Persona Glossary

Overview

The following glossary aims to present key terms and jargon that are relevant to understanding and using the Persona Platform. The glossary is chunked into sections, starting with the most fundamental terms and then building on them.

Foundational Terms

Personally Identifiable Information (PII): Any information, data, or documents that can help identify an individual.
Field: An individual data entry that can include strings, numbers, file, array, etc are example of field data types.
Object: A data structure within the Persona’s system with set types, functions, and hierarchies.
Token: An alphanumeric string that is represents a Persona object for reference, tracking, and linking objects together.
Organizations: An Organization is an instance of Persona object that houses all objects related to a Persona customer including the dashboard experience, environments, billing, users, and product objects.
Persona-defined ID field: A field that contains identifier that is automatically generated by Persona to keep track of our product record e.g. Case ID, Inquiry ID, etc. AKA a Persona token.
User: Users are profiles of team members who are granted access to a customer’s Organization, with access determined by their Role.
End User: A person that a Persona customer is seeking to collect, verify, or reverify identity information from.
Account: An object representing a unique end user or business, that acts a system or record for for all objects related to a a specific person or a business.
Inquiry: An object representing one attempt at collection and verification of identity information from an end user, usually via a Verification object.
Verification: An object that runs multiple tests called Verification Checks, to check PII for likelihood of authenticity, validity, and assurance that the information is true and real.
Reference ID: An optional string provided by customers to define an object as related to something within their system, service, or product.

Persona Platform

Flow: A descriptive reference to any processes and branching logical paths, start to finish within an Inquiry.
Run: A single instance of a product or feature being triggered and completed.
Event: An object that records any change in status or state, modification, or handling on an object by an user or workflow including the timestamp.
Event Log: A listing of all events that have occurred within an Organization.
Status: An indicator, like “Created” or “Approved”, to show the current state or condition of certain Persona objects or processes.
Workflow: An automation tool product that lets you create flexible, no-code or code-based workflows to streamline identity-related processes in Persona that can trigger actions based on events, API calls, or schedules, integrate with Persona products and third-party apps, and build logic using conditions, parallel execution & custom web requests.
Cases: A product that allows customers to build UI display templates that arrange and surface attached objects like inquiries, verifications, reports, transactions, and accounts for further investigation, often conducted by manual review teams.
Reports: Reports products provide additional identity data from authoritative and non-authoritative sources to help organizations enhance identity information by pulling information like address history, watchlist matches, media mentions, or business records.
Graph: A product that allows customers to investigate relationships between Accounts, ip addresses, device information, phone numbers and other data that can indicate patterns of fraud through the use of a visual and interactive link analysis canvas.
Personas Wallet: A Persona feature that allows end users to securely store and control their submitted PII (like Driver’s License) on their device using Passkey technology, so they can more quickly submit it in future Inquiries while not changing how they are otherwise handled by customer’s flows.
Transactions: A product that enables integration with Persona via API to trigger subsequent Workflows and run additional Verifications, Reports, business logic, and other processes.
Lists: A set of products that allows you to store attributes like emails, IP addresses, and images, that can be matched against the content of an Inquiry or Workflow to then take subsequent actions if there is a list match.
Tags: A feature available on most Persona products allowing you to store custom context or observations to help drive manual and automated decisioning.
Analytics: Performance metrics relevant to the use of a particular product or feature.
Integration Methods: Descriptions of how information, signals, and events are passed between Persona and your product or service.
Index Page: A product specific page within the dashboard that present a searchable listing of that product’s objects.
Omnisearch: The built-in search in the top-left of the Persona dashboard that allows you to look up objects (Inquiries, Verifications, Workflows, Cases, and more) by ID, run action shortcuts, and surface Help Center articles.
Shortcuts: Command-menu actions inside Omnisearch that let users run common dashboard actions, like creating an Inquiry, from the search box instead of clicking through navigation.
Persona Assistant: The in-dashboard AI chat in the bottom-right corner that answers product and support questions from Persona’s Help Center and developer documentation.
Tools: The dashboard’s integrations area where you connect third-party add-on apps (such as Okta, Clearbit, and SentiLink) to your Persona workspace.
Integrations page: The dashboard section listing every tool you’ve connected to Persona, where you manage each integration’s credentials and configuration.
Integration Logs / External Integration Log: A developer log, searchable in Omnisearch and opened per-eil_ ID, that records activity from marketplace and third-party integrations to help you debug connected-tool issues.
API: An Application Programming Interface is a set of protocols or rules that allow software applications to communicate with each other with Persona’s API allowing you to send commands programmatically to Persona without using the Dashboard interface.
Domain Manager: The Inquiries > Domain Manager page where you manage the custom domains your hosted-flow integration is allowed to redirect back to.
Subdomain: The customizable yourcompany.withpersona.com web address on the integration page that your hosted (verify-by-link) flow uses.
System status page: Persona’s public status page at status.withpersona.com showing real-time operational status for APIs, dashboard features, and overall system health, plus historical incident and maintenance data.
Webhook Events: A per-wbhe_-ID feed, searchable in Omnisearch, of each webhook delivery Persona sent to your endpoints, used for debugging webhook integrations.
2FA: Two-factor authentication, an optional security layer for signing in to the Persona dashboard that requires a second factor beyond your password.
SSO: Single sign-on, an optional way to sign in to the Persona dashboard using your organization’s identity provider (such as Google, Okta, or Microsoft Entra) instead of a Persona password.
FedRAMP: The US federal security authorization that some Persona instances hold, in which the in-dashboard AI chat is not available.

