Global.Church Developer Portal
For Data Managers

Reviewing Claims

Organizations and their members submit claims through the Global.Church platform. These claims go through a review process before they affect the knowledge graph. This guide covers both types of claims and how to review them.

What is a Claim?

A claim is a statement that needs verification before it becomes official in the system. There are two types:

Organization Claims

An organization claim is when a user says "I belong to this organization." For example, a user with email [email protected] might claim membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators during onboarding.

Engagement Claims

An engagement claim is when an organization says "We work with this people group." For example, Wycliffe might claim engagement with the Quechua people in Peru. Once approved, this fact is added to the knowledge graph.

Organization Claim Lifecycle

  1. Submitted -- A user goes through onboarding and selects or creates an organization.

  2. Auto-approval check -- The system checks whether the user's email domain matches the organization's registered domain. If it matches and no one has claimed the organization before, the claim is auto-approved and the user becomes the organization admin.

  3. Pending Review -- If the domain does not match, or if the organization already has an admin, the claim is queued for review.

    • If the org has an existing admin, the claim goes to that admin for approval.
    • If no admin exists and domains do not match, the claim goes to platform admins.

  4. Reviewed -- An admin (org admin or platform admin) approves or rejects the claim.

  5. Approved -- The user is added to the organization with the appropriate role (typically org_member, upgradable to org_contributor or org_admin).

  6. Rejected -- The claim is archived with a reason. The user is notified.

Engagement Claim Lifecycle

  1. Submitted -- An organization member submits a claim such as "We work with the Fulani in Nigeria" through the engage dashboard or platform.

  2. Pending Review -- The claim appears in the admin dashboard at platform.global.church/admin/claims.

  3. Reviewed -- An admin with the claims:review permission (admin or support role) reviews the claim.

  4. Approved -- The engagement is transformed into RDF triples and loaded into GraphDB in the engagement claims named graph (<https://data.global.church/engagement-claims/>). The fact becomes queryable across all applications.

  5. Rejected -- The claim is archived with a reason.

Where to Review Claims

Claims are reviewed in the platform admin dashboard:

You need the admin or support platform role to access claim review. The claims:review permission is required.

What to Check When Reviewing

Organization Claims

When a user claims membership in an organization, verify:

  • Email domain match -- Does the user's email domain match the organization's known domain? An [email protected] claiming Wycliffe is more credible than a gmail.com address.
  • Organization legitimacy -- Does the organization profile look complete and real? Check the org name, website, and type.
  • Duplicate claims -- Has someone else already claimed this organization? If so, the existing org admin should handle the new request.

Engagement Claims

When an organization claims engagement with a people group, verify:

  • Organization legitimacy -- Is the claiming organization a real, active entity? Check their profile on the platform.
  • People group identification -- Does the ROP3 code match the named people group? Verify the people group name and country are consistent.
  • Engagement accelerator -- Is the claimed engagement accelerator (church planting, Bible translation, etc.) appropriate and plausible for this organization?
  • Supporting evidence -- Has the organization provided any supporting context? While not always required, evidence strengthens a claim.
  • Geographic plausibility -- Does the organization have a presence or history of work in the claimed region?

Organization Roles After Approval

When an organization claim is approved, the user receives an organization membership role:

RoleWhat they can do
org_adminFull control -- approve members, submit engagement claims, manage org metadata
org_contributorSubmit data and engagement claims for org admin review
org_memberView organization data (read-only, default for new approvals)

The first person to claim an organization (with matching email domain) automatically becomes org_admin. Subsequent members start as org_member and can be upgraded by the org admin.

Platform Roles Required for Review

ActionRequired roleRequired permission
Review organization claimsadmin or supportclaims:review
Review engagement claimsadmin or supportclaims:review
Manage user rolesadminroles:assign
View all usersadmin or supportusers:read

What Happens After Approval

Organization claims: The user is added to the org_memberships table with their assigned role. They can now see and (depending on role) contribute to the organization's data.

Engagement claims: The claim is transformed into RDF triples following the engagement pattern (MinistryActivity linked to PeopleGroup via gc:engagesPeopleGroup, with the organization as the associated agent). These triples are loaded into the <https://data.global.church/engagement-claims/> named graph in GraphDB. The engagement becomes visible in the engage dashboard and queryable through the API.

Next Steps

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