Consent tracking with the Consent Tracker

Where the processing of personal data is based on consent, under the GDPR, you must be able to demonstrate that your contacts have given valid consent to a specific processing activity (keeping track, for example, of the relevant consent checkbox action as well as any withdrawals and/or updates of such choices by the contacts/data subjects populating the database).

To enable simple management, in a single environment, of changes to the preferences expressed by contacts (data subjects) in the database and thereby facilitate compliance, the Consent Tracker was developed.
The Consent Tracker is a platform add-on that lets users simplify the documentation of the consents given (and, more generally, the expressed preferences) by their contacts (data subjects), through an extremely flexible solution capable of automating the tracking of every relevant event.

Once the Consent Tracker add-on is activated, log files will be generated with information related to the events being monitored, in a folder automatically created in the platform's FTP space, according to the configured settings.

The folder created in the FTP space is a system folder with read-only permissions, accessible exclusively by users with the system role Administrator or users who have a custom user role with the Security management option enabled:

In addition, to export the log files, the Data Export permission must be enabled:

To access this feature, from the Classic version of magnews, go to Management > Settings > Consent Tracker

You will see the page with the tracking configurations currently in progress, which will be empty on first access and until you have saved your first tracking:

To create a new tracking, click the button

The tracking creation page is divided into three sections, plus a fourth, Information, which appears after the first save of the tracking.

New tracking

In this section, define which type of event to track and for which database:

• Name: an internal-use label that helps you identify each tracking you create.
• Database: the contact database on which the tracking will run.
• Track the event: when the selected event occurs, a new row is added to the tracking file. The events that can trigger a tracking are:

Contact subscription

When tracking subscriptions to a database, these can be filtered based on the contacts' source.

Contact unsubscribe

When tracking unsubscribe events, you can select them according to their reason.

Contact update

You can have the tracking action be triggered by the update of one or more fields of the contact belonging to the selected database.

From the drop-down, choose the first field you want to monitor, then click the button and proceed to select the others, which will be added to the Fields to monitor list.

• Track only contacts with status Subscribed
  if you enable this option, only changes to the monitored fields for subscribed contacts will be tracked, ignoring those in any other status (unconfirmed, suspended, or unsubscribed)
• Also include new contacts
  by enabling this option, newly subscribed contacts will also be added to the tracking

Log file

In this section, configure the characteristics of the file that will be created by the Consent Tracker.

File name

Enter the name of the file that will be generated in this field.
The name must include at least the date placeholder in the format yyyy-MM-dd, to which you can add text elements (enclosed in quotes) and the database ID placeholder ${databaseid}. You can also add, still enclosed in quotes, the .csv extension to the file name.

Folder name

By default, the tracking files will be stored in the platform's FTP space, in a subfolder of the main folder called consenttracker.

You can access the FTP space by going to Management > System > FTP

Remember that to access the Consent Tracker files the user must have Administrator permissions or have an associated system role in which the Security management option is enabled.

The created subfolder, accessible in read-only mode, will take the name of the tracking ID and will therefore be indicated by a numeric value (e.g., "1" if the tracking ID is 1).
You can still create an additional subfolder by filling in the Folder name field:

• If you want to give the subfolder a static name, simply enter its name in quotes and the folder will be created the first time a tracking is performed .
• If you add date parameters to the folder name, the Consent Tracker will create subfolders organized according to the set frequency.
  For example, if you add the parameter yyyy-MM to the folder name, a different folder will be created each month, while if you add the parameter yyyy-w a different folder will be created each week.
  You can also include the placeholder ${databaseid}, which will append the ID of the database being monitored to the folder name.

Fields to save

From the drop-down, choose the fields that will make up the file layout.
Each time you select one, click Add field to list to add it to the layout. You can also directly type the field names without selecting them from the menu, one per line.

Delete files older than... days

The value entered in this field indicates how many days the files created in the system folder will be retained.

Date/time format

All dates and times included in the log file will follow the configuration stored in this field, where yyyy represents the year, MM the month, dd the day, HH-mm-ss is the placeholder for the time expressed in hours, minutes, and seconds.

Time zone

All times printed in the file will be consistent with the time zone selected here.
Therefore, if you are based, for example, in the United Kingdom, it will be appropriate to select the value (GMT +00:0) Europe/London.

File parameters

Delimiter

Choose which symbol will act as the delimiter between the different elements added inside the log file. You can use a comma (,), tab, semicolon (;), space, or pipe (|).

Text qualifier

Define a symbol that identifies text elements entered inside the log file. You can use single quotes (') or double quotes (").

Row separator

Set the character that will act as the row separator. By default, the CRLF (Windows) character is suggested.

Encoding

You can configure the text encoding of the file that will be generated. By default, the UTF-8 encoding is suggested.

Once a tracking is configured, to make it operational you need to save it by clicking the Save button at the top right of the page.
After this operation, a new section will be available on the page called Information, which summarizes some key data.

Information

• Created by: name and ID of the user who created the tracking
• Creation date: date and time the tracking was created
• Updated by: name and ID of the user who last modified the tracking
• Latest modification date: date and time of the last change made to the tracking.

Tracking history

The Consent Tracker also stores information related to changes made by users to individual trackings.
By clicking the button you can access the page that lists the changes made to the tracking.

On this page, you will find the list of all users who made a change to the individual tracking. By clicking the icon you can analyze the changes in detail.