Blog

Mobile and Style Updates

• Newer Table sections (leads, policies) will not convert to a list of cards instead of a table when a mobile device is detected. It also is responsive based on what device it is (iPad, iPhone, etc).
  • We will update other older sections soonish.
• Fixed some styles on the Admin Dashboard main menu bar for mobile.
• Made Page Titles smaller, and centered on mobile
• Fixed Filters view on Mobile to fit in the Filter Bar.
• Changed behavior or Column builder so the screen doesn’t pop to top after selecting or removing a column on mobile. Does not pop up on Desktop either but continues to keep the filter bar highlighted.
• Moved Column builder filter to top of page
• Added “Save” to column builder filter area so you don’t need to scroll down to update columns.
• Update column builder filter section to work better with Mobile.
• Modals are now full screen on mobile to allow for good editing experience.

Vendor Questionnaire

• We added a simple vendor questionnaire with common questions you may want to ask a new Lead Vendor in the edit vendor popup. You can use this for research purposes or to just store information about the vendor. If you use it for research and decide not to go with the vendor you can simple deactivate that vendor. You can find it again later by searching for inactive vendors.

Minor updates in this patch.

Responsive Update & Dialer Mods

• Dialer Info more responsive
  • Cleaned up Menu, tabs, and more. Hid new slider sidebar when in mobile view.
  • Centered Name when in small view.
  • Stacked buttons and Lead ID when in Small view
• Leads
  • Made more responsive. Should be easier to use in Mobile view
  • Made medications and conditions textareas so you can see more of what you are typing.
• Policies
  • Made more responsive. Should be much easier to use. Most columns are now 2 x 2 instead of full width.
• Dependents
  • Made more responsive.
• Fixed an issue where you could not enter CC number when half screen. Most of these issues should have been fixed with the responsive update. Let us know if you find any more of those!

Embedded Products

• Embedded products now respect state validation rules. Will silently fail if the state the primary is being created in does not fit the criteria for the embedded product.

Policies

• Fixed an issue where we were not using the product custom type, and always reverting to the product type. Product Custom types will now reflect in Sales Board, Profile and Policies sections. We may need to update a few more reports with this method.
• Added “Future Effective” policy disposition. This is for sales that have been made, and paid, have an in force date and effective date but do not go into effect until sometime in the future.

Sales Board

• You can now sort by total commissions
• Salesboard settings now save until you hit “Reset”
• Cleaned up filter dropdown to look more like rest of the system
• Removed some spacing from top and bottom of header so you can fit more on screen.

Sales Board

• You can now set the beginning of the week to any day, not just Sunday or Tuesday.
• On Fire now has a Fire Effect. Please let us know if you receive any retina damage.
  • Moved On Fire to top right corner of the cell it belongs in to keep the layout data cleaner and more even.
• Added “Stack Columns” capability so you can see two rows of data per agent.
• Added “Size” capability so you can change the font size of the main table for easier visibility.
• Reordered the Carriers Summary + the Sales Summary so Sales stacks on top of Carriers naturally, which makes for a more even table when there is too much data.
• Fixed an error when there was no results for the week.

Filters

• UX Update: I was getting annoyed adding columns then pressing backspace and having it auto-delete what I just added. So I made it require you press backspace 3 times before it starts deleting columns.

Policies

• Fixed an issue with the “Is Active Customer” column and search.
  • Our original query was not working correctly
  • An Active customer is a lead with at least one active policy
  • An Inactive customer is a lead with at least one policy that has been active before, but has no active policies
  • Other results will not show (Unsold Quotes, Kicked Policies that were never sales, etc).
• Added “Has and Doesn’t Have” to Premium, Enrollment Fee, Admin Fee, Deposit, Policy Number, Application Number, Deductible, Terms, Current Term, Lapses In. Thanks new query system!

