Users may begin at a company’s primary web site, where they might click on a support link or use a help widget.

The single sign-on process streamlines the flow for these users to interact on the support community, and allows company staff to track users from their main system in the support area.

A logged-in user will have a cookie placed on their computer that contains their username, email, a unique userID and any other name-value pairs they would like to track with the user. The cookie is written by a script tag (embedded in the html footer) served from the same domain that the community site is served on to satisfy Javascript cross-domain limitations.

A convenience link back to the main site is provided on the top left of the support site for users who come directly from the company’s web site.

(Note: You must first set a Fastpass return link to your main site on the FastPass page of your admin area.)

When a user takes an action that requires authentication we alert the user that we will be using their regular company account to authenticate them, and send notifications to this email address when there are responses.

If a user prefers to use different credentials, another email address, or use their Get Satisfaction account, they may opt to do so at this time.

Simply clicking Log Me In gives them instant access to the full features of the support community.

The information encoded in the cookie placed earlier will only be stored in an account on the support community if an action is taken that requires authentication.

The next time the user interacts on the support community they will be automatically logged in.

If the user’s Get Satisfaction session has expired, a renewed login on the main site will pair with their previously created Get Sat account transparently.

If a user’s session has expired and they visit the support community without first logging in through the main site, they will be prompted to login through the main site.

A “sign-over” cookie with this referring URL is placed to return users to this page once they’ve logged in.

(Note: You must first set a url to your login page in the FastPass page of your admin area.)

After a successful login on the company’s main site they will be auto-redirected back to the community site page they started from.

The same script tag that writes the cookie in step 1 also reads the “sign-over” cookie, and executes the URL redirect based on the cookie written in step 5.