Use an external consent management platform (CMP) to manage cookie consent on your Hub

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If you use a third-party consent management platform to manage cookie consent on your other web properties, you can also configure it to work with your Uberflip Hub. Here's how.

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Before you begin

• This article is intended for Uberflip customers who use a consent management platform (CMP) that is external to Uberflip, such as OneTrust, TrustArc, Cookiebot, etc. Ideally you are using this platform with your other web properties already (but this is not strictly necessary).
• Using an external CMP with your Hub requires developing and implementing custom code that is specific to your organization. As a result, you will need a web developer who is proficient in JavaScript to do this. Your developer should also:
  
  • Be familiar with your CMP
  • Have worked with custom code on your Uberflip Hub before, or have read the guide to using custom code
• Before your developer can get started, there are setup steps that must be completed in the Uberflip app. The necessary steps are described in this article. To complete these steps, you need to be an Account Admin or Content Manager.

 

About using a consent management platform with your Hub

To comply with the requirements of GDPR (and similar laws such as CCPA), many businesses rely on consent management platforms (CMPs) to manage visitor cookie consent across their various web properties. If you already use a CMP with your other web properties, you can also use it to manage cookie consent on your Uberflip Hubs through Uberflip's JS Privacy API.

Using the JS Privacy API, you can configure your CMP to control the cookies set by your Uberflip Hub alongside those set by your other web properties. This means that cookie preferences set by a visitor on any of your integrated web properties will also apply to your Hub, and vice versa:

• If a visitor has already set their cookie preferences on any other web property integrated with your CMP, these preferences will also apply to your Hub(s), and the privacy banner/controls will not appear the first time this visitor enters your Hub
• If a visitor enters your Hub and has not yet visited any of your other web properties, they will be shown your CMP's privacy banner/controls to set their cookie preferences, and these will also apply when they visit your other web properties

The primary benefit of doing this is that your visitors will only have to set their privacy preferences once, resulting in a more user-friendly experience with less friction across all your web properties.

How does it work?

The most common approach to cookie consent management is to group cookies by their basic function, which allows visitors to opt-in to or opt-out of types of cookies, rather than individually. Most CMPs are based around this "cookie categories" approach, and Uberflip implements the same idea with Privacy Groups. When Privacy Groups are enabled on a Hub, visitors can use the controls on the built-in Privacy Page to manage their cookie preferences by either accepting or declining individual Privacy Groups (and hence all cookies associated with the Privacy Group).

The purpose of the JS Privacy API is to replace this mechanism by linking Uberflip Privacy Groups to the cookie categories in your CMP. Using the API, your CMP can control Uberflip Privacy Groups, opting in or out based on the visitor's existing stored preferences for the equivalent cookie category (i.e. as set on another site). Likewise, you can display your CMP's privacy controls on your Hub, and use the API to sync cookie preferences back your CMP so that they can be applied to other sites.

To use the JS Privacy API, you need to develop a piece of JavaScript custom code that is deployed on your Hub. This code will manage the communication between your CMP and the JS Privacy API, allowing the CMP to get information from Uberflip about your Hub's Privacy Groups and their status for each visitor, and to change their status as needed to match the visitor's existing settings in your CMP (if present). When this code is implemented, your CMP will act as the source of truth: your Hub will always get information about a visitor's privacy preferences from the CMP, and will always send any preferences set on the Hub back to the CMP for storage.

 

Prepare your Hub to connect a CMP

In order to integrate your Hub with a CMP, there are several settings you will need to configure first to ensure the Hub is prepared.

Turn off the Uberflip Privacy Page

Because you will be using an external privacy policy page and the CMP's privacy controls, you need to disable the equivalent Privacy Page feature in Uberflip to avoid conflicts:

1. Log in to Uberflip.
2. In the sidebar menu, click on Hub Privacy > Privacy Policy:
   
3. In the settings menu, turn off the Enable Privacy Page setting by toggling it to the OFF (grey) position:
   
4. Your changes will be saved automatically.

Turn off the Uberflip Privacy Banner

Uberflip also has a built-in privacy banner feature. As you will be using the CMP's privacy banner instead, you must ensure that the built-in Uberflip privacy banner is turned off:

1. In the sidebar menu, click on Hub Privacy > Privacy Banner:
   
2. In the settings menu, turn off the Enable Privacy Banner setting by toggling it to the OFF (grey) position:
   
3. Your changes will be saved automatically.

Create and configure Privacy Groups

The JS Privacy API allows the CMP to control your Hub's cookie settings by giving it access to Uberflip's built-in Privacy Groups functionality. As a result, you will need to create and set up Privacy Groups in your Hub if you have not yet done so. Doing this will:

• Stop your Hub from setting any cookies unless a visitor opts-in, as required by GDPR
• Group functionally related cookies together so that you can map them equivalent cookie categories in your CMP
• Provide a mechanism that your CMP can hook into so that it can control which cookies your Hub will set, depending on a visitor's preferences

You can find detailed instructions on how to set up Privacy Groups in this article.

If possible, we recommend structuring your Privacy Groups in the same way as the cookie categories in your CMP, in order to simplify mapping.

Remember that, in addition to creating Privacy Groups, you must also use the Functionality tab to ensure all cookie-setting services in your Hub are assigned to a group:

Map Privacy Groups to equivalent CMP cookie categories

To link your CMP's cookie categories to their corresponding Uberflip Privacy Groups in their code, your developer will need to understand the relationship between the two. For this reason, we recommend that you make a list of both your Uberflip Privacy Groups and the cookie categories in your CMP, then map out which ones are equivalent to one another. For example:

Uberflip Privacy Group name	CMP cookie category name
Essential	Strictly necessary
Analytics	Statistics
...	...

Note that:

• Each Privacy Group must be mapped to a cookie category in your CMP, as your CMP will not be able to control unmapped Privacy Groups
• You can map multiple (or even all) Privacy Groups to one cookie category, if needed

 

Develop the CMP integration code

Once this setup work is complete, your developer can begin work on the code that integrates your CMP with your Hub. This involves two pieces of code:

1. Code to display the CPM's privacy banner/cookie consent controls on your Hub
2. Code that integrates the Hub with the CPM using the JS Privacy API

To support your developer with this project, instructions, sample code, and API reference materials are provided on Uberflip's developer site, here:

Uberflip Developers: Using the JSPrivacy API

 

Deploy the code

Once the necessary code has been developed, work with your developer to deploy it on your Hub using Uberflip custom code. As soon as the relevant custom code blocks are active, your CMP will be integrated with your Hub in the same way as with your other web properties.