Signing blocked by validation

If DASH won’t let you sign a certificate, it’s enforcing the quality gates that protect what you release. Signing is refused and the reason is shown at the top of the signing dialog. This page explains the two usual causes and how to clear them.

Before you start

Only a Quality Person, Admin or Account Owner can sign, so make sure signing is your step — see Roles & permissions. If the Sign control is greyed out entirely, that’s a permissions issue, not validation — see Permission denied.

The two gates that block signing

DASH checks these before it will sign. If either fails, signing is refused:

1. Required fields are complete. Every property mapped as required must have a value. A blank required field stops the sign.
2. Error-severity validation rules pass. All rules set to error severity on the definition map must pass. Warnings do not block signing — only errors do.

(There’s also a third check on the sign itself: the name you type must exactly match your profile name. That’s covered in Sign a certificate.)

Find what’s failing

1. Open the certificate and try to Sign. The dialog lists every unmet gate at the top — read these first; they name the specific fields or rules.
2. Review the mapped data in the document view. Missing required values show up as blanks where a value is expected.
3. Match each failing rule back to the definition map it came from — the rule’s message tells you which property and condition failed.

Fix and re-sign

• Missing required value. Send the certificate back to draft and correct the source data or the mapping so the required property gets a value — see Review & edit mapped data. Then re-process and sign.
• A rule fails on every certificate. That points at the rule or mapping itself, not this one file. Review the rule’s condition and severity on the definition map — see Validation rules.
• A rule is too strict. If a rule set to error should really be advisory, an editor can lower it to warning so it flags without blocking. Only change rules deliberately — errors exist to stop bad data being certified.

Fix the cause, not the gate

Loosening a rule or filling a field with a placeholder to get past the gate defeats its purpose. Correct the underlying data so the certificate is genuinely valid before you sign.

Related

• Validation rules
• Sign a certificate
• Review & edit mapped data
• Test with a sample
• Permission denied