RentGrow, Inc.
Screening Applications Through 3^rd Party Property Management Systems
July 2003

The Process

The property management system collects the applicant data and creates the XML as per the RentGrow input DTD.  The RentGrow input DTD is available at: 

http://www.rentgrow.com/b2b/xmldtd.html

The property management software will then open a new browser window as a POST to the URL: (Please contact RentGrow at 800-736-8476 x232 for specific URL) with the body of the post containing the XML data according to the published DTD.  This will log the user into TotalScreen, submit the applicant contained in the XML, and display the TotalScreen report including the recommendation. The user is free to navigate through the TotalScreen application as they would had they logged in the conventional way.

 
FAQ’s

Q:  What is the attribute parseOnly for the Element RgRentalApplication used for?

A:  That is just a testing thing.  It allows you to send up an application, to see if it gets parsed correctly, without running a credit report.

Q:  What will the attribute rentalHistory specify?  Basically, What does it depend on?  Who/What decides the value for that? 

A:  The agent entering the application would choose this value.  It is "yes" if the applicant has rented/owned before, "no" if not, and "student" if the current address is with parents or relatives. Some of our screening policies may score differently depending on this value.

Q:  Also, we do an HTTP Post of the XML as a value of an INPUT field of name XMLPost.  Is this name OK? 

A:  We can make it OK.   We can check for a field named XMLPost in stdin of the incoming data. Usually I just take all of stdin from the poster and expect that it is well-formed XML.  Being that the username and password are part of the data, the post would need to be an https: post.

Q:  I am assuming that RgNodeCode, RgUserName and RgPassword would be enough for you to authenticate a user and understand that the source of request is the property management system  i.e. do you need to know the source or not?

A:  The source application does not need to be specified, as we don't store it anywhere.

Q:  Do you provide any kind of account number to a property when they set RentGrow up as their credit screening agency? Is this what the RgNodeCode is?

A:  Yes, RgNodeCode, RgUserName and RgPassword would be available to a property when they signed up to use TotalScreen.