Rate book lifecycle and moving to production
The default implementation includes a series of rate book statuses (Draft, Stage, Approved, and Active). The default implementation also includes the ability to easily move rate books from one environment to another to support typical rate book lifecycle requirements.
Most insurers have multiple environments (development, one or more stage/test environments and production) to better control production changes. The recommended lifecycle described in the following illustration assumes multiple environments: development , stage/text, and production. The lifecycle can also be applied to a single environment by skipping the export and import steps.
See also
Synchronize development rate books with production
Rate books, and their included rate tables and rate routines, are typically maintained and updated in a development environment then deployed to staging and finally to the production environment. Before making changes to the rate books in the development environments, make certain that you are modifying an exact copy of the rate books in the production environment.
For each rate book, the development environment must have all rate book editions, and all editions must be exact copies. If a rate table has not changed, newer rate books can refer to rate tables in older rate book editions.
To avoid conflicts when importing rate books to the production environment, you must do one of the following:
- If the rate books in the development environment are exact copies of the rate books in the production environment, no action is necessary. You can make rating changes in the development environment. Select this option if you are certain that the rate books in the development and production environments are the same.
- If the rate books in the development environment are not exactly the same as the rate books in the production environment, then export all relevant rate books from production. Next, import the rate books into your development environment. Then you can make rating changes in the development environment. Select this option if there is a question whether the rate books in the development environment are a copy of the production rate books.
- Copy the production database into the development environment. Select this option when setting up an environment that needs production data. This process also ensures that the rate books in development and production environments match.
Development environment with Rating Management
In the development environment that includes Guidewire Rating Management, developers edit rate books and the included rate tables and rate routines.
You can add a new rate book or create
a new edition of an active rate book. These actions creates a new rate
book in Draft status.
The Draft status is the
only status in which the rate book is open for edit. You can return to
Draft status from either
Stage or Approved if you need to make modifications.
However, after a rate book is in Active
status, you can no longer modify the rate book in any way, including
a change in status.
The development environment can consist of one or more development servers. However, multiple servers increase the complexity and the potential for problems.
One development server
If you have a single development server, one or more developers edit rate books, rate tables, and rate routines on the same server. The development server is the master copy from which you propagate changes to the stage and then production environments.
If you have a single development server, the public ID prefix of the development server need not be different than the public ID prefix of the staging server.
Multiple development servers
If you have multiple development servers, developers edit rate books, rate tables, and rate routines on different servers. For example, one development server may be devoted to making changes to the rate books associated with a particular line of business.
To avoid overwriting the work of other development groups, devote a single development server to a discrete set of rate books and included rate tables and rate routines.
So that public IDs are unique within objects of the same type in the staging and production environments, each development servers must have a unique public ID prefix. Public ID collisions can occur if more than one development servers has the same public ID prefix. For more information about public Id prefixes, see Public ID prefix.
Stage environment with Rating Management
After all changes are done, you promote the
rate book from Draft to
Stage status to indicate
that data entry is complete. At this point the rate book is ready for
testing. Testing can occur in the same development environment, but typically
insurers have a separate staging environment for testing. If this separate
environment exists, the rate book can be easily moved to that environment
by using rate book export and import actions in the rate book editor.
Exporting a rate book includes all included rate tables and definitions
associated with that rate book.
Active rate books are
considered for policy rating. However, a configuration parameter exists
to allow testing of pre-Active rate books in a development or test environment.
For more information, see Minimum rating level parameter.Production environment with Rating Management
After testing is complete, you can move the
rate book to Approved
status. You can then move the rate book to the production environment
by using export/import actions. Then you can activate the rate book for
production use. Upon activation, the rate book status is set to Active and the rate book is available
for production policy rating.
The default implementation includes sample user permissions to control who can move rate books to each stage. See User authority and permissions for Rating Management for details of the included roles and permissions. You can configure this to meet your specific needs.