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Documenso on Cloud Run — Lab Guide

📖 Configuration Guide

Overview​

Estimated time: 45–90 minutes

Documenso is an open-source DocuSign alternative — a Next.js + Prisma application for sending, signing, and managing e-signature documents. This lab takes you through the full operational lifecycle of the Documenso on Cloud Run module on Google Cloud: deploy it, access and verify it, run it day-to-day, observe it, diagnose common problems, and tear it down.

The lab focuses on operating the Cloud Run module and the Google Cloud platform, not on Documenso product features. For the complete list of provisioned services and every configuration input (organised by group), see the Configuration Guide — this lab deliberately does not duplicate that detail so it stays accurate over time.

Objectives​

By the end of this lab you will be able to:

  • Deploy the module from the RAD platform and locate the resources it provisions.
  • Access and verify the running service, and complete Documenso's first-run account setup.
  • Perform day-2 operations — inspect, scale, update, and manage secrets and backups.
  • Observe the service with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.
  • Diagnose and resolve the most common deployment and runtime issues.
  • Tear the deployment down cleanly.

Prerequisites​

  • Services_GCP deployed in the target project (provides the VPC, Cloud SQL, Artifact Registry, and shared service accounts this module depends on).
  • A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
  • gcloud CLI authenticated: gcloud auth login and gcloud auth application-default login.
  • Project Owner (or equivalent) IAM on the project.
  • RAD platform access with permission to deploy modules into the project.

Set these shell variables once; every task below reuses them:

export PROJECT="<your-gcp-project-id>"
export REGION="us-central1"          # the region you deploy into

Task 1 — Deploy the module [Automated]​

  1. In the RAD platform, open Documenso (Cloud Run), set project_id, and review the inputs. Configure only what you need — the Configuration Guide documents every input by group, with defaults. Review the estimated cost (if credits are enabled) and click Deploy, which opens the deployment status page with real-time logs.

  2. The platform provisions the Cloud Run service, a Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15) database with its Secret Manager secrets (NEXTAUTH_SECRET, NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY, NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_SECONDARY_KEY, an HMAC key pair for optional S3 upload transport, and the database password), a Cloud Storage uploads bucket, a Cloud Filestore (NFS) instance, builds the custom container image, and runs a one-shot database-initialisation job. First deploys take roughly 20–35 minutes (Cloud SQL creation dominates).

  3. When it completes, discover the resources with name-agnostic filters (so the commands keep working regardless of the deployment suffix):

    SERVICE=$(gcloud run services list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" \
      --filter="metadata.name~documenso" --format="value(metadata.name)" --limit=1)
    SERVICE_URL=$(gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --format="value(status.url)")
    echo "Service: $SERVICE"
    echo "URL:     $SERVICE_URL"

Task 2 — Access & verify [Manual]​

  1. Confirm the service is up. Documenso has no dedicated health endpoint, so the startup probe only checks that the container is listening on its port — verify readiness by hitting the app directly instead:

    curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" "$SERVICE_URL"   # expect 200 (or a redirect to /signin)

  2. Open $SERVICE_URL in a browser. Documenso provisions no bootstrap admin account — the first person to complete sign-up through the app's own web UI becomes the account owner. Create that account now.

  3. Set webapp_url to the Cloud Run URL (or a custom domain once one is registered) via Update. Until it is set explicitly, the entrypoint re-derives NEXTAUTH_URL/NEXT_PUBLIC_WEBAPP_URL from the platform-injected CLOUDRUN_SERVICE_URL on every boot, which is fine for a quick test but not stable across redeploys or custom domains.

  4. Signing certificate. With no certificate supplied, the app self-signs a throwaway .p12 at boot so document signing works end-to-end for testing — but the signature is not trusted by PDF readers. For anything beyond this lab, supply a real certificate (see Task 3, step 5).

Task 3 — Operate & keep it running (Day-2) [Manual]​

  1. Inspect the service and its revisions (each deploy creates an immutable revision; traffic shifts to the newest healthy one):

    gcloud run services describe "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"

  2. Scale by changing the min/max instance inputs and clicking Update on the deployment details page — the module owns the service spec, so scaling is a configuration change, not a manual gcloud edit (a manual edit would be reverted on the next apply). Documenso defaults to min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero, adding cold-start latency to the first request after idle) and max_instance_count = 1.