Use Cases

Use Case: A use case explains how users interact with a product or system.
Solution: A solution is a set of Persona products configured to address and support a specific use case.
Fraud: A use case that is focused on preventing malicious bad actors from interacting with customers’ systems.
Compliance: A use case that is focused on aligning with strict legal or regulatory requirements from various governments or governing bodies.
Trust & Safety: A use case focused on converting new users onto customer products or services while ensuring end users are who they say they are.
Conversion: A use case focused on getting a large percentage of end users who take a specific action to reach a specific latter part of that journey, I.e. getting more end users from Point A to Point B.
Friction: Any step or element of an end user’s experience that requires effort and might impede them from moving to the next step or desired outcome.
KYC: A use case focused on satisfying Know Your Customer guidelines, and, for some industries and countries, hard requirements from regulations.
KYB: A use case focused on satisfying Know Your Business guidelines, and, for some industries and countries, hard requirements from regulations.
AML: A use case focused on satisfying Anti-Money Laundering guidelines, and, for some industries and countries, hard requirements from regulations.
Age Assurance: A use case where organizations confirm an end user’s age, using methods like selfie age estimation, age inference, and age verification, to comply with age-related regulations and provide age-appropriate experiences.
Workforce Verification: A use case where organizations verify the identities of employees and contractors across the worker lifecycle, from onboarding to access to sensitive systems.

Customer Organization

Roles: A feature of the Persona platform where each user is assigned one or multiple Roles, and with each Role being configurable with specific levels of access and permissions to various parts of the Organization.
Environment: An environment is a sub container within a customer org, through which a set of that org’s various enabled Persona products are run & billed, and into which Users can be invited and assigned Roles.
Production Environment: An environment is where the live runs of Persona’s products are tracked and the fees for those runs collected.
Sandbox Environment: A test environment where customers can Simulate workflows and Preview Inquiries and otherwise test their templates and settings without being charged.
Environment ID: The organization-level identifier shown under Organization > Information that tells Persona which environment (Sandbox or Production) your API calls, like Create Inquiry, should run in.
Sandbox Trial / Production Trial: Trial environments available during your initial 60-day Essential Plan trial, where Sandbox (simulated data only) and Production (real verifications capped at 50 free services, subject to business verification) let you evaluate Persona without an active plan.

Change Control

Template: A collection of settings for a Persona object.
Version: A trackable change to an object, with previous versions being accessible and even usable.
Live: A designation for the active version or template in production.
Publish: The process of converting a draft version into the new live version.
Draft: An editable intermediate version that allows you to make multiple edits and saves before you commit that draft version as a new version by publishing it.

Account Management

Account Update: An action in an Inquiry, Workflow, or Case, triggered to update the fields within an Account.
Account Tag: A characteristic of an account, like “Under 21 years old”, that is unlikely to change in the context of the verification process that can be added, or tagged, to an account.
Account View: A configurable visual arrangement of the elements of an account.
Identifiers: Account fields designated by a customer organization that can be used to model unique users.
System Field: A premade or predefined field that comes with an inquiry or account by default.
String Index: A search index produced by concatenating all of the string fields in a record.
String Search: A search for matching records against the string index.
Associated Records: When you open a record page in Dashboard, there are other records of different product types that are shown because they are associated.
Account ID: A unique string generated by persona as the identifying token for that account object.
Account Type: The default account template with a set selection of fields and views.
Custom Account Type: An Account type that allows customers to set their own preferred fields and views.
Default Account Statuses: Active, Inactive, and Archived.
Custom Account Statuses: An account feature that allows customer to create and set their own statues relevant to their needs, that are configurable by Account Type.
Account Action: A series of pre-set Actions relevant to an account, configurable by Account Type, that you can set for Persona to run automatically as part of a workflow or triggered manually.
Account Relation: A link between an account and another account or a transaction, that adds context to both objects.

