Introduction

Overview

An Entity is a record in Alloy that represents either a prospective applicant or an active customer. Entities are the data structure in Alloy that is “sent through” a Journey, Workflow, or Events API request and are the backbone for tying together data together across different onboarding applications, or between onboard and ongoing monitoring.

By default, Alloy automatically generates an identifier for each Entity, called the Entity Token. Entity Tokens begin with either P- for person-type Entities, or B- for business-type Entities. The Entity Token is assigned as soon as a new Entity record is created in Alloy’s system.

While the Entity Token can be used as a unique identifier, Alloy strongly encourages you to assign your own unique identifier, referred to as the External Entity ID. When an External Entity ID is assigned, it can be used interchangeably with the Entity Token when interacting with Alloy's API. If duplicate entities are created we have the ability to merge entities in Alloy, and if you need to refer to an entity via multiple External Entity IDs you can also do so.

Re-Using Entity Records

When a net-new customer is onboarded, it’s likely that this will result in a new Entity. If you plan on using Alloy to run additional onboarding or ongoing checks for the same individual or business, we recommend that you re-use the same Entity record for subsequent requests so you can track the full lifecycle of your customer. To support this, you will either need to:

• Supply the External Entity ID to Alloy when onboarding a new customer.
  • Note: If you don’t assign an External Entity ID until after onboarding, you can update Alloy later to sync it to the Entity record. See the Retroactively Assigning an External Entity ID page for instructions.
• Store the Alloy Entity Token after it’s first assigned.