Products

• You can now mass edit product validation rules.
  • If you set no rules in any validation section, nothing will be updated
  • If you set no rules in a section, nothing will be updated in that section.
• Added “Copy All From”
  • Will copy all validation rules from specified product for every section: Conversion, Verification, and Submission, including State Validation rules.
  • This also works with Mass Edit
• Added Copy All but State”
  • Will copy all validation rules from specified product, EXCEPT the state validation rules. This is useful for mass updating while maintaining state validations.
  • This also works with Mass Edit

Sales Board

• The sales board has now been updated to treat primary and ancillary policies bases on the Primary ID being set. It also respects the system configuration for treating ancillary products as ancillaries even if it is a primary policy with no primary set.
• Commissions Paid has been added as a toggleable field either per day and agent or overall for the agent.
• The hybrid and contest sales boards have been merged into the main sales board. They can still be turned on and off and both required the contest date set.
• Pretty much everything on the sales board is now clickable. It will take you to the main policies page with a preset search based on what you clicked. Please let us know if there are any errors, although we did test thoroughly!

Admin Dashboard: First Worked Leads

This is a new section in the admin dashboard that allows you to see how many first touches on a lead an agent received during a certain period.  This will also show you the total amount of unworked leads in the chart section, along side who worked what % of your leads that came in during that period. This circumvents the issue of not being able to pull reports based on Last Modified By, since the verifiers often become the new Last Modified By User when they get passed the lead to verify. We are pulling this data out of the action log and filtering out the system user, which is usually the first one to touch a lead. Hope this helps!

Commissions Paid

This is the first step toward the Payroll module. This is a manual entry version of commissions paid to your agent, as opposed to commissions received, which is from the carrier to your agency (or agent). There are three ways to generate commissions and the final two ways are coming soon!

1. Manually set the Commission Paid on the Dialer screen under a policy.
   1. This is currently active and selectable as a column in Policies sections. You can also use the Total and Average aggregate fields to build reports.
   2. This is simply a commission_paid column in the Policies table.
   3. The following permissions can view this field
      1. Superadmin, Admin, Manager, Accounting, Payroll, Commissions, Change Commissions Paid, View Commissions Paid
   4. The following permissions can edit this field
      1. Superadmin, Admin, Manager, Accounting, Payroll, Commissions, Change Commissions Paid
2. Coming: Generate commissions amounts based on triggers in the product config
3. Coming: More complex commissions payouts with the Payroll module, where you will be able to calculate hourly wages, bonuses, manager pay, and also deal with reoccurring commissions for agents who get paid monthly.  This is the complex one since there are some crazy schemas for payouts out there. This will also work with the points system.

Commissions Paid has been added to the Mass Edit policies screen.

Policy “Others”

This section has been removed, and the “Commissions” section added. The bill me later option has been moved into the main policy section.

Custom Status Option: Change Converted Lead Status

It is now possible to change the status of a converted policy by customizing any status and selecting “Show on Converted Leads Sidebar and allow change if converted?”

This will keep the conversion data but prevent the system from throwing the error that the lead is already converted. This is useful for campaigns where there is an extra step in the lead process flow, but no policies being sold.

Previously there was a workaround to this by using the Mass Edit feature.

Bugfix

• Fixed an issue where bolding datetimes were bolding too many datetimes…

Policies

• Terminate Date
  • Normally we calculate the lapse date by taking the effective date and the duration if set, and then looking at today and calculating it from there. However, some policies have a hard fixed termination date that may be either a few days in the future or the past.  The terminate date is able to be manually set and overrides the calculation if it exists. The Date terminate will be either what it is set to or nothing, but the date lapse will not modify itself based upon it’s presence. All calculations for renewals, including the auto terming feature of the system have been updated to use this method.
    • TLDR: If you set a date_terminate (Terminate Date) the date lapse will be set to that instead of the calculation.
  • In the Dialer Screen, if a policy has a duration and effective date we will show a Suggested Terminate date in the box as a placeholder(ie:” Calculated: 2018-01-01″. This does NOT need to be set unless you want to override.

Filter Improvements

• Redid a couple of theory items in Filters
• Added the ability to turn a filter into a Menu item in the Leads, Customers or My Business Sections. Works with both private and global filters. You will only see sections that you are permitted to view based on your permissions. Try it out!
  • This is useful for creating things like a “About to Turn 65” Menu item. You know who you are who wanted this!!!