Inquiries for collection

Inquiry: An Inquiry object that acts as a collection method for end users submitting PII, which can then be added to a Persona account.
Screen: A distinct end user UI, on desktop or mobile, that the end user will navigate through as as they work to complete their Inquiry.
Dynamic Flow: The Inquiry template which controls for branching logic and screens that effects the end user experience and outcome of the Inquiry.
Theme: A set of visual Screen configurations that affects the look and feel of the end user experience via settings like color, logos, and fonts that can be applied to an Inquiry Template.
Step: Any discrete process within a Persona flow (Workflow or Inquiry) is referred to as a Step.
Preview: To help test an Inquiry Template, you’re able to run through the dynamic flow while in sandbox mode, allowing you to check the various screens while experiencing the branching logic paths.
Lifecycle: The start to finish stages of a Inquiry or Workflow with their relevant Statuses.
Inquiry Model Lifecycle: A flow of statuses going from Created to Pending, then the three end statuses of Completed, Failed, and Expired, then with the three optional decision statuses of Approved, Needs Review, and Declined.
Review: A decisioning process that can be handled manually or with automations, to select or change the decision status of an Inquiry.
Prefill: When creating an Inquiry for a specific end user, you can populate end user data into inquiry fields before sharing the inquiry link with the end user.
Expired: An Inquiry end status that is triggered if the inquiry reaches the end of it’s configured duration without the inquiry being set to Completed or Failed.
Resume: A feature triggerable by the customer allowing selected expired inquiry to be resumed, with the end user able to pick up where they left off in the inquiry flow.
Inquiry Session: A collection of data, including location and device info, related to a single and sustained network connection between the end user’s device and the Persona platform.
Inquiry Template: The central object that defines the inquiry flow shown to end users, including its themed screens, Verifications, and all logic within the flow. The Inquiry Template is sometimes called the Dynamic Flow Template; glossary Template covers the general concept.
Inquiry Template Library: The gallery of ready-made Inquiry Templates (such as “Government ID and Selfie”) you can pick from when creating a new template in the Dashboard, which add a prebuilt flow you can then customize in the Flow Editor.
Inquiry Template Versions / Versioning: The publish, draft, and revert workflow for Inquiry Templates, which keeps a Version History and lets you roll back to earlier published versions or compare the current draft against the latest live version.
Dynamic Flow Template: A legacy name for an Inquiry Template that is still used in parts of the product and docs; see Inquiry Template.
Legacy Template: An older-style Inquiry Template, identified by a tmpl_ prefix in your integration code, as opposed to the newer itmpl_ Inquiry Template type.
Inquiry Flow: The flow your end user sees when they go through an Inquiry, distinct from the general Flow term; the Inquiry Flow is what an Inquiry Template defines and what end users navigate screen by screen.
Step Types: The four kinds of steps in an Inquiry Template: Screen Steps, Branching Steps, Action Steps, and Connector Steps, which you place on the Flow Editor canvas to define the experience.
Branching Step / Conditional Step: A step that conditionally routes the end user to one screen or another based on the result of conditions you define, like the outcome of a verification; within Inquiries it is sometimes called a Conditional Step.
Action Step / Action Sequence: A step that performs an action, such as running a verification, updating fields, or calling custom code or HTTPS, with several in a row forming an action sequence that runs between two screens.
Connector Step: A step that routes the end user to a screen located elsewhere in the flow, letting you repeat a screen (like a Retry screen) from multiple places without duplicating it.
Modules / Inquiry Flow Modules: Pre-configured, drop-in groups of screens and/or steps that you add to a flow from the Flow Editor, such as verification modules, a Country select module, or the Standard Success and Standard Failed Steps.
Standard Success Step / Standard Failed Step: One-screen modules you can add to an Inquiry Template to show the end user a standard message after a successful or failed verification.
Capture Methods: An Inquiry Template configuration that controls whether end users submit images by capturing a new photo with their camera or uploading an existing image from their device, with settings you can apply per device (desktop web, mobile web, or native mobile).
Device Handoff / Device Handoff Link: An Inquiry screen component that adds a button letting end users continue an active Inquiry on another device, such as switching from a computer to a phone.
Flow Editor: The visual, no-code interface under Inquiries > Templates where you design an Inquiry Template, using the Flow Tree canvas, step types, modules, per-screen editors, and a left command panel for Theme, Fields, Verifications, and Settings.
Theme Editor: The part of the Flow Editor where you apply an existing Theme Set or create and customize the visual themes (color, logos, fonts) your Inquiry screens use.
Field Editor: The Inquiries > Templates > Settings > Fields surface where you create, edit, deactivate, and delete the fields your Inquiry Template collects, including each field’s key, data type, and redaction and write policies.
Translations / Localizations: The per-screen translation feature in the Flow Editor that supports 35+ languages, lets you edit each screen’s text by locale, and can auto-translate or import and export translations as CSV.
External Display Name: The sender or business name Persona presents to end users in device handoff emails and SMS, confirmation codes, and security dialogs so users know which business a verification belongs to; when left blank it falls back to your organization name.
Inquiry Overview: The per-Inquiry Overview tab in the Dashboard (and its analytics page) that summarizes a single Inquiry, including its statistics, the attributes collected about the end user, their location, and behavior risk signals.
Redact / Redaction Policy: A privacy feature that permanently removes personal identifiable information (PII) from an object or its downstream objects, either manually per record, automatically via a Workflow Redact Object action, or organization-wide as a policy Persona enables for you.
Inquiries Basic / Inquiries Enhanced: The two Inquiries pricing tiers; an Inquiry Template is billed as Enhanced when it uses more than 20 steps, more than 3 branching routes, or any Enhanced screen components, and Basic otherwise.
Workflows Basic / Workflows Enhanced: The two Workflows pricing tiers that gate which Workflow actions and advanced Verification services an organization can use, with the rule (for example) that Action Steps on the Essential Plan run the actions available in Workflows Basic plus basic Inquiry Flow actions.
Mini App / Native mobile app verification: An integration method that runs the verification experience natively on mobile with no app install or SDK, powered on iOS by App Clips opened from a link or QR code.
Persona Wallet app: The Android app end users complete native mobile app verification through when App Clips are unavailable, since Android has no equivalent App Clip-style experience.
Mobile SDKs / Web SDK / Flutter: The integration toolkits for embedding Persona: native Android and iOS SDKs and a React Native wrapper (Mobile SDKs), a JavaScript widget for your website (Web SDK, or Embedded Flow), while Flutter has no first-party SDK today.
Verify by Link / Inquiry link / Hosted Flow link: The URL you send or share to start an end user’s Inquiry; a Hosted Flow link is the generic link that creates a new Inquiry each time, while an Inquiry link is created in advance for a specific end user and can be pre-filled.
Hosted Flow / Embedded Flow: The two primary integration modes: Hosted Flow (aka verify by link) runs Persona on Persona-owned pages you reach via URL, while Embedded Flow (Web SDK) renders Persona’s UI as an overlay inside your own web page.

