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 (6)
Let Forth Take Care of Your Compensation Templates
This new optional feature offers a simplification of the management of compensation templates, including creation and design, by FORTH agents. Leave your comp templates in our hands and prevent client users from accidentally editing or deleting them. This feature has been released as a disabled add-on, so if you prefer to manage your compensation templates as you have been, you can!
Create Deliverability Windows for SMS
This new feature provides the ability to set delivery windows for a user's SMS campaigns. This will allow the user to further customize when the SMS campaigns are sent and then define a delivery deadline. This will help ensure company compliance with industry-standard rules around communication. In addition, this will better enable clients to control the messaging and when those messages can be delivered and prevent situations where DSRP consumers get notified after hours.
Interface to Update Policy Group for GCS Contacts
This new feature provides the user the ability to change the selected GCS policy group in a post-enrollment capacity. On the enrollment details screen, a new dropdown option has been added titled "GCS Policy Group". From this dropdown, the user would select from all available policy groups that are tied to the credentials saved for the company the user/contact is assigned to. When selecting a new policy group; the policy group that Forth uses locally with that contact is updated.
Enhanced Password Requirements
With this new feature, admins can facilitate their users to maintain strong passwords to ensure the overall security of accounts. It helps ensure that password requirements are clear, understandable, and enforced in a standardized manner across the system. This will minimize the risk of unauthorized access and potential data breaches, and ensure users understand the password requirements, and clear prompts are provided via validation messages/feedback loop. These requirements include a new minimum (12) and maximum (20) for password characters (superseding recommendations of NIST 800-63b). Passwords now must have all of the following: One uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one numeric digit, and One special character (e.g., !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *). Emojis and non-ASCII characters are not allowed.
Adding a Trigger Event for Debts Updated
This new feature allows clients to create a trigger event named 'Debt Updated,' allowing them to set conditions based on 'Debt Status.' This will enable them to receive notifications whenever the Debt Status field is updated, informing them of important changes. As a result of this feature, clients will now have the ability to select "Debt Updated" (replacing Debt Made Legal) from the "Event Name" drop-down menu while setting up trigger events, utilizing the existing fields in the system for the initial implementation of the "Debt Updated" trigger event. Finally, this feature streamlines the process by using "Debt Status" as the key field for the trigger condition. The Debt Updated trigger event won't be triggered for API updates and Credit Pull updates; it's solely intended for manual updates within the Forth CRM.
Prevent Users from Deleting Contacts that have Advances
This new feature provides the ability to prevent a user from deleting a contact that has a FUNDED advance(s) in the system. However, if a contact has no advances that have been funded still be able to delete that contact and all associated advances deleted as well. This will help improve overall coherence in the system as advances associated with deleted contacts will no longer show up in the advances tab and cause confusion as they cannot be accessed due to the contact it is tied to being deleted. It also helps prevent scenarios in which contacts whose advances have been funded in the system can be deleted - which helps achieve overall better data integrity.
What's Improved (6)
Add ForthPay return reason & Gateway hold status to the Servicing tab
This update to Forth Pay adds a view of a payment return reason. This information is useful in recapturing NSFs, which is a common task to ensure full payout for submissions. With this update, the Forth Pay return reason is now displayed in the transaction table within the servicing tab. This update also added a "Gateway Hold Status and Reason" that now allows affiliates to more easily complete the steps required to release the hold. This helps facilitate full payouts.
Update Memo Description for Earned Performance Fee Type
This update adds the phrase "Earned Fee" in the memo description line for all transactions with the type Earned Performance Fee to indicate that the fee is associated with the respective creditor's name. The updated memo description will now be displayed correctly in the system interface and in any generated reports or statements. The goal of this feature is to provide clarity and understanding for the fee transaction. An example of the new memo format would be: "Earned Fee- CREDITOR NAME".
Request Release Button Control
This update improves transparency and efficiency when applying the Request Release function within the CRM. When you click this new color-coded “Request Release” button, you now greatly reduce the chance of producing duplicate Forth helpdesk tickets, causing less confusion and saving you valuable time.
The “Request Release” button will be automatically disabled immediately, and then turn red after it has been clicked, or a client is enrolled into the program for the first time.
The “Request Release” button will be enabled again immediately once a Forth Pay agent acts on the account, after 24 hours from the initial click. or 24 hours after the button is disabled after enrollment. This will help reduce the creation of duplicate help tickets. As a bonus, when the button is disabled, a user-friendly tooltip will appear, keeping the user informed. It will read, “The button will be enabled after a Forth Pay agent acts on the account or 24 hours have passed since the initial click.”
Faster Loading of Edit Settlements Page
The settlements page, available from the “Contacts” module/tab, currently loads settlement check images directly. This inherently slows down the settlements page and the user experience.
By presenting links to the check images rather than loading them all at once, the DSRP settlement page of a contact now loads more efficiently. In addition, the implementation of links does not compromise the accuracy of settlement check information, and will still allow users to access the images as needed.
Standardizing Two Decimal Points for Key Percentage Fields
With this new feature, the Forth system has been updated to remove rounding and to accommodate two decimal places precision (i.e., changes in how percentage figures are displayed to include two decimal places). This update affects specific fields in the CRM, namely the 'Settlement %', 'Original Amount in percentage', 'Current Amount in Percentage', 'Verified Amount in Percentage', 'Percentage of Current', 'Percentage of Original', and 'Percentage of Verified' and sets them to be accurate to two decimal places. This enhancement will align them precisely with the 'Offer %' for more consistency and accuracy in business decision-making.
Update Credit Bureau Connection (CBC) Integration
The CBC Integration needed to be refreshed to support a few changes in XML node structure. As a result of this refresh, a Credit parsing tool was implemented, and PDF generation was improved.
API Updates (2)
Add Creditor Reference Information to Create and Update Settlement Offers Endpoint
This new feature adds the ability to include Creditor Reference Information when creating and updating settlement offers for settlement payments by Check. This will allow users to provide additional reference information related to the creditor, DRSP (Debt Relief Service Provider), and any special instructions for the settlement offer. The changes will be applied to the existing API endpoints for POST and PUT. This addition will not only enhance the settlement offers API endpoints to include the Creditor Reference Information, but will also improve the user experience by providing a way to capture and manage additional reference details. API Documentation on this feature is available by clicking HERE.
Add Time in Status to Get Contact by ID API Endpoint
This new feature updates our contacts endpoint on the API to retrieve the time in the status field. Additionally, it updates our workflow endpoint upon GET to return full status history. The goal of this feature is to enable the retrieval of how long a client has been in a certain status & enable clients to better keep track of their customer base. This feature will now report in such that the newest/most recent status change in the history reflects first in the feed. API Documentation on this feature is available by clicking HERE.