Trial-with-Payment Subscriptions (NCS Circ)

This document contains information about Trial-with-Payment subscriptions, including the setup guide.

DISCLAIMER

Product Information contained within this document, including technical information and functional specifications, is subject to change without notice. Naviga reserves the right to make any changes to the information in this document at any time without notice. Naviga makes no warranty, representation, or guarantee regarding the suitability of its products and services for any particular purpose.

What is a Trial-with-payment subscription?

A Trial-with-payment subscription allows end-users to try a subscription for free before deciding whether to purchase it.

Trial-with-Payment Subscription Details

This feature enables a publication to collect payment information, such as credit card and/or bank details when an end-user subscribes to a Trial. The payment information is collected and authorized for $1 without any actual deduction from the subscriber’s account at the time of the Trial purchase. This information is then tokenized and securely submitted to the NCS circulation system.

Publications can set a Trial duration in days, weeks, or months, independently of the actual rate and term for the offer using the SolCon application. Auto-renewal (EZPay) is mandatory for Trial offers, so at the end of the Trial period, a subscriber is billed for a standard subscription using the tokenized payment information.

An end user can cancel the Trial subscription anytime during the trial period, however the cancellation can happen only through the Self Service portal.

• Regardless of payment success/failure, when the Trial End Date is reached, the 'Subscription kind' in Subscribe changes from Trial to Standard.

• The actual status of the subscription, however, will depend on the payment status;

  • Active - when payment is successful

  • Perm Stopped / In Grace depending upon trial-specific Grace period setup in NCS.

  For more details on Trial features within NCS, click here.

In Account Management (Self-Service), a banner reminds the end date of Trial subscriptions. This banner will be displayed every time a subscriber logs in to Account Management till the Trial period ends. The user can close this banner, if required, by clicking the 'X' button.

A similar banner with a warning message is displayed in the Account Info tab of the SubCon Admin Portal too.

Before you start

For this feature to be implemented the following prerequisites must be met:

• The minimum Subscribe version: 3.16.2

• The minimum NCS Circ version: 2020.4.0

• Subscribe extracts version 5 is required

Please note that during implementation, the sync job has to be updated to 3.16.2.

Setup Guide

To avail Trial-with-payments feature, you need to:

1. Set up a Trial offer in Solicitor Concierge.

2. Set up the CMS presentation to display the Trial offer on the Subscription Panel.

3. Key setting in the Support Viewer.

1. SolCon Settings

To set up a Trial-with-Payment offer with an end date in Solicitor Concierge please perform the following steps:

1. Select Offer Groups from the left sidebar.

2. Select the Additional Options category.

   1. Select the Subscription Kind section, and check the option, Trial. Select the Trial period unit (Day/Week/Month). Enter the number of trial days/weeks/months that are offered. Note: Once the offer group is published, the whole Subscription Kind section including the number of trial days cannot be edited. If you need to edit an existing Trial subscription, select the corresponding offer, and click the Save As New button to make the Subscription Kind section editable again.

   2. Select the Auto-renew section and ensure the Auto-renew Required option is selected.

      

      Subscription Kind and Auto-renew sections
   3. Select the Payment Method section and select the desired payment method options(s).

3. Select the Coding category.

   1. Select the Billing Systems Code section. Ensure to set up all the required rate-related details such as Rate Code, Reason Code, Billing Method, Term, and Term Length. Note: Rate Code, Reason Code, Term, and Term Length will be reflected from NCS in SolCon.

   2. Set Delivery Method to Online since a Trial subscription is supported only for digital products.

   
4. Click Save Draft or Publish.

5. Click Clear Cache button on the top menu bar of SolCon.

2. CMS settings

Set up a subscription Presentation in the CMS application for the Trial offer. Follow the same steps as a standard SolCon offer.

CMS > Subscription Panel > Presentation > Select any Presentation from the drop-down.

Title of the Landing Tile CMS Setting

Title and Trial button of the landing tile on the Subscription Panel

1. After making any updates, click the Save button on the corresponding component.

2. To customize the Payment Information tab: You can reassure users with a message stating that no money will be deducted during the Trial subscription purchase, even though payment details are collected. To set this up, follow these steps:

   1. Navigate to Page V3 (the page following the landing page).

   2. Select Step V3 (Payment step) > Details.

   3. Enter the reassurance message in the Subtitle text field.

      

      Payment Information tab message setting

      

      Payment Information tab message

3. To customize the Confirmation page: You can display user a congratulatory message for purchasing the Free Trial subscription. Follow these steps:

   1. Navigate to Page V3 (the final page)

   2. Select Confirmation V3 (Confirmation step) > Details

   3. Enter the congratulatory message in the Title field.

   

   Congratulatory message setting on the Final page

   

   Congratulatory message displayed on the final page
4. It is mandatory to select Refresh Panel from the page-top menu bar and click the option 'Refresh CMS+Panel' before you leave the editing of the presentation to reflect the changes in the Presentation on Subscription Panel.

3. Support Viewer Settings

The Trial subscription kind is configurable from MG2control or Support Viewer. The App Setting key 'OfferGroupAdditionalOptionTrialFlag' configures and displays the 'Trial' subscription kind in Solcon.

• If the value of OfferGroupAdditionalOptionTrialFlag is 1, the 'Trial' subscription kind is available in SolCon and a Trial offer can be configured.

• If the value of OfferGroupAdditionalOptionTrialFlag is 0, the 'Trial' subscription kind will not be available in SolCon and a Trial offer cannot be configured.

To Configure Trial Subscription kind in SolCon, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Support Viewer → Management → App settings

2. In Filters section under Search settings, select Setting type: Client Components Permission, Key: OfferGroupAdditionalOptionTrialFlag, App type: SolconAdmin

3. Click Search. Click on the OfferGroupAdditionalOptionTrialFlag key displayed in Settings Keys Grid to select it.

4. Select the Client group from the corresponding dropdown (Ex. Mg2 Group Stripe) in the Filters section at right. Select Client and Environment from the corresponding drop-downs.

5. The clients with Environments, key values, and other details are listed below. Note: To update any key value, click the "Edit" button at the end of the selected client's row. Update the value to either 0 or 1. After making the change, add a comment in the Comment field of the same row describing the update. Finally, click "Update."

6. Click the Update button in the Update setting key section, just above the Filters section. A pop up will open. Click Show generated script. Click Execute.

7. After the update, click Clear Appcache button to clear the cache. Note: If the SolCon Offer Groups page is already open in your browser, be sure to refresh the page to reflect the recent SV changes.