Release Notes

Note

The structure and use of the API does not change when names of entities or endpoint operation IDs change. These changes are typically made for clarity and consistency.

All changes to the API listed here are also reflected in our Open API definition file.

December 4, 2024

New Feature: Data Lake (Beta)

Data Lake provides a relational view of your book of business in Socotra, enabling a wide range of reporting applications. See the Data Lake Guide for details.

New Feature: Value-Based Coverage Terms

Until now, values to be associated with a coverage term had to be defined as a finite set of options in the configuration. To support use cases requiring variable values – such as a computed quantity based on various factors – a coverage term may now be configured to take a value described as a PropertyRef, instead of options. See the Coverage Terms Guide for details.

Other Changes

  • Use of the pre-commit plugin for delinquency events (method signature PreCommitDelinquencyEventsResponse preCommit(PreCommitPlugin.DelinquencyEventsRequest request)) is now deprecated.

  • Both “startsWith” and “fuzzy” searches are case-insensitive.

Bug Fixes

  • Pascal casing for account names is now enforced.

  • graceEndAt now accounts for gracePeriodDays if that value is set in the pre-commit plugin for delinquency, with graceEndAt taking precedence if it is also set in the plugin.

  • Deployments API: Validate Config and Format Config responses include a content-type: application/zip header.

November 20, 2024

New Feature: Early Invoicing

  • Early invoicing allows invoices to be created and sent before the generate time of the installments that they are based on.

  • See the Early Invoicing Feature Guide for details.

Note

There will be no release on 2024-Nov-27. The next release will be on 2024-Dec-04.

November 13, 2024

New Feature: Delinquency Events

November 6, 2024

Constraint Tables

  • There is now an option to use any column (not just the first column) of a constraint table as a list of distinct values for constraints evaluation. Use of the first column is implicit if there is no where clause. To enable other columns, set the makeDistinct property in the column definition to true.

  • For consistency with other validation checks on configuration deployment, validation of constraint column names is now case sensitive as well. Column names in the constraints definition have to match case with column name in the associated constraint table definition.

Quote Events

  • Events have been added to signal changes to static data for quotes.

  • The new event types are policy.quote.staticdata.add, policy.quote.staticdata.replace, and policy.quote.staticdata.update, each of which emit a QuoteEventData object.

Optional Properties

The following properties are now marked as optional:

October 30, 2024

Constraints with Custom Data Types

Data extension constraints have been extended to include nested custom data objects. Constraining arrays of custom data objects is not yet supported.

Additional Changes to Paged List Fetch Semantics

The following endpoints have been updated to align with list endpoint semantics as described in recent release notes:

Deployments

To better accommodate common zip file creation patterns on various systems, configuration deployment will no longer fail if the configuration archive contains an extra top-level directory.

October 23, 2024

Data Access Controls

Webhooks Security Features

Yet More Changes to Paged List Fetch Semantics

Similar to the endpoints that were enhanced last week, when fetching entities with any of the following endpoints, a new query parameter is available called extended. Setting extended to true means that the return object will not be a bare array of entities, but rather a List Contents object that includes an indicator that the list is complete. The following endpoints have been changed:

The Open API descriptor file and documentation for endpoints expresses these responses as if the extended property were set to true.

Note

Later, the extended property will be deprecated, and then removed and the default behavior will be as if it were true. Until then, the default value for this flag is false.

Other Changes

October 16, 2024

Entity Numbering

  • Several system entities, including accounts, policies, quotes, policy terms, invoices, and disbursements can now have automatically generated numbers, for use on printed documents, portal and app screens, etc.

  • This provides a much easier, human-readable identifier compared to locators.

  • Numbers are ideal for use in customer service and similar situations.

  • See the Entity Numbering Feature Guide for details.

More Changes to Paged List Fetch Semantics

When fetching entities with any of the following endpoints, a new query parameter is available called extended. Setting extended to true means that the return object will not be a bare array of entities, but rather a List Contents object that includes an indicator that the list is complete. The following endpoints have been changed:

Other Changes

  • The InvoiceItemPreview entity has added fields policyLocator, quoteLocator, chargeCategory, chargeType, and transactionLocators properties.

  • The InvoiceItemResponse entity has new property transactionLocators.

  • The DeployedConfigMetadata entity’s pluginVersionStatus has type changed from map<string,string> to map<string,map<string,string>>.

October 9, 2024

New Feature Guides

Other Changes

October 2, 2024

  • Added the property category to ElementResponse, to indicate in which of the main categories the element is. This can be product, policyLine, exposureGroup, exposure, or coverage.

  • Added the Format Config endpoint to convert a configuration’s property casing to match requrements.

