Custom Lists Guide

Custom lists let your organization screen customers against internal watchlists, do-not-onboard registries, and other tenant-owned lists. They screen alongside Minerva’s standard Sanctions, PEP, and News feeds, and every upload becomes a versioned, deployable screening source with full audit history. Access: Requires the Admin role or above to create lists, upload records, publish versions, or change workspace activation. Other users can review lists read-only. In the sidebar, go to Administration > Configuration, then open Custom Lists under Data Sources.

​

Key concepts

​

How custom list screening works

1. Create a list and load records through file uploads or manual entry.
2. Publish the working set into a new immutable version after reviewing the staged changes.
3. Activate a published version in the selected workspace on a feed category.
4. Minerva deploys the version. When the deployment is live, screening and ongoing monitoring in that workspace include the list.
5. Matches appear in screening results under the selected feed category with the list name, record UID, and your custom fields as evidence, and the list’s risk rating impact is applied to the profile’s Client Risk Rating.

​

The custom list management page

The management page shows every list in the tenant with its deployment state, workspace activation, feed category, record count, and latest version. From this page you can:

• Create list: name the list, describe it, and choose its default feed category.
• Download upload templates: starter CSV or XLSX files with the recognized column headers.
• Open a list to manage records, uploads, versions, and activation on its detail page.
• Upload directly into a list from the table row.

​

The list detail page

Each list has a detail page with four areas: the records table, the risk rating impact control, deployment status, and recent uploads.

​

Records

The records table is the list’s working set. Manual edits become part of the next published version.

• Filter by record status (Active or Archived).
• Search by record UID prefix.
• Add record or Edit opens the record form: record UID, entity type (individual or organization), name, aliases, countries, date of birth or date of incorporation, reason, notes, and custom fields.
• Archive removes a record from the next published version without deleting its history; archived records can be restored.

​

Upload records in bulk

Use Upload records on the detail page to load a CSV or XLSX file of up to 100MB. Columns can be in any order as long as the headers are recognizable; start from the downloadable templates when you are building the file for the first time. Every upload is validated on the server before anything changes:

1. Choose the file and a merge mode: Upsert only keeps records that are missing from the file, while Full replace archives them.
2. Validate parses the file and computes an execution plan (adds, updates, unchanged records, and archives) without applying anything.
3. Review the plan, the row preview, and any validation errors.
4. Publish applies the batch and creates a new published version of the list.

If validation reports errors, fix the file and upload it again. Nothing from a failed or unreviewed batch reaches screening. In-progress and recent batches stay visible in Recent Uploads so another admin can pick up a pending review.

​

Publish changes

Manual record edits and list-setting changes (name, description, risk rating impact) accumulate as unpublished changes. The list header shows an Unpublished changes chip while anything is staged. Publish changes snapshots the working set into a new version and deploys it where the list is activated. The review dialog summarizes exactly what will change:

• Added, updated, and removed record counts, with a sample of affected records
• List configuration changes, such as a new risk rating impact
• The total record count after publish

Use Discard changes in the header menu to reset the working set back to the last published version instead.

​

Activate a list in a workspace

Activation controls which published version screens live traffic in the selected workspace. Open Manage activation (or Activate in workspace for a list that is not active yet).

• Feed category chooses the screening feed this list contributes matches to: Internal Risk, Sanctions, PEP, News, Legal, or Criminal.
• Target version selects the published version to serve. Draft or failed versions cannot be activated.
• Disable stops the list from screening in this workspace without deleting the list or its versions.

Activation requests a deployment. Screening starts once the deployment status reaches Live. The deployment status card on the detail page tracks each step (version published, deployment queued, provisioning and indexing, live) and surfaces failure reasons with retry.

​

Risk rating impact

The Risk rating impact slider (0–100) controls how much a screening match against this list raises the profile’s Client Risk Rating: 0 means no risk-rating effect and 100 means a match immediately reads as high risk. The value is saved to the working set and takes effect on screening when you publish changes. Use higher impacts for lists that represent confirmed adverse decisions (do-not-onboard, exited relationships) and lower impacts for advisory or contextual lists.

​

Version history and rollback

Every publish creates a numbered version with its record count, risk impact, publish time, and deployment state. Open Version history from the header menu to review or roll back. Activating an older version rolls the workspace back without deleting newer published versions, so you can roll forward again at any time. Rollback is also the recovery path when a deployment fails: retry the failed version, roll back to the last good one, or disable the feed while you investigate.

​

How matches appear in screening

Matches from custom lists appear in screening results and ongoing monitoring under the feed category the list is activated on, alongside matches from Minerva’s standard data feeds. Match evidence includes the list name, the record UID, and the custom fields you uploaded, so reviewers see why the record is on the list. Once custom lists are enabled for the tenant, the monitoring cadence for the Internal Risk feed is configured on the Screening frequencies page.

​

Example use cases

​

Related guides

• Screening Guide
• Screening Frequencies Guide
• Workspaces Guide
• Match Scoring Guide
• Risk Rating