Before, doors and windows had a casing property on all sides of equal widths (except for doors which had no casing on the bottom of course). This presented a problem: the door or window could not be placed closer than the width of the casing to a wall or another subtraction. it also made it difficult to add a double-door (with no frame between the two halves).

 

Now, the following rules are observed for doors and windows:

If a door or window touches a wall or the floor or the ceiling (if it's flat), or another subtraction, casing is removed from the side(s) touching the wall/floor/ceiling/other subtraction. If the subtraction is closer to the floor/wall/ceiling/other subtraction than the width of the casing, the casing on that side is reduced in width, equal to the distance between the subtraction and the wall/floor/ceiling/other subtraction. Casings of two subtractions in close proximity never overlap.

This improvement now allows you to add a double door with no casing between the two doors:

1. Add a door to a wall (from the floorplan or the Wall Editor) and set the properties (type, casing width) in the Wall Editor.

2. In the Wall Editor copy the door by tapping-and-holding and selecting Copy from the context menu.

3. Paste the copy of the door on the wall beside the original door.

4. Move (by dragging) the door so it is adjacent to the original door (notice how the casing of both doors is removed between the doors).

5. Reverse the hinges of the copied door.

As before, the surface area calculations for walls will accurately factor in the area consumed by the casing of all subtractions on walls for items which should be priced separately (for example, when cleaning walls, the surface area of the casing is removed from the wall, and a line item should be added separately for cleaning the casing).

 

 

FEATURE 976 – Automatic orientation of bay windows

When drawn, bay window shapes will now automatically orient themselves appropriately based on whether it is drawn tall or wide and whether it is being drawn adjacent to a wall of an existing room. This eliminates the need in most cases to rotate a bay window shape after it is drawn.

 

 

FEATURE 3698 – In-line category and item descriptions

The Symbility database contains descriptions for most categories and items, which helps you determine which category or item to select. Before, viewing the description for categories required a tap-and-hold on the category which was not intuitive and as a result most users never even knew they were there. Now, category descriptions are shown automatically when the category is selected. If the category is long and spans more than one line, tap the small black arrow on the right edge of the first line to expand the description.

 

Item descriptions, which used to be viewable only after the item was dropped on a surface in the diagram, are now also shown automatically when the item is selected, and long descriptions can be viewed in the same way as for category descriptions.

 

 

FEATURE 39 – Category modification factors

The pricing in the Symbility item database can now be customized down to the subcategory level using Category Modification Factors. If you find that prices in one or more categories/subcategories are consistently too high or too low, you can create your own modification factors for materials, labor or equipment to apply to all items within a specific subcategory. The Category Modification Factors can be set as defaults or they can be set per claim, which allows for sudden but temporary shifts if pricing for particular item types (ex. lumber, roofing, electrical).

 

To set up default Category Modification Factors (default factors that will be used for all new claims created), use the Claim Defaults command in the Administration menu in Symbility.NET and view the tab labeled Category Modification Factors (only Administrators can do this). Click the link at the bottom of the table to add a new Category Modification Factor, then select the category/subcategory you wish to enter modification factors for. Finally, enter the percent that the materials, labor and equipment pricing components should be modified by (enter either a positive or negative percentage). To modify an existing factor or delete one, just select the record in the table you want to modify or delete, then make your changes and click Accept or click Delete.

 

If you want to enter Category Modification Factors for just a single claim, tap the Category Modification Factors... link in the Pricing section of the Loss Summary page in either Symbility.NET or mobile claims. Note that you can only add new factors or modify existing ones if you are the claim originator and either you have ownership of the claim or no one else does (if you're using Symbility.NET). In mobile claims, changing the factors or adding new ones instantly recalculates the unit prices of all affected items.

 

If you are not the originator of the claim, then you can still inspect the Category Modification Factors that are being used by the claim.

 

 

FEATURE 2442 – Ability to open a single journal entry and print

Clicking an entry in the Journal (in Symbility.NET only) will show all the details of that specific journal entry on a separate page, allowing you to then print it.

 

 

FEATURE 1531 – Ability to customize the loss type and policy type lists

The default lists of available loss types and policy types, that don't fit every insurance company, can now easily be customized to fit your company. You can find the current lists and make changes to them (same as for Category Modification Factors, above) in the Claim Defaults screen (Administration menu—only for administrators).

 

 

FEATURE 3854 – Ability to undo last Disto measurement taken for subtraction

When using a Disto laser rangefinder to capture a series of measurements for a subtraction (for instance, the width, height, distance from wall for a door) the interface used to be quite unforgiving if you made a mistake capturing any of them, forcing you to complete the series and then start all over. Now you can use the new Undo icon to reverse the last measurement captured, without needing to complete the series and start over.

 

 

FEATURE 3678 – Ability to browse item categories by picture

A new method of searching for items in the database has been introduced that will make learning the layout of the Symbility database much easier for new users. The Database View panel of the Item Pane normally shows an alphabetically-sorted list of categories and subcategories. New users may know the item they need to find but not which category/subcategory the item is contained in.

 

When showing the Database View panel, use the Browse Categories by Picture icon () to show an image of the type of room that is currently selected on the floorplan (an index of all images available will be shown if mobile claims can't determine the type of room the that is selected—you can also show the index using the Back to Picture Index page icon: ).

 

Each room image contains typical items that are found in that type of room and multiple graphical links to the categories represented by the items pictured in the image. Simply tap on a part of the image to view the items in the category represented by what you tapped on. If multiple categories correspond to what you tapped on, they will be shown in a menu. For example, tapping on the wall in a bathroom image will show a menu with the categories "Carpentry, Rough / Walls", "Painting / Walls", "Walls / Drywall", "Walls / Plaster & Stucco".