Terms & Conditions - inspiration and best practices

Hi team,

Where are these terms actually surfaced in the community? Are there any elements that link to this page?

Hi, I want to echo @Onomatopoeia’s question above.  We have the same question.  Where/how can we surface the Terms more persistently in the community so members can view them later or our community moderators can refer to them?

Also, when we make updates to the text of the Terms & Conditions, are all members auto-prompted to view them again and acknowledge/accept?  

cc @mstruening @dandre @Dorothyt 

Hi @Onomatopoeia & @JKelley ,

These terms are displayed upon user registration. The link is present here and all users must agree via the checkbox in order to submit the form and create their account. You can also add a persistent link to your header or footer using Customize mode in the front end or Customization in the control environment - let me know if you need any help with this.

To your second question @JKelley, users are not currently auto prompted to view and accept terms again when the Terms & Conditions are updated. I will raise this with our Product team now.

This is great, thanks for the quick reply @olimarrio!  And yes, it would be great if in future there was a way to either auto-prompt members to acknowledge revised terms upon login, or perhaps a way to schedule that on an annual basis or something. 

Hi! If our members want to view the T&C upon registration, they are rerouted to the login page. This is because they are not logged in yet to view the T&C, because they don’t have an account yet. Is there a way to link to the T&C without having to be logged in?

@annemijn.hintzen What you can do is link to a PDF of your terms, you can style it as you want so the experience is still good.

@olimarrio @Alistair FIeld 

We have a weird solution to the T&C right now and I'm trying to fix this.

I want to add the phrase because we currently do not have it. But when I try to add the phrase it gives me an error. Can you help me out? In the sandbox I have no issues with this.

Yes, it’s not possible for new, unregistered users to view the T&Cs anymore. A new user in my community has discovered this gap during registration two weeks ago.

I contacted Gainsight support (not sure If I’m allowed to post here what they wrote exactly, maybe I need to read the Gainsight T&Cs again 🙂): it’s possible to update the Phrase for a hyperlink to an external page with T&Cs.

But unfortunately, due to some reasons, we cannot use an external page at the moment. 
So, I experimented a bit today and added the T&Cs as a looong phrase below the registration form. It’s not beautiful, but at least the T&Cs are there so users know what they are actually accepting during registration.

@Karenottema, can you please explain this and how to do this exactly? 
Thanks!

BTW: when I open the Gainsight Terms & Conditions, a cookie info opens…
So, the correct T&Cs are here?

Hi @Eva!

You can redirect the Terms page to an external one with a redirect script:
 

<script>

if (window.location.href == 'old URL') {

 window.location = "new URL"

}

</script>

Let me know if this doesn’t work for you. Also, feel free to submit another support ticket about this

Hi @leo-inspired 

Thanks. Yes, I can change the link with the script (tested in staging community).

But the problem still remains:
The redirection script works only within the community so terms are still only accessible if a user is already registered. According to support: it's not possible to make the terms link public anymore.

But a user needs to have the ability to see/read/access the terms first before accepting them, from a legal point of view.

Currently, if a user is not registered yet, the Terms & Conditions link does not open any terms but redirects to the login page, as @annemijn.hintzen wrote (btw: annemijn, how have you solved this?)

Maybe I’m overlooking something? 🤔 

@Eva we followed Karen’s advice, and now we link to a pdf hosted on a HubSpot page. Good luck!

Hi @Eva, 

I made a mistake when explaining this to you. The redirect script will not work for private communities.

What you’ll need to do instead is edit/add the Phrase below and have the href HTML tag redirecting to your external website:

Module: Common
Key: loginBox.terms

This should do the job, however please let me know if you have any problems with this!

Hi @leo-inspired 

It works.
Not with the phrase you mentioned, but with this one: terms / Forum Terms

(I added the target="_blank" attribute to open the external page (google in my example) in a new tab, but this doesn’t work. Maybe it’s not supported)

So, I’m able to link to an external website now 👍 
Also, the link to the Terms and Conditions has disappeared from the login page.
Which is good, so unregistered users are not tempted to click on it 👍