The "Explicit Consent" feature is available to individual, team, business, and enterprise levels of service. Custom Consumer Disclosures are available to customers with enterprise service plans.
The explicit consent with forced review process requires the recipient to open the Consumer Disclosure and positively affirm (in steps 1 through 3) that they agree to the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure. Step 6 affirms the consent to do business electronically. These agreements are reflected in a discrete record logged in the agreement Audit Report.
Overview
Terms of Use (ToU) and Consumer Disclosure (CD) documents are a common part of the user experience when using a service like Adobe Acrobat Sign. They help define business relationships in terms of limitations, responsibilities, expectations, and, within the context of electronic signatures, allow the parties to agree to conduct business electronically.
For most use cases, an implicit agreement to these documents is sufficient. To that end, Acrobat Sign makes links to these documents conspicuous when any recipient has access to an Agreement in the signature cycle.
However, some compliance requirements demand a more assertive acceptance of these documents. To fill that need, the Terms of Use & Consumer Disclosure settings allow an Account level admin to require explicit agreement to each document type. These features are available to Customers with individual, team, business, and enterprise plans. Additionally, custom Consumer Disclosures are available to Customers with an enterprise service plan.
How it’s used
In most use cases, the Acrobat Sign ToU and Privacy Policy are presented to the recipient before they can interact with the agreement. There are two notable exceptions to this:
- Recipients that have an active user in the same account as the sender.
- Recipients that access the agreement while logged in to Acrobat Sign.
The Consumer Disclosure is presented to the recipient based on the account configuration.
The default setting (implicit consent) exposes the Consumer Disclosure link at the time the recipient is finalizing their signature.
Enabling Explicit Consent requires the Recipient to actively check a box affirming they agree to the ToU and CD.
Enabling Forced Review requires the Recipient to open each document individually, and then actively check the box agreeing to the terms.
If authentication is in place, the recipient will have to verify their identity first, and then they will be able to accept the ToU/CD.
Logging acceptance in the Audit Report
When Explicit Consent is enabled, the Audit Report reflects the nature of the recipient's actions when accepting the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure:
The Implicit Consent setting does not reflect an overt acceptance of the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure in the Audit Report:
Configurable options
The account-level settings can be accessed by logging in as an Acrobat Sign account-level admin and navigating to Account Settings > Signature Preferences > Custom Terms of Use & Consumer Disclosure
All controls can also be configured at the group level. Remember that:
- All groups inherit the account level settings by default.
- Group-level configurations override the account-level settings.
- All signature preferences embedded in the agreement are derived from the settings of the group the agreement is sent from.
The options for this feature are:
- Define when the CD and ToU acceptance is displayed to the recipient.
- Define the acceptance process based on the role of the recipient.
Process by consent option:
The setting option - Agree to terms when signing:
The acceptance process:
- Accept the Adobe ToU and Privacy Policy by selecting the Continue button (after opening the agreement).
- Fill in the agreement fields as required.
- Accept the Consumer Disclosure by selecting the Click to Sign button.
Implicit consent is not explicitly recorded in the agreement Audit Report. The signature event registers the implicit consent of the recipient as described in step 3 of the acceptance process
The setting option - Agree to terms before signing:
The explicit consent with forced review process requires the recipient to open the Consumer Disclosure and positively affirm (in steps 1 through 3) that they agree to the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure. Step 6 affirms the consent to do business electronically. These agreements are reflected in a discrete record logged in the agreement Audit Report.
The acceptance process:
- Accept the Adobe ToU and Privacy Policy by selecting the Continue button (after opening the agreement).
- Fill in the agreement fields as required.
- Accept the Consumer Disclosure by checking the box.
- Click to Sign when done.
The explicit consent process requires the recipient to positively affirm (in step 3) that they agree to the Consumer Disclosure and to do business electronically. This agreement is reflected in a discrete record logged in the agreement Audit Report.
The setting option - Agree to terms before viewing the agreement:
The acceptance process:
- Accept the Adobe ToU and Privacy Policy by checking the box.
- Accept the CD by checking the box.
- Select the Accept button to progress to the agreement.
- Fill in the agreement fields as required.
- Click to Sign when done.
The explicit consent process requires the recipient to positively affirm (in steps 1 and 2) that they agree to the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure. Step 5 affirms the consent to do business electronically. These agreements are reflected in a discrete record logged in the agreement Audit Report.
The setting option - Click terms, review, and agree before viewing the agreement:
The acceptance process:
- Accept the Adobe ToU and Privacy Policy by checking the box.
- Review the CD by clicking the Consumer Disclosure link.
- Accept the CD by checking the box.
- Select the Accept button to progress to the agreement.
- Fill in the agreement fields as required.
- Click to Sign when done.
The explicit consent with forced review process requires the recipient to open the Consumer Disclosure and positively affirm (in steps 1 through 3) that they agree to the Terms of Use and Consumer Disclosure. Step 6 affirms the consent to do business electronically. These agreements are reflected in a discrete record logged in the agreement Audit Report.
Adding a custom Consumer Disclosure (enterprise service plans only)
Customers with an enterprise service plan have the option to provide a custom Consumer Disclosure. This option is not currently exposed to the customer interface, so if you would like to take advantage of this feature:
- Make your CD available via a public URL.
- Contact the Support team and provide them with the URL.
- Adobe must review and approve the content of the document.
- Once the content is approved, the URL provided is configured in your account, and the link points to your page.
- Please note, custom Consumer Disclosures should not include any system requirements. If system requirements must be included, include a link to the System requirements for Adobe Acrobat Sign.
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