order follows the step's stages: only when a stage is complete are the next stage's signatures unlocked and requested. If a stage uses "One is sufficient", the first signature completes it; the remaining requests of that stage are marked as no longer required.

Once all required signatures are in, the step is completed. The participants are notified, the next process step begins, and the locks configured for content and progress take effect.

## View the signed document

Next to the step's title, a small arrow menu opens the step's actions. There you download the **Sealing document (PDF)**, at any time, even years later.

![Open step menu with the sealing document and the abort action](/attachments/ziele/versiegelung-starten-bestaetigen-und-aufheben/schritt-menue.png)

## Abort or remove a sealing (HR)

HR users can intervene through the same menu:

* **Abort sealing**: ends a running round. Signatures already given are discarded.
* **Remove sealing**: reverts an already completed sealing, for example because an objective has to change after all.

In both cases the step reopens: the process jumps back to this step and the locks fall back to the state before it. The round can then be restarted; that produces a new document over the then-current state. Removed rounds stay visible in the sealing box's history with their original document.

:::info
If several sealing steps have already run, HR always removes the latest round first. easyreview refuses to remove an earlier sealing while a later one still stands, so the chain of signed states stays consistent.

:::

:::warning
Removing a sealing is an exceptional intervention. The round's signatures lose their validity, and every signer has to sign again after the correction.

:::