Automated Vendor Coordination

Automated vendor coordination automates the process of prompting internal and external users to process DSRs when they are submitted, and it enables the customization of email digests and other associated settings for each vendor. This is useful when there is no automated programmatic integration available for a given vendor.

There are several reasons why we might not have direct integrations with certain vendors:

  • The vendor has no API for a certain type(s) of DSRs
  • The vendor expects you to send an email in a specific template
  • The vendor only provides a self-serve dashboard to submit DSRs, and someone on your team would need to log in and submit the request through their browser
  • You want to notify an internal team to perform a manual process against a database or internal tool that is not integrated

Before you can configure specific elements of the workflow, you'll want to make sure that emails are sent from an internal email address. Most vendors require that DSR emails are sent from a domain that your company owns.

To do this, you will need to grant Transcend the ability to send emails from a domain you own, by having your IT team configure 5 DNS records of types TXT, CNAME and MX, following these steps:

  1. Navigate to your Email Domains page.

  2. Determine the subdomain that we should send and receive emails for. We recommend that you grant us permission of the privacy.<company.com> subdomain, so emails would be sent from the address automation@privacy.<company.com>. If you want to send/receive emails from a different subdomain, toggle the "Custom Domain" option.

  3. Copy the DNS records from Transcend and configure them on your end.

  4. Once the records are set, you will see the status update to "Verified" from the Transcend Admin Dashboard. Note: after updating the records, it may take a couple of hours until the status updates.

Each integration that you configure with email notifications can have its own custom email template. You can customize each email template to have instructions on how to fulfill the request, or you can simply use the default email template to notify a vendor to respond to a DSR.

By default, your organization will come with an email template named "Automated Vendor Coordination". Each integration will default to this email template. If you want to change the default language for all vendor emails, edit this template.

If you want to use specific email templates for each vendor, you will need to:

  • Navigate to the "integrations" page
  • Find the AVC integration you'd like to customize

    Tip: you can use the filter button to find all your AVC integrations

  • Click on the integration to see the details of the integration
  • Navigate to the "DSR Automation" tab and scroll down to the "Email Automation" section
  • Configure the details of the integrations as you see fit.

The following template variables are available when sending emails relating to data subject requests.

In TemplateVariable meaning
{{organizationName}}The name of your company or organization, as configured here.

Ex: Acme Corp.
{{completionText}}Text that instructs the AVC recipient on what they need to do in order to process the request on their end and mark their work as complete.

The {{completionText}} field is based on the "Completion link authentication type" options configured within each AVC Integration's settings page, under "DSR Automation" > "Email Automation". It contains information on timeline expectations and, where applicable, it directs the vendor to click on the {{completionLink}} in order to complete the request on their end.

Tip: if you'd like to use the same type of authentication across your AVC integrations, you can ignore this field and write instructions directly into the email template, followed by the {{completionLink}} where applicable.

Ex. "Please confirm that you will take the relevant action in your systems to fulfill this request within 7 days by responding here and/or confirming at the following link".
{{completionLink}}A magic link that is automatically generated for each request or batch of requests, sent to the AVC recipient so they can access the request and process it.

If the "Completion link authentication type" option within an AVC integration is set to SSO, the {{completionLink}} will redirect to the requests within Transcend. If it is set to "allow anyone to see outstanding requests", the {{completionLink}} will be a unique link for that recipient, redirecting to outstanding requests. If the "Completion link authentication type" is set to "Send no link", no link will be sent.

Ex. "https://app.transcend.io/privacy-requests/bulk-requests?token=supersecrettoken123"
{{dataSiloTitle}}The title of the integration being processed.

Ex: Rockerbox
{{requestId}}The ID of the request being processed.

Ex: e18cf2f4-b7ca-447a-9520-698046b9dce5
{{requestDetails}}The request details provided in the Privacy Center form. This is only available when using the "Per Data Subject Request" Email Digest setting.

Ex: I would like to update my address to 123 South St.
{{actionTitle}}The name of the data subject request type being submitted

Ex: Erasure

You can learn more about creating and modifying email templates here.

Creating AVC integrations is similar to any other integration type. Go to the Integrations page.

