Connact Networks · Platform
The Connact Community EngineA substantial foundation, shaped into your institutional product.
Not a blank-sheet build. Not a white-label subscription. Twenty modules that already exist, each described by exactly what state it is in. A claim about a platform deserves the same honesty as a claim inside one.
A members community platform, and then the part other platforms do not have.
The table stakes first, because an institution evaluating this arrives with a checklist rather than with our architecture. The twenty modules below are the same capabilities, organised the way the platform is actually built.
What members do
The reason they come back between your events.
- Claim a verified profile rather than being handed one
- Find people by expertise, organisation and topic
- Join open communities and members-only circles
- Connect with each other, mutually and revocably
- Message in threads inside the network
- Hold credentials that expire, renew and can be checked
- Contribute work through a visible review pathway
- Set what is public, link-only or available on request
What your team runs
The half of the product that decides the evaluation.
- Import a roster with a dry run before anything is written
- Work a claim queue with the evidence attached
- Issue credentials the recipient accepts, not receives
- Set access space by space, from open to private
- Moderate, publish and curate what the public sees
- Read an audit trail kept separate from the signed record
- Revoke and expire without deleting the history
What it connects to
Because none of this replaces the systems you already run.
- Sign-in through your identity provider, OAuth 2.0 and OIDC
- CRM, CMS and event systems through documented APIs
- Webhooks for the events your systems care about
- A TypeScript SDK for your own developers
- Full export of everything, any time, at no cost
Five layers, twenty modules, each labelled with the state it is in.
The record
The differentiation. Everything else in this list exists on other platforms; this layer is why an institution would choose Connact over them.
Provenance
Nothing enters without who says so attached. Four tiers render distinctly, and a platform computation is never dressed up as a credential.
Implemented foundationNotary
Signed and appended from record #1. The rule against rewriting history is enforced in the code itself, not in a setting an administrator could change. Root hashes mirror to an append-only public witness, pointed at your own repository at deployment.
Implemented foundationVerify
A permanent address per claim that resolves on its own, independently of every other service. Works the same for a browser and for a machine fetching JSON.
Implemented foundationAttestation
Human witnessing with a stated relationship and two-sided consent. The witness’s identity travels with the claim. Never a counter.
Implemented foundationThis comparison is too lopsided to draw to scale. At the scale of the bar above, where 7 days spans the full width, the request below would be about a fiftieth of a pixel. It is drawn at a readable minimum instead, so read the second bar as a marker rather than as a measurement. The ratio is calculated from the two figures shown: 7 days against 1.2 seconds.
Identity
One typed record per subject, with one permanent URL. It renders wherever it is useful, and it is disclosed only as far as the holder allows.
Subjects
People, organisations, works and objects as typed records. Written once, rendered on the member’s page, your public site, search and partner surfaces.
Implemented foundationDisclosure
Set per item by the holder: public, link-only, or on-request. It is never sold as a paid upgrade and never traded.
Implemented foundationAccount ownership
Proving a member actually controls the handles, domains and profiles they claim. Worth more every year that identity forgery gets cheaper.
Demonstrable capabilityDirectory and discovery
People, organisations, expertise and topics, searchable and ranked by relevance and standing rather than by engagement.
Demonstrable capability- Tariq MansourHead of Data Governance · Aldera GroupData governanceAssuranceVerifiedConnected
- Omar Al-SayeghDirector of Data Engineering · Aldera GroupData engineeringAI assuranceVerifiedConnect
- Mariam Al-FarsiProgramme Director · Novaria Institute of TechnologyProgramme deliveryData governanceVerifiedConnect
- Elena MarshSenior Fellow · Civic Futures InstituteInstitutional trustAttestedConnect
- Marcus WebbIndependent practitionerService deliverySelf-declaredConnect
- Aisha RahmaniPractice Design Lead · Civic Futures InstitutePractice designData governanceVerifiedConnect
The community
The surfaces where members meet each other: shared spaces, topics that gather related work, direct connections and conversation. A register of verified people is a useful thing to own; this is the layer that makes it a network.
