This article is about the Proxi admin app at app.proxi.co.
Keeping a few hundred businesses current is more than one person can do by hand. Hours change, a shop moves, a bakery finally gets a website — and you find out months later. So Proxi gives the people who already know these things a way to tell you: the owners themselves, and the neighbors who walk past every day.
The important part, and the thing to say out loud to anyone nervous about this: nothing they send changes a listing on its own. Every single thing waits for you.
Three Ways Information Comes In
Someone claims their listing. A business owner spots their shop on your map or directory, taps a link that says Is this your business?, and asks to manage it. Approve them and they can keep their own info current from then on.
Someone answers listing questions on a form. When a person adds a place to one of your maps, you can also ask for the phone, hours, and website. Those answers are held aside for you to look at rather than written straight onto the listing.
A business asks to join. Your sign-up form is a public page a business can fill in to ask to be added to your listings. Approving one creates the listing.
It All Lands in One Place
Whichever door it came through, it shows up on your Listings page in a card called Listing Updates, with a count of what needs you. Claims, suggested edits, and new sign-ups sit together with Approve and Decline buttons. Nothing is scattered across three inboxes.
Why We Don't Ask "Are You the Owner?" First
You might expect a form to hide the phone and hours questions until someone swears they own the place. Proxi asks everyone instead, on purpose.
Say a regular at the coffee shop knows it now closes at two on Sundays. She isn't the owner and never will be — but she's right, and she's the only one telling you. Since every answer waits for your review anyway, hiding the question from her wouldn't have made anything safer. It would only have cost you a true fact.
Near the end of the form, people are asked whether they're the owner or a contact for the place. That answer doesn't unlock anything — it just tells you who you're hearing from when you review, and offers them the chance to keep the listing updated going forward.
Good to Know
You choose which doors are open, per map, per directory, and on your public listings page. New maps and directories start with claim links on; older ones and your public listings page start off.
Approving a claim makes that person an Editor on that one listing — not on your workspace, and not on anything else.
A claim link only appears on listings nobody manages yet, so a business that's already been claimed doesn't get pestered.
Once someone manages their own listing, their later edits go live without waiting — but you still see every change and can undo any of it. See Reviewing Claims, Edits and New Listings.