  • Added the resetToDraft query parameter for the Reset Transaction endpoint. If true, then the transaction will revert to draft state and the generated segment data, including elements and data, will be discarded. If false (the default), then the transaction will revert to initialized state and the segment data will be retained. This is useful to preserve the locator data for generated elements.

September 25, 2024

New Getting Started Guide!

New Migration Feature Guide

Invoice Documents

  • Documents can now be configured to renender when invoices are generated, similarly to how policy documents are created.

  • See the Invoice Rendering topic for details.

Other Changes

September 18, 2024

External Documents

You can now attach documents created from outside Socotra to quotes, policies, terms, segments, and transactions. See the Document Management Feature Guide and Documents API Guide for details.

Other Changes

September 11, 2024

  • On PolicyTransactionResponse, the property acceptedTime has been added, the properties aggregatedTransactions and changeInstructions have now marked as optional.

  • On QuoteResponse, the deprecated property boundTime has been removed in favor of the new property acceptedTime.

  • On TransactionPriceResponse, the property aggregatedTransactions is now marked as optional.

September 4, 2024

Optional Properties

The following properties are now marked as optional:

Billing Triggers

The “Billing Trigger” setting is being removed, and the following entities now have the property billingTrigger deprecated.

In addition:

Other Change

  • On DocumentSummary, the property documentInstanceState has been added, and the equivalent property state has been deprecated.

August 28, 2024

August 21, 2024

Diaries

Diaries are a new feature that enables a running narrative to be attached to individual entities. The following endpoints have been added:

The following entities are used in the above endpoints:

For now, diaries are enabled for quotes, policies, and policy transactions. Other entities will be enabled in the future.

See the Diaries Feature Guide for more information.

Regions

Regions are now supported. The new region property has been added to:

Also, defaultRegion has been added to ConfigurationRef.

Changes to Paged List Fetch Semantics

When fetching entities with any of the following endpoints, a new query parameter is available called extended. Setting extended to true means that the return object will not be a bare array of entities, but rather a List Contents object that includes an indicator that the list is complete. The following endpoints have been changed:

Note

Later, the extended property will be removed and the default behavior will be as if it were true.

Auto Transaction Rebasing

Before, transactions were always invalidated when a transaction on another branch became issued. Now, these transactions are automatically rebased on to the new, latest issued transaction. This behavior can be bypassed by settng the autoRebase query paramter to false when using the Issue Transaction endpoint.

Other Changes

The following entity properties have been marked as optional:

July 31, 2024

Quick Quotes

Quick Quotes are a lightweight mechanism for quotation without full underwriting support or document generation. Element extension data for quick quotes can be a subset of that used on a full quote.

The following endpoints have been added:

In support of the above endpoints, the following new entities are used:

Account Level Billing

Account level billing is activated by setting the billingLevel of the account, policy, or quote to account. If a policy or quote uses inherit for the billingLevel, it will defer to the account for the setting.

The following endpoints have been added to modify the billing level:

Each of these endpoints takes a UpdateBillingLevelRequest entity.

In addition, the following entities have added a billingLevel property:

Policy Transaction Branching

Policy transaction branching is done by setting the baseLocator of the transaction to a transaction other than the most recently created transaction. The following endpoints that create policy transactions now have a baseLocator parameter:

And the following entity has a baseLocator property:

Configuration Changes

  • Added the property delinquencyLevel, and removed properties baseLapseOn and lapseConflictHandling from DelinquencyPlanRef

  • Added the property defaultBackdatedInstallmentsBilling to ConfigurationRef.

  • Deprecated the billingPlans and defaultBillingPlan properties on ConfigurationRef, and defaultBillingPlan on ProductRef. These will be removed in an upcoming release.

Other Changes

July 24, 2024

Internal changes only for this release.

July 1, 2024

Stateless Operations

Stateless operations are a way to determine the validatability, pricing, and underwriting for a quote or policy transaction without changing its state. The following endpoints now have a stateless parameter added to generate the results of the call without a state change:

Other endpoints will also be updated with a stateless parameter in upcoming releases.

Invoices and Installments

  • On InvoiceItemResponse, added new properties invoiceLocator and transactionLocator, and changed the installmentItemsLocators property to be called installmentItemLocators, and made the elementStaticLocator property required.

  • On InvoiceResponse, made the startTime and endtime properties required, and changed the type of the currency property to string.

  • On InstallmentItemResponse, removed the property reversalOfLocator.

  • On InstallmentLatticeResponse, added the property reversalLattice, and made the settingsLocator property required.

Other Changes

June 10, 2024

Policies

  • Added the properties startTime and endTime to PolicyResponse. These indicate the start and end of the policy based on issued transactions only.