To configure an AVC integration for a supported vendor, you can use the search bar to find them. Transcend has presets for each vendor even if they are just email based integrations.

If you are setting up an internal AVC integration, or don't see the vendor you want to connect with:

  1. Search for the "Prompt a Person" integration.
  2. Click on the "Prompt a Person" card to open the configuration window.
  3. Review the Data Points that are in scope for this integration, and click on "+ Add"
  4. On this page, you can create an Integration title (to make it easier to find this integration in the future) and configure the assignee for requests reaching this integration.

See more in Connecting integrations.

When configuring an AVC integration, you have the option to change the email address, templates and notification frequencies to your liking.

To change,remove, or add an email address or email template for an existing integration, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Integrations
  2. Search for your integration and click on the tile to open the settings
  3. Navigate to the DSR Automation tab
  4. Scroll down to the "Email Automation" section.
  5. Here you can specify whether emails should be batched across multiple requests ("Across Active Data Subject Requests") or sent for each request as they are ready ("Per Data Subject Request").
    • If you decide to batch notifications "Across Active Data Subject Requests", you can configure the "Email Frequency" to specify how often email notifications should be sent (per hour, per day, per week, etc…)
  6. You can decide to include a CSV with the identifiers of the requests by clicking on the "Include identifiers in email" toggle.
  7. Additionally, you can configure how these integrations need to authenticate to process requests through the "Completion Link Authentication Type" field:
    • The default is set to "Require receiver(s) to log in with SSO or username/password", requiring the integration owner to have access to Transcend. This is the recommended setting for internal data silos.
    • When configuring an AVC integration for third party vendors, the recommended setting is to "Allow anyone receiving the email to view outstanding requests for this integration", which will authenticate the email address and expose the bulk respond interface even without access to the platform.
    • A third option of "Send no link and automatically mark datapoints as resolved once email is sent" can be selected. This disables the bulk respond interface entirely for the integration. Instead, an email will be sent to the vendor with the CSV of identifiers attached. The request will immediately mark those integrations as completed and continue processing the request without waiting for the vendor to respond.

Read more about connecting and configuring integrations.

Once an AVC integration is set to "live for Data Subject Requests", DSRs will be added to the queue for that integration and the email address configured for that integration will start getting notified of incoming requests. The best place to manage the status of these requests is by using our bulk respond interface. To navigate to the Bulk Respond interface:

a) If you are logged in, go to DSR Automation > Bulk respond and use the dropdown to find your integration. b) If you are logged in on the settings page for an integration, open the "Connection" tab dropdown and click "Manage requests for this integration" c) If you are a third party vendor, or do not have an account log in to Transcend, you will need to click the magic link from your email and it will bring you to the interface.

From the bulk respond interface, you will be able to see the list of active requests that require your attention, as well as past requests that have already been resolved.

Using the checkboxes next to each request, you can select the requests that you want to process. Once selected you can:

  • View the type of request (Access, Erasure, Opt Out…)
  • View the identifiers associated with the request
  • Upload files to the access requests
  • Export the selected requests to a CSV
  • Add notes on how the requests need to be processed
  • Mark all selected requests as Exception
  • Mark all selected requests as Not Found
  • Mark all selected requests as Completed

Additionally, you can apply a set of filters across the requests:

  • Filter by the type of request (Access, Erasure, Sale Opt Out…)
  • Filter by the email batch. When receiving email notifications for an integration, the link in the email will include a filter for that email batch. This means that if you set up the integration to send weekly emails, the link in the email would show all the requests that were received within the past week. Note: if a request fails to be responded to after 2 weeks, it will be re-queued in the next email batch.

In order to process access requests, responders will need to upload user data back into Transcend so that it can be collated and sent to the end user.

To do this, you will first need to navigate to the "Bulk Respond" tab under DSR Automation, then find and select the relevant integration you would like to process requests for.

  1. Select the relevant integration
  2. Select all the Access requests you would like to process
  3. Add all the data relevant to the request, by using the "upload" option for each datapoint
  4. Once all the files have been uploaded for the selected requests, click on "Mark as Complete" to complete the request.