Verifications for scrutiny

Verification: A Persona product that can run multiple tests, in the form of checks, to scrutinize if the PII is likely valid, and resulting in a Pass or Fail.
Check: A check is an individual test, tailored to the specific type of a Verification that it is apart of, that scrutinizes PII and returns a “passed”, “failed”, or “not applicable” status.
Verification Type: A verification built for a specific use case, using a tailored set of checks.
Required Check: Checks that are set as Required will cause the verification they are apart of to fail if that required check fails.
Disabled Check: A check set to disabled will not run at all as part of the verification.
Attempt: Each time within a inquiry that a end user submits a verification, it is tracked as a an “attempt” on that verification.
Fallback: A design practice for when an end user would be blocked from completing, for example, an inquiry via a preferred path of verification and instead are directed to a secondary path that allows an alternate verification to complete the inquiry.
Accepted Fallback: Within the Gov ID verification, the Accepted Fallback field can capture alternative IDs that can be accepted if the preferred ID is not available.
Step Up Verification: A fraud prevention measure design practice that prompts additional verification(s) beyond the standard verifications required, like requiring an AAMVA verification if the distance between the end user location and their home address is too high.
Extracted Field: A field that has been populated with information extracted from a submitted document, ie extracting a name from a Passport.
Gov ID Verification: A verification that inspects a submitted government ID such as a driver license, national ID, or passport for authenticity and extracts the relevant information off of it for additional consumption.
Phone Number Verification: After an end user submits their phone number, the verification sends a confirmation PIN code to that number and then it checks the number against public and private databases to confirm that the information provided is valid.
Selfie Verification: A verification that asks the end user to take a video of their face in real-time, and Persona checks that the individual is live and real.
Document Verification: A verification that asks the end user to submit a document such as a utility bill, bank statement, or proof of address, with the verification then attempting to extract targeted information.
Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, and then uses the information to check against trusted public and private source databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
AAMVA: The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization that, among other functions, admins an authoritative database of state drivers licenses from most US states.
AAMVA Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, with the verification then uses the information to check against US AAMVA databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
eCBSV: The electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification service, which is administered by the Internal Revenue Service.
eCBSV Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, which the verification then uses the information to check against US eCBSV databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
Phone Carrier Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, which the verification then uses the information to check against phone carriers (ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon) databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
Serpro: The Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados (Federal Data Processing Service) is a large Brazilian government owned IT corporation that include a government ID database.
Serpro Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, which the verification then uses the information to check against Serpro databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
TIN: Taxpayer Identification Number is an IRS classification that include SSNs, and other tax identification numbers like EINs, ITIN, ATIN & PTIN.
TIN Database Verification: A verification that asks the end user to provide personal information like name, birthdate, address, and/or identification number, which the verification then uses the information to check against IRS TIN databases, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.
Aadhaar / UIDAI Verification: A database verification that asks the end user to provide their 12-digit Aadhaar number along with personal information like name, birthdate, and address, and then checks the details against the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) database, confirming that there is an associated identity record and that the provided information matches against the record.

