Platform Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Organization | The company using the platform. An organization has its own API credentials, environment access, and service configuration. |
| User | An individual accessing the platform on behalf of an organization. |
| API Key | Authentication credential issued per organization, per environment. Used to obtain JWT tokens. Format: eval-api-key-<unique-hash>. |
| Request | A single API submission to any endpoint. |
| Search | A customer-initiated lookup or evaluation workflow, identified by a search_id. |
| Result | The completed output from a service, returned in the API response. |
Evaluation Decisions
Reportability labels (REPORTABLE / NOT_REPORTABLE / MANUAL_REVIEW) appear at every level of the decision hierarchy: charge_decision on each offense, plus aggregated case_decision, court_decision, and record_decision on parent nodes.
Routing queues (Automation / Auditor / Insufficient Data) are separate from decision labels and appear as routing.queue on offenses, plus aggregated case_queue, court_queue, and search_queue.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
Reportable (REPORTABLE) | Charge can legally be included in a background check report under applicable federal and state laws. |
Not Reportable (NOT_REPORTABLE) | Charge filtered out by compliance rules — cannot be reported (e.g., beyond lookback period, sealed, expunged). |
Manual Review (MANUAL_REVIEW) | Confidence is low or no compliance rule matched — a human must make the reporting decision. |
| Queue → Decision mapping | At aggregated levels, *_decision is derived from *_queue: Automation → NOT_REPORTABLE, Auditor → REPORTABLE, Insufficient Data → MANUAL_REVIEW. |
Routing Queues
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Automation | Charge can be fully automated with no human review. Assigned when the offense is not reportable, or when the identity does not match the candidate. |
| Auditor | Charge requires manual audit/verification. Assigned when the offense is reportable and the identity matches the candidate. |
| Insufficient Data | Charge lacks enough information to make a determination (e.g., missing disposition, missing identity fields). |
| Queue Rollup | case_queue, court_queue, and search_queue are computed from per-charge routing.queue values using the precedence Insufficient Data > Auditor > Automation. |
Criminal Record Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| candidate_info (request) | Required top-level object on record for both XML and JSON paths. Must be non-empty (not null, missing, or {}) with non-empty first_name, last_name, and date_of_birth. Optional: middle_name, ssn, address. Must not appear inside record_json. |
| submission_type (request) | Top-level field on record. Required "resubmit" when record_json is provided. Omit on initial XML submissions. Must not appear inside record_json or record_json.search. |
| order_id / order_number (request) | Required top-level fields on record alongside search_id and search_date. Must be non-empty strings — not null, missing, or "". Must not appear inside record_json or record_json.search. |
| cases (request) | Optional array of { court_search_id, offense_id } pairs on record. Omit or send [] to evaluate all offenses (count-reconciliation gate not applied). When non-empty, must enumerate every court and offense — distinct court search ID count and total offense ID row count must exactly match parsed XML/record_json. Multiple rows may share the same court_search_id. Partial/filtered subsets are rejected (XML-Transformer HTTP 422 internally; /evaluate returns HTTP 500 / failed). |
| Offense | A single criminal charge within a case. A case can contain multiple offenses. |
| Case | A court case containing one or more offenses. |
| Disposition | The outcome of a criminal charge (e.g., Guilty, Dismissed, Deferred). |
| Charge | The specific criminal charge description (e.g., “THEFT OF PROPERTY”). |
| Type Class | Offense severity: "FELONY", "MISDEMEANOR", or "INFRACTION". |
Compliance Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| FCRA | Fair Credit Reporting Act — the federal law governing background checks. |
| 7-Year Lookback | Under FCRA, most non-conviction records older than 7 years generally cannot be reported. Some states have stricter rules. |
| Lookback Period | The maximum age of a record that can be reported. Varies by state and offense type. |
| Sealed / Expunged | Records that have been legally sealed or expunged and are not reportable. |
Identity Matching
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Match Score | Overall weighted score (0–1) indicating how closely the candidate matches the record subject. |
| isMatch | true when the match score meets the threshold for a positive identity match. |
API Terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Search ID | Unique identifier for a single background check search. |
| Correlation ID | Unique UUID generated by SNH AI for each request. Returned in both data.correlation_id and meta.correlation_id. Include this when contacting support. |