AwardScience, the award and grant management platform, released built-in e-signing, custom email sending domains and a four-hourly continuity export in the week of 28 September 2026. Three of this week’s releases exist because of a question asked in procurement rather than by a user. What happens to our data if we leave. Who can see the bank details. Why does your email land in spam.
They are rarely the features that win a demo, and they are frequently the ones that lose a deal when the answer is a shrug.
On this page
- Built-in document e-signing
- Send email from your own domain
- Continuity export
- Sensitive fields and an audit log
- Hourly message digest
- Also in this release
- Availability
Built-in document e-signing
Applicants sign documents and forms inside their application, with no separate tool and no second login. Each document shows signing progress and a confirmation once signed. If the organiser changes a document after it was signed, the applicant is asked to sign again. Admins place signature boxes by role in the template builder.
Re-signing after a change is not a convenience decision. A signature that survives an edit to the document it signed is not evidence of anything.
Application form › Sign Document field
For IT teams. Signatures are stamped onto the PDF, with a signing chain linking signatures across stages.
Send email from your own domain
Workspace email goes out from your organisation’s own domain, signed with DKIM and aligned with DMARC, so it reaches the inbox and is recognised by the recipient. Until the domain is verified, mail keeps going out from the platform address rather than failing.
Deliverability is the invisible determinant of entry numbers. A deadline reminder in a spam folder has the same effect on your programme as a deadline reminder you never sent.
Email sending domain
Send this workspace’s email from your own domain, so it arrives signed and in the inbox.
| Type | Name | Value | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNAME | x7k2._domainkey | x7k2.dkim.amazonses.com | Copy |
Settings › Email sending domain
For IT teams. Amazon SES domain identity, DKIM, custom MAIL FROM and optional DMARC, with scheduled DNS checks. Pro plan.
Continuity export
Every four hours, AwardScience writes a full copy of everything you would need to carry on without the platform: applications, files, history and the audit trail. It goes to your own S3 bucket, or to secure download links.
This is the answer to the exit question in a procurement pack, and it is deliberately not an export button somebody has to remember to press. The point of a continuity copy is that it exists on the day you did not plan for.
Continuity export
A scheduled copy of everything this workspace would need to carry on without us — applications, files, history and audit trail, every four hours.
Settings › Continuity export
For IT teams. Cross-account IAM role into the customer’s bucket, incremental file copies, and alert contacts on failure. Enterprise plan.
Sensitive fields and an audit log
A new Sensitive Text field — for bank details, ID numbers and the like — stores answers encrypted and shows only a mask. The full value appears solely on the person’s own profile page. Lists, exports, emails, webhooks, AI prompts and share links all see the mask and nothing else. A new audit log records who did what, and when.
Grant programmes collect bank details because they pay money out. Until now those details lived in an ordinary text answer, which meant they also lived in every export anyone had ever run. Relevant background in our note on PDPO compliance for award programmes.
Encrypted. Shown in full only on profile pages.
Audit Log
From 1 SepTo 30 SepSource: All ▾Search| Time | Name | Action | Target | Status | IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Sep 14:02 | Maria Ortiz | Update user | #2231 | 200 | 203.0.113.4 |
| 30 Sep 13:47 | Grants Office | Export applications | Fellowship 2026 | 200 | 198.51.100.7 |
| 30 Sep 11:15 | AI | Generate field | #1042 | 200 | — |
3 entries
Sensitive Text field and the Audit Log
For IT teams. Per-value KMS encryption with configurable masking. The audit log is searchable by date, source and user, with email export. Enterprise plan.
Hourly message digest
Instead of one email per chat message, each person now gets at most one “you have new messages” email an hour, listing who wrote and a preview of each message.
Per-message email is how a useful notification becomes a filter rule.
You have new messages
Dear Alex,The following messages were sent to you while you were away:Thanks for the update. Could you also attach the revised budget before Friday?
I’ve finished the methods section, have a look when you can.
Reminder: the panel meets next Tuesday.
The digest email
For IT teams. Messages are grouped into one-hour windows per recipient.
Also in this release
Content-security-policy violation reporting with automatic purge, translation fallback, and scheduled clean-up of import sessions.
Availability
Everything above shipped in the week of 28 September 2026 and is live now. Features marked Pro or Enterprise are noted as such in their technical notes; everything else is available on every plan.
If you are comparing platforms, these are reasonable things to test in a trial rather than take on trust — alongside the questions in our RFP guide.
Book a live demo to see any of this on your own programme, or review pricing.
