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Privacy Requests
Configuring email
Overview

Configuring Email Templates

In order to successfully send emails, you'll need to configure an email provider. See our guide for configuring a message service.

When managing privacy requests, it's important to keep consumers informed about the progress of their requests. This is typically managed through email templates, which can be customized both in terms of content (continue reading) and appearance. The following instructions outline how to modify the email content for each request type.

The following types of emails may be sent while processing privacy requests:

  • Subject identify verification: An email used to confirm the identity of a data subject.
  • Privacy request status: An email sent to a data subject when a privacy request has been received, approved, or denied.
  • Access request completed: An email sent to a data subject when an access request has been completed that includes a link to download the data package.
  • Erasure request completed: An email sent to a data subject when an erasure request has been completed.

To further familiarize yourself with the email template types, including default values, see our email template types guide.

There are 2 different modes to configure these emails:

  1. Basic messaging. This mode is available by default for all users. It requires separate ENV variables to be set up that globally enable/disable each email template type.
  2. Property-specific messaging. This is a paid feature that enables enabling/disabling each email type by website property.
For either mode, Owner or Contributor access is required to change email configuration in the Admin-UI.

Configuring Email Template Content

Option 1: Basic Messaging

We recommend Basic Messaging mode for everyone just getting started with Fides, particularly if you only have 1 web property that needs to be managed within Fides.

The following configuration variables are available for Basic Messaging mode, and should be set up in an .env file or in the fides.toml file.

FIDES__NOTIFICATIONS__SEND_REQUEST_COMPLETION_NOTIFICATION="true"
FIDES__NOTIFICATIONS__SEND_REQUEST_RECEIPT_NOTIFICATION="true"
FIDES__NOTIFICATIONS__SEND_REQUEST_REVIEW_NOTIFICATION="true"
 
FIDES__EXECUTION__SUBJECT_IDENTITY_VERIFICATION_REQUIRED="true"

The first three variables control just the email sends, but the last one also determines whether or not identify verification is needed for the privacy request. If this is enabled, then an email or SMS will be sent if a provider is configured. For more on this topic, please see the subject identity verification guide.

After your environment variables are set up, navigate to the Management > Email Templates section of the Admin-UI to customize email content.

Option 2: Property-specific Messaging

Paid users have access to property-specific messaging mode. This enables you to enable/disable and configure different email content depending on which website property the privacy request originated from.

For example, if you have 2 properties, "House of Cookies" and "Pizza Parrot", you may want your Privacy Request Received email for "Pizza Parrot" to read "Your privacy request for Pizza Parrot been received!". Or, you may wish to disable the privacy request received email for just the "House of Cookies" property.

This level of customization is possible by doing the following steps, in order:

  1. In your Admin-UI, navigate to the Management > Messaging section of the Admin-UI to customize email content by property. Ensure the appropriate email templates you wish to send are enabled/disabled as needed.
  2. Once you have the templates configured / customized as you like, you'll need to set the following ENV var to signal to Fides you're ready to start sending the property-specific emails:
FIDES__NOTIFICATIONS__ENABLE_PROPERTY_SPECIFIC_MESSAGING="true"

Message template configuration

The following message templates make use of placeholder variables (the values between the __UNDERSCORES__). When a message is generated, Fides will replace the placeholders with actual values as specified below.

Subject identity verification

  • __CODE__ Random 6-digit verification code generated by Fides, not configurable.
  • __MINUTES__ The time (in minutes) the verification code will be valid, configured by the FIDES__REDIS__IDENTITY_VERIFICATION_CODE_TTL_SECONDS environment variable.

Deny privacy request

  • __DENIAL_REASON__ This uses the denial reason provided by an admin when denying a privacy request from the Admin UI.

Access request completed

  • __DOWNLOAD_LINK__ Auto-generated by Fides, this is the URL for the DSR package in the configured S3 bucket. See Configuring Storage Destinations.
  • __DAYS__ The time (in minutes) the download link link will be available, configured by the FIDES__SECURITY__SUBJECT_REQUEST_DOWNLOAD_LINK_TTL_SECONDS environment variable.

What's next?

You may want to update the style of these messages. Please see our guide for configuring email style.

Processing requestsMessage template types