Remove SmarterTools Info and Links in Portal Footer

Question asked by TrinitiComm - 1/27/2015 at 7:42 AM

Answered

How do we hide all of the SmarterTools info and links in the main Footer area of the Portal in version 10.4 and above? This question was asked almost a year ago and no resolution was ever provided. Just a baseless response in October 2014 that it couldn't be changed. This is ridiculous. In version 9 this could be done with a simple CSS tag to hide the footer and/or modified to include custom text and we had it that way for years. This no longer works. But it works on competing solutions. Although we appreciate your motivations for displaying this info, we have no interest in letting our competition, staff, representatives know with whom we partner with for various technologies and services. We consider this Confidential Information and Trade Secret in our business. This should be a simple checkbox option like all of the other PAID software we use for various functions throughout our business. No coding necessary. If it's free, display it all you want. If it's paid for, then that no longer ethically applies and the buyer should have a choice on whether to display it or not. Frankly, if I would have known that this was turned off in version 10, we wouldn't have spent almost $1,000 to upgrade. This isn't free marketing and advertising. It's marketing and advertising at our expense and leveling of the competitive playing field at the Service & Support level. Ironically, the Fortune companies that are using your solutions according to your site, the few where I have have actually seen SmarterTrack in place, none of your info and links can be found on their sites. How did they accomplish this? We need to have the option to hide it in the Management area as well.

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TrinitiComm Replied

1/27/2015 at 11:37 AM

I don't recall that being there in the previous EULA when we went from 8 to 9. This decision doesn't make any sense and obviously doesn't take the privacy and confidentiality needs of your customers into consideration. That information should not be on the Portal area. MI either, but that is more acceptable. At least it's not public at that point and is restricted to staff. That is the same as putting "Site designed by" on the bottom of our corporate site. And if this is now your stance since it's part of the EULA, then like Vision or Kayako, you should provide a white label/unbranded option for companies who desire it. We've been using ST for 7 years and before now it could be removed. In fact, your devs provided us with the code to remove it. I'm sure you can search the legacy Forum for the proof of this claim. We would hate to have to switch to another Help Desk solution after so many years with your company. But this is a very big deal, and you guys treat it as if it's not.

Unify Your World.

Eddi Bento Replied

1/28/2015 at 10:31 AM

With some of the business decisions lately from SmarterTools, I have heard whispers of other companies looking to switch. Instead of being a semi-custom solution that adheres to businesses, it appears to be morphing into a product outside of our control.

A support system doesn't look professional if it has the same look and feel between Acme Inc. and Beta Ltd. It just seems like a cheap bolt-in solution. First the custom links (of which I received no official response) and then there's this.

TrinitiComm Replied

1/28/2015 at 11:13 AM

We fully agree. And other companies obviously understand the importance of this privacy component and made sure it was an option for those who need it. Even though it's completely within their right to do so, it's unethical to market your business at the expense of your customers without their explicit permission. I owned a Microsoft Gold Certified development house for 10 years and would have never plastered our name on any of the web solutions we developed for our clients. They found us on the Internet and via good old-fashioned marketing and referrals. The sole purpose of this move is greed and revenue generation. It has nothing to do with IP protection and credit. And they will lose long term loyal customers to be replaced by new customers instead of maintaining both. It will ceate an endless cycle of turnover where they will lose more than they gain in the long run. We also noticed that many of the companies listed as using SmarterTrack no longer have it anywhere on their sites. They most likely left for the same reasons. Help Desk is a vital component of a company and it should appear as a seamless part of the overall solution. Not some pieced-together third-party hybrid solution. And worse yet, advertising and linking directly to what we paid for at significant expense to integrate and use.

Unify Your World.

Chris Cole Replied

3/27/2015 at 3:27 PM

Ugh I was hoping this was not the case.

This immediately prevents me from using it. We can't have third party links in ANY of our online tools. This would immediately cause my company to fail audits from some of our customers who are looking be sure we provide a secure, private resource where sensitive company information is posted. As Cyber-Security becomes more of an issue in the corporate technology world, Its become a bigger 'no-no' to tell the world 'hey my site is powered by xxx'.

In the majority of the 'vendor questionnaires' that we have filled out in the past year we are asked if we have an online support tool. We are asked if it is internal or hosted. We are asked if it is 'discrete'. By tacking your name to the bottom of the portal, we're immediately at issues because of privacy and confidentiality concerns.

We are asked the same question about the security our mail, our website etc.

I really hope you guys really re-consider this stance. Until then I'll have to stay with Freshdesk.

Best Regards,

Chris

Eddi Bento Replied

4/7/2015 at 10:49 AM

Chris, you might want to check out OSTicket.

Chris Cole Replied

4/7/2015 at 10:57 AM

Hi Eddi, We did, but we couldn't use it because of a permission conflict between agents and admins. We've been waiting around for YEARS for Smartertrack to add the Organization feature to group tickets into a single organization. Still very disappointed by the decision here for the forced advertising.

Employee Replied

4/16/2015 at 4:04 PM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

Hello all!

I reached out to upper management regarding the concerns voiced in this thread. As a result of our conversation, the styling requirements for the user interface for SmarterTools products were modified. As detailed in the KB article, White Labeling SmarterTools Products, full white-labeling is permitted. Trademark and copyright notices can be edited out via custom CSS for public-facing portions of SmarterTools products. However, any copyright notices contained within source code comments and headers of the files will remain.

Please understand that the original intent of the guidelines was not to hinder customization or profit from free marketing but was meant to prevent users from removing the copyright information and claiming the product(s) as their own. We believe these changes do just that as well as accommodate your wishes for privacy, confidentiality and unified company branding.

Thank you,

Employee Replied

4/16/2015 at 4:05 PM

Employee Post

Add these lines to your brand's custom CSS section to remove the SmarterTools text in the footer:

footer div.col-md-10 p { display:none; }
footer div.col-md-10 p:nth-child(3) { display: block; }

Employee Replied

4/16/2015 at 4:09 PM

Employee Post

Hey Chris! With these changes to the styling requirements, I hope you can now reconsider your move back to SmarterTrack. We've love to have you using SmarterTrack again.

Chris Cole Replied

4/16/2015 at 4:17 PM

That is excellent news. Completely understand not touching copyright in the code, but controlling what the end customer sees (or doesn't see) is excellent.

Eddi Bento Replied

4/17/2015 at 3:52 AM

This is good news. You should also update the EULA to reflect this and take a look to see if any other community posts suggest this idea where a response could be made.

There is hope for ST yet, but we are still concerned about custom links (which I addressed with a solution in another post).

Employee Replied

4/17/2015 at 8:10 AM

Employee Post

Eddi, product EULAs and the EULA in the current Help docs have been updated to reflect this change. Can you please link me to the custom link thread you're referring to?

Eddi Bento Replied

4/17/2015 at 10:29 AM

The other issue that we face in upgrading can be found here - https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a1324/custom-icons-using-font-awesome.aspx.

Miguel Montejo Replied

7/11/2015 at 6:58 PM

SmarterMail 14.0

Custom CSS:

div#footer {

visibility: hidden;

}

However this will not work on Mobile Interface. 
 
In fact brand customization will not work on Mobile Interface at all

Eddi Bento Replied

10/7/2015 at 10:52 AM

Supposedly with the new release, there's an option to do this now built in. I haven't played with it yet, but it might be worth checking out.

jordan Car Replied

11/15/2018 at 12:33 PM

Is there a way to remove the mark in the chat window as well? I have experimented to no avail.

thanks

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