Spaces and boards
An open discussion and a members-only board can sit around the same subject. The space's access policy decides who sees which, so public reach and private candour are one product rather than two.
Demonstrable capabilityTopics
One topic gathers the people, the communities and the contributions on a theme, so expertise is discoverable in context rather than scattered down a timeline.
Demonstrable capabilityConnections
Mutual and two-sided. Both people agree, either can end it, and blocking is a first-class action rather than a request to support.
Demonstrable capabilityMessages
Threaded conversations with read state and an unread count, so direct contact between members stays inside the network the institution runs.
Demonstrable capabilityAI governance
Not signed in. Arrived from a search result.
- DiscussionWhat good model assurance looks likeOpen discussion · 14 contributorspublic
- RecordFellowship: Dr. Leila HaddadCredential · conferred by the Institute councilpublic
- BoardNot shown to this viewerRequires: membershipmember
- DirectoryNot shown to this viewerRequires: membershipmember
- BoardNot shown to this viewerRequires: the expert circlecircle
- Working noteNot shown to this viewerRequires: the expert circlecircle
4 of 6 items are not shown, and the viewer is told that rather than shown a shorter list pretending to be the whole one.
The institution
What your operators run day to day, and what your members experience as membership.
Collections and spaces
Containers with an access policy: open, approval-based, restricted or private. Membership is a dated assertion with validity, not just a row in a table.
Implemented foundationCredentials
Issuer, holder, verifier. Offered credentials require acceptance; expiry, revocation and verification pages are first-class.
Implemented foundationProgrammes
Contextual submissions with attached evidence, review pathways and outcomes that become credentials or opportunities.
Configurable client deliveryOperations console
Roster import with dry run, claim queues, issuance, access, moderation, publishing controls and an audit trail kept separate from the signed record.
Demonstrable capabilityThe agent gateway
What makes this a 2026 platform rather than a 2019 one. Possible here only because consent and disclosure were modelled as first-class concepts from the start.
Delegated grants
A member can authorise an agent to act for them, on named records only, until a stated date. The grant is revocable at any time and comes with a receipt the member can read.
Integration-ready architectureGoverned retrieval
Retrieval over institutional knowledge that checks disclosure at the moment of the query, per item and per person, instead of after the answer is already given.
Integration-ready architectureCited answers
Machine output that resolves to provenance-bearing records with verify links attached, rather than a fluent summary nobody can check.
Optional moduleIntegration surface
OpenAPI contracts, OAuth 2.0 and OIDC, webhooks, a TypeScript SDK, and full data export at no cost, always.
Integration-ready architectureGrants a scope
Names the agent, the specific records it may read, and the date access ends. Nothing is granted by default.
Issues a receipt
The grant is signed and written to the member’s own history, readable by them, in plain language, at any time.
Acts within it
Presents the grant. Records outside the scope do not resolve. They are not filtered out afterwards; they never load in the first place.
Receives a signed answer
Structured JSON carrying only the disclosed records, plus a count of what was withheld. Verifiable without calling us.
Access stops on the stated date. No renewal is implied and none happens silently.
The member revokes and access ends at the next request. No notice period, no appeal, no support ticket.
What twenty modules look like once someone is using them.
Identity, credentials, spaces, boards and a dated contribution history are separate modules above. Nobody using the product sees them as separate. They see a person, and they see the room that person is in.
Practice standard 4.2, draft 3
Standard 4.2 goes to the Institute council in March. This circle is where the draft gets argued before it leaves the building.
Draft 3 moves model evaluation ahead of the vendor questionnaire. If your organisation has run an evaluation like this, say what it cost you in weeks, not in principle.
Eleven weeks, and six of them were waiting on a legal opinion we could have asked for on day one.
Same order of magnitude. I can attach the timeline as a record if it is useful to the draft.
Work out which of these your institution actually needs.
Every module above carries the state it is genuinely in, because a list of capabilities is easy to write and hard to check. Which of them matter to you, and in what order, is the question discovery answers.