Bugfix

• Fixed schema bug with CSR Date Modified
• Cleaned up CSR Date’s headers vs labels.

Fields

• Mass Customize Fields. Turn them on and off in bulk, or reorder them in bulk.

Products

• Mass Customize Products. Turn them on and off in bulk, or reorder them in bulk.

User

• You can now clone permissions from another user! Just use the mass edit tool under users.
  • Beware this will drop any permissions they had!
  • You can’t clone their permissions if the permissions would be higher level than you!

Lead Posts

• Now checks for dupes by Email if provided.
  • The post system always allowed either phone or email, and always accepted a lead if it had one or the other but never checked for dupes via email.
• Fixed an issue where no actions where being inserted on a lead when a lead was posted, making it impossible to untrash.

Vendors

• You can now set dupe checker to by Criteria.
  • This was already in but not enabled on live until it was tested.
• Clone Vendors
  • You can clone vendors just like cloning relays. The only difference is it will UNSET the Inbound phones for the clone since an inbound phone cannot be assigned to more than one vendor.

Vendor Logs

• Performance Tuning:
  • Vendor Logs have had account ID added to them for increase query performance.

Action Logs

• Performance Tuning:
  • Action Logs have had account ID added to them for increase query performance.

Relay Logs

• Performance Tuning:
  • Relay Logs have had account ID added to them for increase query performance.

Auto Term

• Auto term had it’s main query rewritten to support new account_id’s on policies. Much faster now.
  • Also fixed a bug where it wasn’t running for some, (timing out).

Campaigns

• Added is_terming flag. This allows you to only send on the final term, when the Terms matches the Current Term. this is useful for sending renewal messages or renewals to your dialer when your multi-term policy is about to lapse or lapses.

Agent Production Report

• Now that we have tuned the action logs, we have enabled the agent production report, which tells you what an agent has modified in the system. We were hesitant to release this when we weren’t able to effectively query by account id without creating temp tables. Yay!

Users

• You can now mass edit user permissions.
  • Mass Add
  • Mass Remove
  • Mass Drop

Vendors

• You can now mass edit vendor relays.
  • Mass Add
  • Mass Remove
  • Mass Drop

Agent Report

• The agent report now allows you to include post dates when searching by status and date converted.
• Removed the Agent activity section since the agent clock is no longer supported (for a long while now).
• Found and fixed a bug with the comparison charts that was also effecting the agent dashboard report.

This patch is a pretty big one, as it reworks the entire leads section. The way this section works will become the template for others including Policies, etc in the future. For now we are looking for feedback on the new interface changes.