Invoices and Payments

Installments

Stateless Operations

These endpoints now have a boolean stateless property to allow calculation of pricing or underwriting data without changing the state of the associated quote or policy:

Underwriting

The responses for quote and policy transaction underwriting have been changed:

Accounting

  • The “Cash” T-Accounts that represent cash inflows and outflows from the system are now managed at the customer account level.

  • These are accessed through the new Fetch a Ledger Cash Account and Fetch Multiple Ledger Cash Accounts endpoints.

  • The tenant-wide cash account has been removed and so the GET /billing/{tenantLocator}/accounting/ledgerAccounts/cash endpoint has been removed as well.

Delinquency

Aux Data

  • On AuxDataResponse the property auxDataSettingsName is now optional.

  • On AuxDataKey the auxDataSettingsName property is now optional.

Data Extension Constraints

These Data Extension Constraints endpoints are now accessed with POST API calls:

Other Changes

May 23, 2024

Users

Excess Credits

The Excess Credits feature is forthcoming to handle excess customer credits held in a credit balance.

Open API Definitions

A top level property in the Open API definition file was erronously called externalDocuments rather than its proper name externalDocs. This has been corrected. (This property is not currenly used as so contains an empty array.)

Other Changes

  • Clarified that the references property of DelinquencyResponse will only be populated when fetching a single delinquency entity. Accordingly marked references as optional.

  • Renamed the listByTransactionLocator endpoint to Fetch Installments for Policy Transaction

  • The DocumentInstanceResponse entity has the following properties marked as optional: policyLocator, referenceDocumentLocator, segmentLocator, termLocator, transactionLocator, name, staticName, documentFormat, processingErrors, readyAt, and createdBy.

May 20, 2024

Event Stream Data Definition

May 17, 2024

Deprecations

The following entity properties are now deprecated and will be removed in a future release:

Static Data

Other Changes

May 15, 2024

Renewal Management and Auto-Renewal

  • There is a new Renewal Management API which supports the upcoming renewal management feature, including automatic renewal functionality.

  • A feature guide for renewal management is forthcoming.

Resources

Policy Snapshots

Credits

  • Added the Fetch Credits endpoint to fetch credits across an entire tenant.

“List” Endpoints

Changed the path to the following endpoints that return multiple endpoints for greater consistency:

Other Changes

May 1, 2024

Charges

On the week of May 6, 2024, there will be a change that requires configuration for which charges can be attached to elements. Each element definition must declare the charges that apply. ElementRef and ProductRef now have a charges property, which is an array of the charge types.

Important

All the applicable charges must be returned by the rating plugin, and only those charges can be applied; otherwise, the rating call will fail and the policy transaction or quote will fail to reach the priced state.

Documents

Note

Policy documents are attatched to either policy segments or transactions, depending on scope rules

April 28, 2024

Feature Guides

New feature guides have been added for these topics:

Along with these is an entirely set of configuration guides for plugins, including rating, validation, underwriting, precommit, and more.

Password Policies

Password policies now have editable settings:

  • The Fetch Password Policy and Update Password Policy can be used to find and update the individual settings. The payloads for these are PasswordPolicyResponse and PasswordPolicyUpdateRequest, respectively.

  • Settings include:

    • Minimum and maximum overall password length

    • The minimum number of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and/or symbols

    • password expiration after a given number of days

    • Restrictions on reusing passwords before they are a certain number of days old

April 23, 2024

Payments

Write-Offs

Added fetch endpoints:

Other Changes

Feature Guides

Added new feature guides:

April 17, 2024

Optional and Required Properties

The process for determining whether properties on entities were “required” (i.e. must be set on requests, or will always be set on responses) has moved from a manual to automated process. As a result of this some fields have changed from being indicated as required (with no suffix on their type name), or optional (with a ? suffix on the type name.)

Write-Offs

Added endpoints for write-off of invoices:

Term Summary

Term Summaries are views of the term based on issued transactions, showing in-force coverage only. This essentially flattens the transactions that affect the term into a single series of segments, such that the segments cover the entire term without overlaps or time periods without segments. This is useful to understand the state of the term without constructing it from the transaction stack.

The Fetch Term Summary By Term Locator and Fetch Term Summary By Term Number endpoints fetch the overall term summary, and contains summary objects for segments and elements. Extension data and charge information is included in the element summary.

Other Changes

The roundingMode property on PropertyRef has changed its enumeration values to use camel case: ceiling, down, floor, halfDown, halfEven, halfUp-up

April 12, 2024

Search

Invoicing

  • Added property installmentsItemsLocator to InvoiceResponse, and removed invoiceLocator and installmentItems

  • Added properties originationType, and refused, and invalidated to InstallmentResponse

  • Added property autoRenewalLocator to TermResponse

Other Changes

Older Changes

See the release notes archive for older release notes.