  3. Update the application version by changing the version input in the RAD platform and applying it via Update; a new image builds (from docker.io/documenso/documenso:${DOCUMENSO_VERSION}) and a new revision rolls out. Prisma migrations run automatically on container start — there is no separate migrate job to run.

  4. Manage secrets and backups:

    gcloud secrets list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~documenso"
    gcloud run jobs list --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"   # db-init job

  5. Wire a production signing certificate (recommended before real use): set secret_environment_variables to map NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_LOCAL_FILE_CONTENTS (a base64-encoded .p12) and NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_PASSPHRASE to secrets in Secret Manager, then apply via Update. Never regenerate NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY in place afterward — it decrypts data already stored in Postgres; rotate only through the secondary-key slot.

  6. Open a database session for inspection or maintenance:

    INSTANCE=$(gcloud sql instances list --project="$PROJECT" --filter="name~documenso" --format="value(name)" --limit=1)
    gcloud sql connect "$INSTANCE" --user=documenso --project="$PROJECT"

Task 4 — Observe: Logging & Monitoring [Manual]​

  1. Logs — from the CLI or the Logs Explorer:

    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=50

    Logs Explorer filter: resource.type="cloud_run_revision" AND resource.labels.service_name="<service>".

  2. Monitoring — open the Cloud Run dashboard for the service and review request count, request latency (P50/P95/P99), instance count (scaling behaviour), and CPU / memory utilisation. Documenso's uptime_check_config is disabled by default; enable it via Update if you want a Monitoring → Uptime check and its associated alert policy.

Task 5 — Troubleshoot & debug [Manual]​

Durable techniques for the failure modes you are most likely to hit. These are platform-level diagnostics and do not change with Documenso releases.

  • Revision unhealthy / service won't serve: inspect the latest revision and its logs for startup errors. The startup probe is TCP on port 3000 (not HTTP), so a "healthy" revision can still 500 on requests if Postgres isn't reachable — check application logs, not just revision status. 
    gcloud run revisions list --service="$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
    gcloud run services logs read "$SERVICE" --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION" --limit=100
  • Database connection errors: confirm the Cloud SQL instance is RUNNABLE, the DB password secret exists, and the db-init job completed. If enable_cloudsql_volume is left at this module's own default (false), the entrypoint does not get a Unix-socket DB_HOST and falls back to a direct-IP connection instead — set enable_cloudsql_volume = true if the app can't reach the database.
  • Initialisation job failed: list executions and read the failed one's logs: 
    gcloud run jobs executions list --job="${SERVICE}-db-init" \
      --project="$PROJECT" --region="$REGION"
  • Image build failed: review Cloud Build history for the failed build's log.
  • 403 / permission errors: verify the runtime service account's IAM roles.

See the Configuration Guide's Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults section for setting-specific gotchas (including enable_cloudsql_volume defaulting false on this module, the immutability of db_name/db_user after first deploy, and never rotating NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY in place).

Task 6 — Tear down [Automated]​

On the Deployments page, open the deployment and click the Trash icon (Delete). Delete runs terraform destroy and is irreversible (the deployment record is retained for history). If a deployment is stuck and the RAD platform can no longer manage it (for example after manual changes that conflict with the Terraform state), use Purge instead — it removes the deployment from RAD's records without destroying the cloud resources (it makes RAD forget the project). This removes everything the module created — the Cloud Run service, Cloud SQL database, Secret Manager secrets, GCS buckets, Filestore instance, and Artifact Registry images. Resources owned by Services_GCP (the VPC, shared Cloud SQL, registry) are managed separately and are not removed here.

Summary​

TaskTypeOutcome
1 — DeployAutomatedModule provisions Cloud Run, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL 15), secrets, uploads bucket, Filestore, and runs DB init
2 — Access & verifyManualService responds; create the initial owner account in the UI; note the self-signed cert caveat
3 — OperateManualInspect revisions, scale, update version, manage secrets/backups, wire a production signing cert, DB access
4 — ObserveManualQuery Cloud Logging; review Cloud Monitoring metrics and (optional) uptime check
5 — TroubleshootManualDiagnose revision, database, enable_cloudsql_volume, init-job, build, and IAM issues
6 — Tear downAutomatedDelete (Trash) removes all module resources

By · Google Cloud certified: ACE · PCA · PCD · PDE · PSE · CDL

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