Leads

•  Theory
  • The idea now is that you choose what you want to see. Even if you are searching for something, you must select the columns you want, we will no longer autopopulate related columns as they may not be relevant to your search. The new column builder is very easy to use and update. You can search by pretty much anything and the system will recognize which tables need to be joined. We have optimized both the select and the join statements to only include what is needed. This has increased performance significantly and reduces server load and delays to pushing data to the client. The joins work based off of both your search parameters as well as your columns selected. We are considering to add appointments, policies, callbacks and favorites into this section which would make it work more like a form builder than anything else.
• Columns
  • The column builder has been completely reworked from the multi-checkbox method that was dependent on the lead_columns meta, and is now based off of internal model data. This is going to be our new template going forward.
  • The column builder will show you a list of tags, with alternating colors for each. Each letter of the alphabet is sorted by a different color in a staggered pattern. We may remove this or revise it if it seems like too much information or it is too messy. We have experimented with gradients and solid colors and felt this was the best visually so far.
  • The column tags are ordered alphabetically. On a standard screen you can see almost all of the tags immediately.
  • You can filter tags by typing in the filter box. If you type a single letter it will filter to only those tags that start with that letter. More than one letters will search the entire word for the presence of those letters.
  • Clicking add all will add all tags to the selected columns
    • If you have filtered tags, it will only add the tags currently filtered.
  • Clicking remove all will remove all columns from the selected columns
  • If no tags are selected, the leads section will default to a preset query setting.
  • You can click on a tag to add it to the selected columns.
  • You can click on a tag in the selected columns to remove it from that section.
  • You can drag a tag to add it to the selected columns.
  • You can drag a tag in the selected columns to reorder the position in which it appears from left to right in the table.
• Exports
  • Exports will now export exactly what you have selected in the column builder.
• Filter Menus
  • Filter menus now save wether they are open or not on refresh, as well as which tab you where on. This way you can navigate away without having to reopen the filter menu.
• Grouping Options
  • You can now choose to group your data by Notes or Dependents. This will allow you to see each Dependent and Note on a lead. Otherwise it will not be grouped and only show one note or dependent. There are some aggregate columns that have been added so you can get total notes and total dependents if desired.  These can be found in the new column builder.
  • If you group by notes and select the “notes” field, which is a total count of notes, the count will be 1, since you are looking at each individual note. Removing the Group option will show the total notes on that lead. This works the same for CSR Requests, which will give you a total amount of CSR Requests. We will add more aggregate fields in the future.
  • There is a tooltip to explain grouping options if you click the grouping options text.
• Filter Multi-checkboxes
  • Every multi-check box that has more than 11 elements in it will automatically have a input at the top that allows you to filter by simply typing. No more scrolling looking for lead vendors! The search tries to match any pattern of text you put in wether it is at the beginning or end. Typing in a single entry will only search for the first letter of each word, which is handy if you just want to see one letter of the alphabet, not every option with that letter in it.
  • Scrollbars have been removed for checkboxes with 11 items.
• Sorting
  • Sorting now has a click component where you can click the header of the table to alternate between sorting ascending or descending. There is an icon that lets you know what it is currently sorted by. This automatically changes the order and sort parameters and refreshes the query.
• Custom Fields
  • Custom fields can now be searched through. We are working on a way to display JSON Data for Multi-checkboxes properly. The query portion works and you will see a list of ID’s related to it if you select a multi-checkbox column.
• Lead ID Column
  • The Lead ID column has been fixed a bit to make sure it stays in place and looks more uniform. The button has also been updated to our fontawesome iconset over the old glyphicons which are being phased out.
• Marketing Fields
  • Added marketing fields to Lead section that were missing including tracking_id, campaign_id, page, referrer and ip_address.
• CSR and Notes
  • Standardized format for displaying these fields as well as their respective search filters.
  • Removed CSR Date Modified (it’s the same as Note Modified)
• Medical Levelz
  • Was displaying in the list but search wasn’t working. Fixed now.
• Medicare
  • Date searches for Part A and B now added.
• Other fields
  • The following fields have been added and searchable
    • Gender
• Radio Buttons
  • Some radio buttons where removed and replaced with normal checkboxes. Options have been simplified for Notes and CSR’s
• Touchpoints
  • Touchpoints only show aggregate data, and more aggregate data has been added in the column builder.
• Disable while Loading
  • You can no longer click again while waiting for something to load. This could cause issues and overwritten results with click happy people. Sorry!

Filter Templates

Filter templates are a new thing! Currently they only work with the leads section but here is what you can do with them.

• Save Filter
  • When you press Save filter you will be presented with a popup to save the current filter. At minimum you must provide a name. You can use the description field to give yourself some notes as to what it is meant to do.
  • Managers or higher can opt to set the search as global or personal.
    • They can also turn global searches into personal searches. Be careful!
  • Anyone below manager level can only create personal searches, but they can load global ones! They cannot edit global ones.
  • To delete a filter you can check the Delete this filter checkbox when editing it.
• Load Filter
  • When you select a filter and press the load filter button it will immediatly set the columns session to the columns found in the Filter template and then refresh the screen with the desired parameters.

Exports

• Exports now bring up a popup that asks if you want to export all, or just the current columns displayed.  The export PHI checkbox has been moved to this area as well and removed from the search bar.
• You can also choose to export all results here by default, or just the limit imposed in the search bar as well as change the limit right there.
• With limited columns, you can now export up to 100,000 leads at a time if needed.

Commissions Received

We made some changes to this section per request and greater understanding of the process we are jumping into with commissions.

