Configure Background Checks Parameters

You can customize certain parameters for Background Checks in your client account, that can give you more accurate results.

Note: These settings will affect all check types performed in your client account.

Parameters description:

names_matching_type: This parameter specifies the matching type for comparing names extracted from identity databases with those found in records from government databases (criminal, legal, and international records). The names_matching_type can be either soft or exact:

  • The soft matching type considers names similar enough to be recognized as the same person (e.g., Maria Alejandra Gomez matching Alejandra Gomez).

  • The exact matching type (default) requires perfect name matches, considering only instances where the names are identical (e.g., Maria Alejandra Gomez matching Maria Alejandra Gomez). This matching type helps reduce the risk of homonyms.

retries: When enabled (set to true) this parameter indicates database queries will be retried automatically on any database with an “error” as a response (because the source is down), until they successfully return a response or until the max_duration time expires. This will change the result of the check, and while the retries are still running, the status of the check will appear as “delayed”. Keep in mind that this will give you a more complete response, but will also delay the check response time.

Retries are configured per Account, this means that:

  • All countries under the same Account share the same retries configuration.
  • All databases share the same retries configuration

max_duration: This parameter sets the maximum duration for a background check to fetch responses, represented in the format Xunits where X is a number and units can be either minutes (m) or hours (h). For example, 25m indicates 25 minutes, and 2h indicates 2 hours.

  • max_duration can range from 2 minutes to 7 days (168 hours).
  • If the retries parameter is enabled (set to true), max_duration configuration is 48 hours by default
  • If the retries parameter is disabled (set to false), no retries will be performed in case of a final response (found, not found, or error). The default max_duration is configured as follows to wait for a final response (found, not found, or error), but will not retry:
    • 3 hours for Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil
    • 48 hours for Chile and international searches
    • 72 hours for Costa Rica

Get Settings

Get the Background Checks settings configured in your client account.

  • Create a GET request to the endpoint https://api.checks.truora.com/v1/settings.

The default values for these parameters are as follows:

Response 200 

{
    "settings": {
        "retries": false,
        "max_duration": "default",
        "names_matching_type": "exact"
    }
}

Configure Settings

To create a new configuration of settings, follow these steps:

  • Send a POST request to the endpoint https://api.checks.truora.com/v1/settings.

  • Set the following key : values within the request body and x-www-form-urlencoded format:

    • names_matching_type: the matching type used to compare names retrieved from identity databases (set to soft or exact).
    • retries: indicates whether or not database queries should be retried until they successfully return a response or until the maximum duration time is reached (set to true or false).
    • max_duration: Sets the maximum amount of time a background check can take to fetch responses

Here’s an example response in JSON format:

Response 200 
 
{
    "settings": {
    "retries": true,
    "names_matching_type": "exact",
    "max_duration": 2h
  }
}

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