What's new in Symbility mobile claims release 0.99.0.2?

Symptoms: If a claim had multiple coverages and multiple deductibles instead of a flat deductible, the deductible would always show as zero in the totals page of the estimate.
Explanation: Now the estimate will include a single deductible equal to the deductible of the first coverage that exists. You can click the deductible and choose another coverage that applies instead, or even select multiple deductibles to appear on the estimate.

Symptoms: The "Market Conditions" component of any items would not appear on the estimate or the totals page. All calculations would factor it in, it would just not appear anywhere—the exception being tax calculations which would not factor in the market conditions calculation.
Explanation: If you adjust the unit price for an item, the difference between the new unit price and the unit price in the database is automatically entered as "market conditions". The concept of market conditions is intended to account for short-term wild price fluctuations such as during catastrophes. In these cases prices are temporarily affected by shortages of materials and labor coupled with higher demand, but will generally come back down to normal levels when the situation has returned to normal. The market conditions component SHOULD NOT be used to make routine unit price adjustments. Rather, you should determine which specific components (materials, labour, and/or equipment) are responsible for a different unit price than what's in the database and alter those components accordingly. Adjusters do not want to see market conditions values greater than zero unless there is a catastrophe situation!

Regardless, when market conditions are used, they now show up as a separate column on the estimate (as an option) and are totaled on the totals page just like the other components are. Market conditions are still not taxed however (another reason not to use this field for routine price adjustments).

Symptoms: If you add a "General Items" room shape (used to add items to that don't apply to any one particular room) then rename it (to "Miscellaneous exterior work" for example) it appears as "General Items" still on the estimate.
Explanation: Fixed.

Symptoms: Items would exclude O&P and Tax by default, and required the user to manually turn on the O&P and Tax properties (via the Property Bar or the Item Properties dialog) for each item.
Explanation: Fixed.

Symptoms: From the estimate page, you can quickly jump right to a floorplan or the Loss Summary page; tapping the Back button should take the user back to the estimate page, but instead returned the user to the claim explorer.
Explanation: Fixed.

Finally, mobile claims will automatically save the claim you're working on at the time interval you select—1 to 60 minutes—there's now no reason you'll lose more than a few minutes of work ever again—even in these buggy early versions!. The AutoSave feature is also intelligent--saving a temporary copy of the claim which you can recover if the software crashes, but still allowing you to close a claim without saving your changes if you wish.

Set the AutoSave Interval in the Tools|Preferences dialog box. It will be defaulted to 5 minutes. If something goes wrong, you'll be asked if you want to recover the last saved version of the claim you were working on the next time you run mobile claims. 

Currently, when an assignee releases ownership of a claim the first time, the status changes to "Estimate uploaded" automatically. This was probably not the best design because often the contractor will need to release ownership (for example to let another estimator in their company acquire it) before they want the notification to go back to the adjuster that "the estimate has been uploaded"—which naturally is taken by the adjuster to mean "it's done"—it may not in fact be complete, but still in progress. The following changes have been made to improve this:

• When an assignee (the contractor) releases ownership of a claim, the status of the claim does not change and no notification is sent to the originator (adjuster).

• The status of the claim changes to "Estimate Complete" ONLY when the assignee indicates the estimate is complete using a new checkbox in the blue header bar at the top of the estimate. Checking this box creates an automatic journal entry that records when the estimate was completed. If the assignee then releases ownership (or uploads the claim but keeps ownership) and synchronizes, the originator will receive notification that the estimate is complete and will be able to view it.

• In addition, the originator is unable to view the estimate UNTIL it is marked as complete by the assignee, insuring that estimates in progress stay within your organization.

This feature was born out of the request for a contractor who has been assigned a claim to be able to share the claim with a subcontractor, to allow them to also contribute diagrams, estimates, etc. to the claim. Here's how it works:

• A new menu command in Symbility.NET called "Peers" allows you to view a list of all other contractors who are Symbility members. You use this list to build your own list of peers—companies with whom you regularly do business with. From the same screen you can even send an invitation to other contractors who are not yet registered with Symbility.

• When you have a claim open in Symbility.NET, you can now add a new company (chosen from your list of peers) as a new participant in the claim—allowing them to view the claim, take ownership, make changes, etc.

• Note that every company that participates in a claim will incur a transaction fee ($0.50 for the duration of the pilot, then US$5.00)

This feature applies mainly to the insurance company. Currently the person who creates the claim cannot stop participating in a claim. This feature allows the claim creator access to the command "Stop participating in this claim". When clicked, a new window is shown stating "You are the creator of this claim, and every claim must have a creator. If you stop participating in this claim, you must assign the 'creator' status to someone else in your company/branch." The window shows a list of all users within the same company/branch to select from. If the new user selected is NOT currently a participant, they are added. In any case, a journal entry is entered regarding the transfer of creator status.

Some items in the item database have integrated comments attached to them, for example, "Includes track and hardware" (for a bi-fold door). While these comments can be viewed by double-tapping an item to show the Item Properties dialog box (the comments are on the "Comments" tab), you don't always know if an item you're adding contains a comment or not—and there may be some valuable information in the comment. This feature helps make you aware of comments that are embedded in items by showing you the comment briefly right where you drop the item onto the room. If you want to make the comment a note that appears under the item in the estimate, you can double-click the item to access its properties—then use the "Make Note" checkbox on the Comments tab.