Skip to content
English
Sign In
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

How do I update an official's name, title or signature on printed documents?

A new Construction Official, Clerk, Health Officer or other signing official has taken over, and the permits, certificates and letters you print still show the previous person's name or signature. Part of this transition is something a system administrator can do in GovPilot right away, and part of it is a change our team makes to your document templates. This article explains which is which, and what to send us so the change happens in one pass.

Where the name on a document comes from

Printed documents in GovPilot come from the templates set up for each module. You see them in the Print Menu on a record. Letters and notices are mail merge templates, which fill in data from the record. Some documents commonly called certificates, such as permit or license certificates, are built as reports instead. In both cases, the name and title of the signing official are part of how the template was configured for your municipality, and a stored signature image is applied by the template when the document is generated.

PLACEHOLDER: Confirm whether the official's name and title on standard templates are entered as fixed text in the template, pulled from a module setting, or pulled from a user's profile. The answer determines whether any part of a name change is self-service. The source material does not say.

What you can do yourself

If the departing official had a GovPilot login, a system administrator handles the user side of the transition:

  1. Go to Account Settings, then User Role Management, then User Management. Open the departing user, uncheck User is Active, and save.
  2. On the Title Management tab, find each Title the departing user held, click Assign, remove them with the x, add the new official, and save. Titles control who receives workflow emails and who appears in scheduling dropdowns, so skipping this sends notifications to an unused mailbox.
  3. Create the new user if they do not have an account, and give them the same module access and User Type.

Each user can also update their own name, email and phone under My Information. Signature fields that a person fills in on a record (for example an applicant or inspector signing a form) are captured on that record and lock once it is saved; they are separate from the official's stored signature used on printed documents.

What our team changes for you

Updating the official's name or title in a template, or replacing the stored signature image that prints on permits and certificates, is done by our team. Templates are configured per module, so a new Construction Official's name needs to be updated on each construction template, and a Clerk who also signs documents in another module needs those templates updated too. There is no single setting that changes every document at once.

PLACEHOLDER: Confirm the typical turnaround for a name, title or signature update across a module's templates, and whether there is a limit on how many templates can be updated per request.

What to send our support team

One message with everything below lets us do the whole module in one pass:

  • The module, or modules, affected.
  • The name of each template that should change. Open a record, click Print Menu, and copy the names from the list.
  • The outgoing official's name as it appears today, and the exact new name and title to print.
  • The new signature as an image file, if a signature prints on any of these documents. A clear scan or photo of a signature on white paper works. Tell us which documents should carry it.
  • The date the change should take effect, if the new official starts on a future date.

✅ Pro Tip: Before you send the request, print one of each document type and mark where the old name appears. Automated emails sent by workflows, such as permit issuance notices, use templates too, so include any email that carries the official's name or signature.

Related search terms: new construction official name on permits, change name on printed permit, update signature on certificates, replace official signature, new clerk name on letters, digital signature on certificate of approval, update title on documents, name change on templates, who signs permits, print menu template update, official retired update documents, signature image for permits, mail merge name change