Documenso Incident Runbook

Documenso Incident Runbook

Instructions

1. Declare the incident scope, commander, affected documents/signers/environment, and safe communication channel.
2. Stabilize with the approved pause, access-revocation, or rollback action before deep diagnosis.
3. Collect only redacted correlation/state/audit evidence; preserve document/signature integrity and chain of custody.
4. Verify recovery, notify owners, and create follow-up work for root cause and prevention.

Output

• A time-stamped incident record with scope, owner, mitigation, redacted evidence, and verified recovery or escalation.

Examples

For unauthorized document access, restrict affected credentials or sharing immediately, capture opaque document/correlation IDs and redacted audit state, and verify access is restored only to the intended role. Escalate according to policy; do not share documents, signing links, or signer PII in incident chat.

Overview

Step-by-step procedures for responding to Documenso integration incidents. Covers cloud outages, self-hosted issues, and integration failures.

Prerequisites

• Access to monitoring dashboards
• Documenso dashboard access
• Application log access
• On-call escalation contacts defined

Severity Levels

Quick Diagnostic Commands

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
echo "=== Documenso Incident Diagnostic ==="

# 1. Check Documenso cloud status
echo "--- Cloud Status ---"
curl -s https://status.documenso.com/api/v2/status.json 2>/dev/null | jq '.status' || echo "Status page unreachable"

# 2. Check our API connectivity
echo "--- API Connectivity ---"
BASE="${DOCUMENSO_BASE_URL:-https://app.documenso.com/api/v1}"
HTTP_CODE=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOCUMENSO_API_KEY" \
  "$BASE/documents?page=1&perPage=1" 2>/dev/null || echo "000")
echo "API Status: $HTTP_CODE"

# 3. Check latency (5 samples)
echo "--- Latency Check ---"
for i in $(seq 1 5); do
  LATENCY=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{time_total}" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOCUMENSO_API_KEY" \
    "$BASE/documents?page=1&perPage=1" 2>/dev/null || echo "timeout")
  echo "  Request $i: ${LATENCY}s"
done

# 4. Self-hosted: check container status
echo "--- Self-Hosted Container (if applicable) ---"
docker ps --filter "name=documenso" --format "{{.Names}}: {{.Status}}" 2>/dev/null || echo "Docker not available or Documenso not self-hosted"

Incident Response Procedures

Scenario 1: Documenso Cloud Outage (5xx Errors)

Symptoms: High error rate, 500/502/503 from Documenso API.

Actions:

1. Check status page: https://status.documenso.com
2. If Documenso confirms outage:
   • Enable degraded mode in your app
   • Queue signing requests for later
   • Show user-facing message: "Document signing temporarily unavailable"
   • Monitor status page for resolution
3. If Documenso shows operational but you see errors:
   • Check your API key validity (could be rotated/revoked)
   • Check if specific endpoints fail (documents vs templates)
   • Review recent deployments for breaking changes
   • Contact Documenso support with diagnostic output

Scenario 2: Self-Hosted Database Issues

Symptoms: Container running but API returns errors, migrations failing.

# Check PostgreSQL health
docker exec documenso-db pg_isready -U documenso

# Check Documenso container logs
docker logs documenso --tail 100 | grep -i "error\|fatal\|prisma"

# Check if migrations ran
docker logs documenso --tail 50 | grep "prisma migrate"

# Check database connectivity from Documenso container
docker exec documenso curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health || echo "Internal health check failed"

Scenario 3: Webhook Delivery Failures

Symptoms: Webhooks not arriving, document events not triggering workflows.

Checklist:
1. Verify webhook is enabled in Team Settings > Webhooks
2. Check your endpoint is returning 200 within 10 seconds
3. Verify HTTPS is working (Documenso won't send to HTTP)
4. Check X-Documenso-Secret matches your stored secret
5. Review your webhook handler logs for exceptions
6. If using ngrok: confirm tunnel is active

Scenario 4: Signing Certificate Expired (Self-Hosted)

Symptoms: Documents can be sent but signatures are invalid or rejected by verification tools.

# Check certificate expiry
openssl pkcs12 -in /path/to/signing-cert.p12 -nokeys -passin pass:$CERT_PASSPHRASE | openssl x509 -noout -dates

# If expired:
# 1. Obtain new certificate from your CA
# 2. Mount new certificate into container
# 3. Restart container: docker compose restart documenso
# 4. Verify: create and sign a test document

Emergency Circuit Breaker

// src/emergency/circuit-breaker.ts
class DocumensoCircuitBreaker {
  private isOpen = false;
  private openedAt = 0;
  private readonly cooldownMs = 60000; // 1 minute

  open(reason: string) {
    this.isOpen = true;
    this.openedAt = Date.now();
    console.error(`CIRCUIT BREAKER OPEN: ${reason}`);
    // Alert team via Slack/PagerDuty
  }

  close() {
    this.isOpen = false;
    console.log("Circuit breaker closed — Documenso operations resumed");
  }

  async execute<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>, fallback?: () => T): Promise<T> {
    if (this.isOpen) {
      // Auto-close after cooldown for half-open test
      if (Date.now() - this.openedAt > this.cooldownMs) {
        try {
          const result = await fn();
          this.close();
          return result;
        } catch {
          this.openedAt = Date.now(); // Reset cooldown
          if (fallback) return fallback();
          throw new Error("Documenso unavailable — circuit breaker open");
        }
      }
      if (fallback) return fallback();
      throw new Error("Documenso unavailable — circuit breaker open");
    }
    return fn();
  }
}

Post-Incident Checklist

• Incident timeline documented (when detected, diagnosed, resolved)
• Root cause identified
• User impact quantified (how many documents affected)
• Fix verified in production
• Monitoring gaps identified and addressed
• Preventive measures implemented
• Post-mortem completed (for P1/P2)

Communication Template

INCIDENT: Documenso Integration Issue
Severity: P[X]
Status: Investigating | Identified | Mitigating | Resolved
Impact: [Number of users/documents affected]
Start: [ISO timestamp]

Summary: [Brief description]

Timeline:
- [HH:MM] Issue detected via [monitoring/user report]
- [HH:MM] Root cause identified: [cause]
- [HH:MM] Fix deployed / workaround applied
- [HH:MM] Resolved, monitoring for recurrence

Action Items:
- [ ] [Preventive measure 1]
- [ ] [Preventive measure 2]

Error Handling

Resources

• Documenso Status
• Documenso Discord
• GitHub Issues
• Self-Hosting Tips

Next Steps

For data handling procedures, see documenso-data-handling.