Terms of Service

1. Agreement to Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Orbit's software and services ("Orbit", "we", "us", or "our"), including public demos, student planning tools, advisor workflows, pilots, and institutional deployments. By accessing or using Orbit, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

If Orbit is provided under a separate written agreement with an institution or organization, that agreement controls where it conflicts with these Terms.

2. About Orbit

Orbit is an academic planning and advising workflow platform. Orbit may be configured for a specific institution's course, program, degree audit, scheduling, advising, and analytics workflows.

Orbit at UMD is an independent instance configured around University of Maryland course and program information. Orbit is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the University of Maryland or any of its offices unless a separate written agreement states otherwise.

3. Institutional and Pilot Use

Institutions are responsible for approving the data loaded into Orbit, the users who receive access, the scope of roles and permissions, the retention period, and any required notices, consents, or agreements.

Pilot use should be limited to institution-approved datasets and workflows. Do not upload real student records into a public demo or unapproved environment.

4. FERPA and Educational Records

Where Orbit processes education records or personally identifiable information from education records, the institution remains responsible for determining its obligations under FERPA and other applicable privacy laws.

Orbit may act as a service provider or school official only where the institution has authorized that role under an applicable written agreement. Users may access student information only when they have a legitimate educational or institutional purpose and permission to do so.

Students should direct official FERPA access, amendment, disclosure, or deletion requests to their institution unless Orbit has been separately authorized to handle those requests.

5. Advisor and Administrator Responsibilities

Advisor, faculty, staff, and administrator accounts may expose sensitive student information. You must keep credentials secure, use only your own account, avoid unnecessary exports, and access records only for authorized institutional work.

You are responsible for the advising notes, exceptions, approvals, communications, and data changes you submit through Orbit. Orbit may retain audit logs of those actions.

6. Demo Data

Demo Mode and investor or buyer walkthroughs use synthetic records. Demo data is for evaluation and demonstration only and must not be used to make real academic, financial, enrollment, or advising decisions.

Demo records may be reset, replayed, edited, or removed at any time.

7. Data Sources and Academic Limitations

Orbit may use public, user-provided, institution-provided, or configured academic data. Orbit is a planning and workflow aid, not an official transcript, registrar system, or substitute for formal academic advising unless an institution has expressly adopted a specific workflow as authoritative.

Course availability, seats, prerequisites, degree requirements, transfer evaluations, exceptions, policies, and audit results may change. Users should verify important academic decisions with official institutional resources.

8. Account Responsibility and Access Control

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and device. You may not share your account, impersonate another person, bypass role restrictions, or attempt to access records outside your authorization.

Orbit may suspend or revoke access if we believe an account is compromised, misused, or operating outside authorized scope.

9. Acceptable Use

You may use Orbit only for lawful academic planning, advising, institutional operations, evaluation, or support. You may not scrape, reverse engineer, overload, disrupt, probe, or compromise the service; upload malicious code; misuse student information; or violate applicable law or institutional policy.

10. Optional Calendar Integrations

Orbit may offer optional one-way export of your class meeting times to Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook. You must initiate each sync. By connecting a calendar account, you authorize Orbit to create recurring events that reflect your Orbit schedule for the selected term.

Calendar integrations are provided as a convenience. Orbit is not responsible for duplicate events, time zone display differences, or changes you make directly in Google or Microsoft after sync. You may also export a .ics file without connecting a third-party calendar account.

Your use of Google or Microsoft services is subject to those providers' terms and privacy policies in addition to Orbit's Privacy Policy.

11. Intellectual Property

All rights, title, and interest in the Orbit platform, including software, infrastructure, database schemas, user interface designs, trademarks, logos, and related content, are and will remain the exclusive property of Orbit and its licensors.

Except for the limited rights needed to use Orbit as permitted by these Terms or a written agreement, no license or rights are granted by implication or otherwise.

12. University Names and Marks

Any use of university names, abbreviations, course codes, program names, or related marks within Orbit is for identification, configuration, or reference. Those names and marks remain the property of their respective owners. Orbit does not claim ownership or official status over them.

13. Security and Accessibility Commitments

Orbit is designed with role-based access, least-privilege permissions, audit logging, demo/pilot separation, and security practices mapped to NIST CSF 2.0. This is a security posture and roadmap, not a guarantee that the service will be free from all vulnerabilities or incidents.

Orbit aims to maintain a WCAG 2.2 AA-aligned accessibility baseline for core workflows. Accessibility issues should be reported so they can be triaged and prioritized.

14. Disclaimer of Warranties

Orbit is provided on an "as-is" and "as-available" basis without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, completeness, availability, or error-free operation.

15. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Orbit and its contributors shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, loss of profits, loss of revenue, loss of data, loss of goodwill, academic consequences, enrollment consequences, or other intangible losses resulting from your use of Orbit.

In no event shall Orbit's total liability exceed the amount you paid to Orbit, if any, in the twelve months preceding the claim.

16. Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Maryland, United States, without regard to conflict of law principles. Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of Orbit shall be resolved in the state or federal courts located in the State of Maryland, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

17. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Continued use of Orbit after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. We will make reasonable efforts to notify users or institutional customers of material changes.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be directed to support@orbitumd.com.