Express Entry:Best Practices

Matching Addresses

Not every address will be found in Express Entry. For example, new addresses and rural addresses not serviced by the United States Postal Service may not be available. Your code should allow for the case that Express Entry does not have the submitted address and handle it appropriately. For example, you may require in your code that if the address comes up with ‘no results found’, then force the user to fill out the full address with all of line 1, city, state, and ZIP Code – and only then be able to move forward with the application. More addresses will be added in future versions including new and rural addresses.

Returning a Parsed Address

In Global Express Entry a parsed version, according to the standards of each country, of the input is returned when there is no reference data match. This may lead to some confusion as to whether the address is in the reference data. If your response address is the same as the input address, but in a different form, you may be getting a parsed version back, which means your address was not in the reference data.

When to Address Check

A Best Practice is to send the address through an address checker if it does not come up in Express Entry. Verifying the address using Address Object or WebSmart Web Service after attempting a match is useful in those cases that the user is required to type the whole address, since the address is unverified in this case. Also, users should know that when there is only one address showing in the results window, and this is the match, then there is no need to type further since they may choose this address with the mouse (or keyboard, depending on the implementation).

'Official' City Name

In the fielded query, (which uses the ExpressPostalCode service), where multiple city names are offered, choose only the ‘official’ city name. Abbreviated cities may not contain thoroughfare names.

Sample Code Fields

In the sample code, all that is needed to access the fields that are populated by the service is the field name. Once the data entry user selects a choice from the listbox, the information is ready to place into variables.

Tab Stops

The sample code (VB and C#) tab stops are set in the form so that the user can use the keyboard without the mouse to use the service.

Updates

Check the product page on the Melissa Data Wiki (Express Entry) for an update on bugs and features that may be added.

User Address Search

The data entry user can ‘search’ for an address using backspace and entering different characters in the search box. The service supports this feature. Add characters to narrow the search, take away characters to broaden the search.