These Release Notes for August 2023 list several new features and improvements, and are organized as follows:
This month’s Release Notes are focused on the great work performed by our Forth Development and Quality Assurance Teams to enhance your user journey. Get ready to elevate your CRM Experience with Forth!
What's New
Field-Level Suppression for the Debts Fields
This new feature allows administrative users to control which debt fields certain users or user groups have access to when adding or editing a debt in the system. It was built to expand the existing functionality around field-level permissions to include the debts feature in the system. With this feature, we have added debt information to the field-level permissions via a new "Debts" section that enables the selection of an individual debt field to be enabled or suppressed as editable via a checkbox. This applies to system-provided fields and custom fields defined for the account.
User Lockout Enforcement
In line with NIST 800-63, this new feature improves our security with a user lockout function based on the number of invalid attempts made by that user. This prevents malicious or forced attempts in your system and protects the data housed within your account. If the user has ten (10) consecutive invalid attempts, the system will lock out the user for 30 minutes.
During this 30-minute window, no one can take action to unlock, as the user is not locked out, but rather in a “cooling” off state. After this expires, the user is able to log in again and gets 10 more consecutive attempts. If the user fails these 10 attempts as well, then the user is locked out and can ONLY be unlocked by an admin, via a one-time use temporary password sent to the user. The system will also now track invalid user login attempts for all users logging into the Forth platform.
What's Improved
Process Refunds of Dropped Forth Pay Clients
Until now, you were required to contact Forth Pay if you need to reverse fees or process a refund to a consumer after cancellation. This update offers a solution to our Forth Pay clients that provides greater control over refund processing. We introduced the capability to schedule advances and refunds yourself for a dropped or canceled Forth Pay client. This feature reduces the need for re-enrollment or Forth Pay intervention. With this solution, you may initiate these refunds only when a client has been canceled from the program, you can only schedule client refunds and no other transaction types, and you can only schedule ACH Credit refunds to the account on record, nor do you have the ability to update the banking information before scheduling a client refund.
Stronger Forth CRM Password Requirements
This update strengthens the already robust password requirements within Forth CRM, to better ensure the overall security of your account. This update helps minimize the risk of unauthorized access and potential data breaches and provides clear prompts via validation messages and a feedback loop. The updates have been performed to exceed new security guidance from NIST and the federal government’s information security standards.
Customer Name Field on the Decisions Page for Unmatched Transactions
This update makes it easier for users to identify unmatched transactions on the Settlement Decisions page, without the user having to read the comments.
Description Box for API Generation
This update provides the ability to set a description for each set of API credentials that are generated in the CRM. This feature added a description box with a maximum limit of 250 characters to the API Key generation window on the REST API page. This description will now appear in the table of credentials once it has been saved, as a new column in the table. This solution improves clarity for users in terms of what keys are used for by letting them set their own description for each credential set.
Update Fee in the Loanosity DSL Calculation
Previously, the Loanosity DSL integration only factored in earned performance fees (EPFs) that are in the “FEE1” slot. With this update, we have adjusted the integration to calculate any fee that has a fee type = percent, is deferred, and is active. This allows a DRSP to use this integration, regardless of what fee slot they utilize for EPF.
API Updates
Create Advance via API
This update provides the ability to create an advance on a contact via the API. It adds an endpoint, and a POST request to this new endpoint, with the Contact ID present. Upon advance creation, the advance will now go into the status that is already defined. Click HERE to access this setting.
Any updates to the advance via API will be done with a PUT request on the advance endpoint referencing the ID of the advance created in this way. API Documentation on this feature is available by clicking HERE.
Set Commissions and Advance Assignments via API
With this update, a user now has the ability to set commissions and advance assignments via the API. It allows the user to leverage the API to assign advance commissions and assignments. These updates assume that the advances being updated in this way have NOT been funded. This is enabled by creating a new API endpoint that uses a PUT request to update an advance by its ID within the Centrex API. API Documentation on this feature is available by clicking HERE.
Send an Email to Contacts
This new feature enables clients to send emails to contacts through the API to easily communicate and allow attachments of uploaded files and files within the CRM to the email. This feature has been enabled by adding a new send email endpoint to the Forth CRM API, supporting the POST method with FormData. There is a maximum attachment size on the email of 20MB. This was done to stay below the maximum known threshold of many email clients around 25MB. These attachments must be one of the following content/MIME types to be accepted: jpeg', png', pdf, zip, gzip, msword, pjpeg, csv, 'text/plain', and msexcel'. NOTE: The Forth CRM does not currently perform real-time antivirus scanning of attachments.
Clixsign & Generated Document Types in Lender Submission API
This new feature enables lenders to identify and categorize documents attached to submissions via the API. It allows the lender to see the document types and Clixsign parameters for documents within the Centrex CRM when pulling submissions via the Get Submission Details API Endpoint. This will allow the programmatic identification of documents included as part of a submission for automated underwriting and decision purposes. This solution utilizes the existing "Get Submission Response" API endpoint. This option is applicable for PDF & HTML documents. This document type tracking feature is only available for documents generated or Clixsigns sent after November 2022. No tracking info exists before this time and it cannot be recreated. The document type value must correspond to the document type set at the individual template level. API Documentation is available by clicking HERE.
Contact Enrollment Value via API
This feature allows a user to enroll a contact via the Forth API. This feature facilitates an enrollment flow in an automated capacity. Our solution was to create an API endpoint that enrolls customers into the Forth system (subject to Enrollment settings). In addition to enabling contact enrollment via API, this solution enforces parity to enrollment flow at the CRM UI, as well as enables clients to automate their enrollment flow via the usage of 3rd party applications. All saved plan/compensation template/banking data is unaffected just as you would expect manually enrolling via the UI.
Create Note API Response
This new feature returns the Note ID in the API response of the "Create Note" endpoint. The Note is also now visible in the CRM under the Contact Dashboard. This allows the user to know the Note ID after a Note is created via API. API Documentation on this feature is available by clicking HERE.