Configuring the Privacy Center

The Privacy Center is the front-facing portal that connects your users to their data rights. Despite being built and wired-up by Transcend, the Privacy Center is designed to seamlessly integrate into the look and feel of your company's existing website, and is typically even hosted directly at privacy.your-company.com.

A screenshot of The Athletic's Privacy Center

Once configured on your end, your companies data practices will be organized into an easy-to-understand format for your users. A side-menu navigation pane makes it easy for data subjects to explore your company's data practices and policies without being overwhelmed. It serves as a visualization of the data your company collects, how that data is used, and with whom it is shared.

Through the "Make a Privacy Request" tab, data subjects are able to submit the types of DSRs your organization supports through an intuitive interface.

A screenshot of making a DSR on The Athletic's Privacy Center

Your company's Privacy Center can be configured from the Privacy Center tab → of the same Admin Dashboard interface that your company uses to view and manage requests (see Review and Approval). The steps for updating and deploying your company's custom Privacy Center can be broken into three steps:

The structure of your company's data is determined by the Integrations and can be updated directly from the Admin Dashboard. This structure determines everything from how the side menu of your Privacy Center looks to how the bundle of data in a Data Subject Access Request presents itself. Since data regulations treat data differently based on how its collected and used, configuring your Integrations correctly is about more than the aesthetics.

The "Data Practices" tab on the left side menu has three panels that allow you to add Data Collections to your Integrations.

Configuring your Privacy Center in Transcend's Admin Dashboard

On creation, Data Collections should be given a method based on how such data was collected by your company.

Data Collection MethodDescription
Info we trackInformation that your company tracks about your users (e.g., analytics data from cookies).
Info you give usInformation that your customers give you (e.g., information from forms they fill out).
Info shared by othersInformation that other vendors have shared with your company about your customers.

If for some reason you wish to remove this interface, you can do so on the General Settings section of the Privacy Center settings. Simply toggle on the setting "Hide data practices page"

Hide Data Practices in your Privacy Center configuration

The bottom three panes on the Admin Dashboard's Privacy Center configuration let you customize your Privacy Center's look and feel.

Customize your Privacy Center design and branding

Web

A labeled diagram of the Privacy Center interface on a web browser

Mobile

A labeled diagram of the Privacy Center interface on a mobile device
Asset nameWhat it controlsRecommendationsFile type extensionLocation in diagram
LogoYour company logo, shown on the header nav bar in mobile viewsNot white (header bar is white).png (.svg will render on the website, but not on certain communications such as Gmail)A1
FaviconThe shortcut icon to display on browser tabs1:1 aspect ratio.png, .svg, .icoN/A
Logo on Side MenuYour company logo, rendered atop your primary color or side menu background color, defaults to LogoDifferent colored version of your logo as needed (i.e., black or white).png, .svgA2
Hero ImageThe main image displayed on the hero banner3:2 aspect ratio, transparent background if you want the Hero background color to show through to prevent hard edge cut-offs.png, .svgA3
Sidebar Widget BackgroundThe optional background image for the desktop view's sidebar widgetImage height between approximately 400-600px in portrait orientation to allow ample space for text and button content.png, .svgA4
Color nameWhat it controlsLocation in diagram
PrimaryThe primary or main brand color, used ubiquitously to color miscellaneous components, i.e., primary backgrounds, buttons, etc.C1
Text on PrimaryThe text color that is on top of the Primary colorC2
SecondaryThe secondary brand color, used for components such as secondary buttons, etc.C3
Text on about Transcend widgetThe text color that is on top of the Transcend widget in the side menuC4
Main paragraph textThe text color of the paragraphs in your policyC5
Lighten textThe color for lighter text subtitlesN/A
Background accentAn light background accent color that lies behind the page's main contentC6
ErrorThe color for error messagesN/A
Side menu backgroundThe background color of side menu, defaults to PrimaryC7
Text on side menuThe text color on the side menu, defaults to Text on PrimaryC8
Hero backgroundThe background color of the hero banner, defaults to PrimaryC9
Text on heroThe text color on the hero banner, defaults to Text on PrimaryC10
About Transcend Widget backgroundThe background color of the Transcend widget in the side menu, defaults to SecondaryC11
Highlighted textThe color of text highlighting on the webpage, defaults to a lighter variant of PrimaryN/A
Description NameWhat it controlsLocation in diagram
Hero titleThe main title message on your hero banner, used as an introductory call out messageT1
Hero descriptionSome description text in the hero that appears underneath the titleT2
Meta titleThe meta HTML title that displays on your web browser tab, used by search engines for indexing purposes.N/A
Meta descriptionThe meta HTML description, used by search engines for indexing purposes.N/A

You may also customize the look and feel of your Privacy Center using CSS. This includes applying custom CSS to your headers, buttons, body text, and hero image. These changes can be made under the Custom CSS Styles section of the Privacy Center → Colors & Styles page.

When you first start with Transcend, your Privacy Center will be initially hosted at a Transcend-owned subdomain your-company.trsnd.co. While here, this Privacy Center looks and acts exactly as it would once you launch it on your own domain, so you can customize and test the page to your liking.

When you are satisfied with the changes made to your Privacy Center, you can launch it on your own domain at privacy.your-company.com via the Admin Dashboard. To do so, visit the "General Settings" tab on the left side menu and click on the dropdown arrow next to "Privacy Center URL". Setting up the Privacy Center on your domain requires updating some DNS records in your DNS database, the instructions for which will be displayed when you expand the "Privacy Center URL" section.

Configuring the URL on your Privacy Center

There are 3 steps to fully launching the Privacy Center on your domain:

In order for Transcend to host the Privacy Center on your domain, a certificate must first be requested that can authenticate the domain name privacy.your-company.com and demonstrate that communication with the page is secure.

The certificate in the previous step must then be validated, and traffic from your page privacy.your-company.com must be routed to the Privacy Center. To do so, the "Privacy Center URL" section will display a couple DNS records that must be added to your DNS database. Your DNS provider will propagate the record changes, which may take some time.

When the certificate has been successfully validated and your domain privacy.your-company.com correctly routes traffic to the new Privacy Center, click "Launch" to launch the Privacy Center at its new location!

You can configure the email addresses, email aliases, and even the domains from which we send Privacy Center emails.

This diagram is labelled with the fields as configurable in the Email Settings:

Email sections view
Location in diagramField nameWhat it controls
1Email aliasThe sender name visible in email clients
2Email prefixThe local portion of the email address, prefixes the unique ID used for reliably tracing email replies. This is only configurable when custom Email Domains are configured
3Reply toThe email address that will be used when the end-user replies to this email
4Email domainThe domain from which the email is sent

These fields are configurable in two ways:

This configuration is static across all requests, and is split between two pages: Email Settings and Email Domains.

Email Settings UI
Email Domains UI

Based on the attributes present on each request, use the closest matching conditional email address configuration when sending Privacy Center emails.

There is also an additional field for conditional configurations: Email body display name. This field populates a special template variable which can be used in Email Templates as {{ prettySenderName }}. This is most often used when conditionally configuring emails to be sent from teams within your organization.

Conditional configurations take priority over the Global configuration when any attributes match. If multiple attributes match a request, then the configuration with the highest number of matching attributes is used, otherwise the lower priority is used, otherwise the first one alphabetically by internal name is used.

Conditional configuration UI

When you have completed your initial configuration and are ready for them to be viewed by your end users, set your changes live by reviewing & publishing your updates.