• Added the following fields
• chargeback_id
  • This is a reference to another commissions received row in which the chargeback was related to so we can calculate the loss.
• trueup_id
  • This is in reference to another commissions partial payment received so we can calculate if there is any remaining balance.
• type_id
  • You can now select a commission entry type from the following types:
    • Residual
    • Partial
    • Trueup
    • Final
    • Advance
    • Chargeback
    • First
    • Full
  • These types may be used in the future for reconciliations or commissions calculations as well as auditing.

Data Settings

• Treat Ancillary Products as Ancillary Policies
  • This is a global account setting that will be worked into all reports and statistics in the system regarding primary and ancilary.
  • Currently some of the system calculated ancillary and primary by the product type. The dashboard was recently modified to split them by Primary ID(a feature from patch 6.2.10) This option now affects the dashboard if set. The rest of the system will be set up later to use the same method for splitting primary and ancillary. By default it will be based on primary_id alone but you can still choose to opt primary policy ancillary products as ancillary if you like.
  • The reason this was done is because it could cause confusion for some people who do not consider standalone ancillary products as primary policies.
• Disable Exports
  • You can now disable exports in the options menu. This will stop all exports from working in the system. Any attempts will be recorded and will be marked as superadmin-lock for the file name and show 0 records.
  • There is a Omni user setting for this reserved for system administrators at Esotech. If you see omni-lock this means that we have detected suspicious activity and temporarily disabled your exports. You can only fix this by calling us and resolving the issue. This allows us to protect you from runaway managers, partners or anyone else that you had given admin or higher access too and can take off with your data.

Embedded Products

You can now embed products with fixed premiums and enrollment fees to go alongside a primary product. These will be set as ancillary automatically to the product being quoted. If you are using this just to track products that already have their price bundled in, then you can leave the premium blank. All other data from the primary policy will be copied (only on creation) to the rest of the ancillary products. This includes billing information and dates as well as the agent sold, etc. This is useful to use with the new Auto Quote / Verify / Submit settings as you can have the product added at any point of the sales process, and then it can keep in sync with the primary.

Auto Quote / Verify / Submit Ancillary Policies

It is now possible to select, per product, that any ancillary products get automatically quoted, verified or submitted along with the primary policy.

This makes it so that the ancillary products stay in sync with the primary, and so the agent only has to quote, verify or submit the primary policy and avoid clicking the buttons on the rest of the ancillaries. This is especially useful for products with 2 or 3 ancillaries.

Send Relays

Now supported in the following sections

• Appointments
• Callbacks
• Favorites
• Relays Logs
• Vendors Logs
• Mailer Logs

Policy Calculations Section

All policy calculations (except marketplace) have been moved to the Calculations section just under the Primary Policy Data. This section can be hidden, as well as any calculation fields that show up by going to Options -> Dialer -> Hide Policy Fields

We have added the following calculations to work with the new Primary / Ancillary Policy system.

• Total Monthly w/ Ancillary
• Total Initial w/ Ancillary
• Total Ancillary Policies
• Total Ancillary Premiums
• Total Ancillary Enrollment Fees
• Total Ancillary Admin Fees

This will help to make sure all your policies equal out. It works well with the embedded policies feature. It will allow your agents to make sure, if premiums are included in a Primary, that the math adds out to the total amount if ancillaries also have a premium set. You can still opt to put the premium information as blank just to track total ancillaries sold, but if you are able to also mark the premiums then you will get accurate reporting on where your premiums are coming from, broken down.

Action Logs

• Fixed an issue where Manual Insert (new leads) where not inserting an initial status making it impossible to untrash, undnc or unconvert if the first action was not a convertion, trash or dnc status. We are now logging this information correctly.
• Made sure that policies created by automation have an initial status logged in the system for similar reasons.

Admin Dashboard Changes

Now shows Primary and Ancillary Totals and Calculations for Period as well as In Range.

Moved In Range to the side next to All Range calculations.

Moved Leads totals to it’s own row.

Validations

You can now set the following Validation rules per product and per step in the sales process

• Minimum Contact Age
• Maximum Contact Age
• Minimum Dependent Age
• Maximum Dependent Age