Workflow automation

Workflow: An automation flow product that can handle inputs from all Persona objects and allows the triggering of additional processes, notifications, new Inquiries, reviews, cases, account updates, and many others.
Trigger: Triggers are what start a Workflow, and include three types of Triggers: Event (ex. Inquiry Completed), API, Scheduled.
Simulate: A feature to help test a Workflow version, allowing you to see how the branching logic would respond to the selected simulated inputs and data.
Workflow Module: A workflow feature that serves as a reusable logic block designed to encapsulate a specific set of workflow steps that can be included within numerous workflows.

Cases for review

Cases: A product that allows customers to build UI display layouts that arrange and surface targeted information from inquiries, verifications, workflows, reports, and accounts for manual review.
Case Template: A collection of configurations controlling the Case UI for your team, and many settings that govern how the Case behaves.
Case Views: A customizable filters and column arrangements for the All Cases view that can be saved and used to facilitate quickly sorting through your available cases.
Case Comments: A Cases feature allowing manual reviewers to leave comments on Case for additional context.
Preset Comments: A Cases feature allowing manual reviewers to leave comments on Case for additional context.
Attach Objects to Case: An action step in both Inquiries and Workflows that direct the flow attached objects, like reports, to an existing case.
Case Modules: A set of prebuilt components that you can pick from to drag and drop into a Cases Template, changing the layout of the template.
Teams: A cases feature for managing and grouping users based around how and when they are assigned cases for review.
Assignment Policy: A Cases feature, configured on case templates, that controls the distribution and assignment of cases using that template to members of your team.
Global Assignment Policies: A Cases feature that allows orgs to set org wide case distribution and assignment priorities, instead of by individual template.
Case Queue: A Cases feature that automatically groups Cases based on filters for Case status, Tags, Verification check status, and/or Report matches, as determined through Global Assignment Policies.

Reports for extra context

Source: A third party online authoritative information reference, usually a database, that that can be queried as part of a verification or a report.
Watchlist Report: A report that screens an individual across 200+ global Sanctions and Warning lists.
Business Watchlist Report: A report that screens entities against 200+ global Sanctions and Warning lists, adding to and enriching information from an Inquiry that collects and verifies a business or entity.
Address Lookup Report: A report that returns detailed metadata for a given address and includes two map views.
Adverse Media Report: A report that screens an individual across a global database of 300+ million news articles to identify any negative or unfavorable information associated with that individual.
Business Adverse Media Report: A report that screens entities across a global database of 300+ million news articles, from both traditional news outlets and less-structured sources, to identify any unfavorable information.
Email Risk Report: A report that assesses the fraud risk of an email address and confirms its authenticity, and identifies fake and suspicious users.
Phone Risk Report: A report that assesses the fraud risk of a phone number and confirms its authenticity.
Social Media Lookup Report: A report that surfaces social media profiles associated with an individual and is mainly used for KYC and marketing purposes.

API for scale

API: An Application Programming Interface is a set of protocols or rules that allow software applications to communicate with each other, with Persona’s API allowing you to send commands programmatically to Persona without using the Dashboard interface.
API Key: An authentication token that proves the api call has access and permission to a specified section of an application.
API Log: A per-requqest ID feed, searchable in Omnisearch, of API requests made to Persona, used for debugging API calls.
API changelog: The versioned, RSS-subscribable release notes for the Persona API at docs.withpersona.com/changelog, covering breaking changes and new endpoints.