PolicyCenter linked addresses and side effects

PolicyCenter has a feature that enables you to share the same address with more than one contact. When you share an address across contacts in PolicyCenter, the contact addresses continue to be stored separately, but PolicyCenter links them. However, in the other Guidewire applications, contact addresses are not linked. ContactManager stores each contact address as a separate, unlinked address.

If you make a change to one of these addresses from ClaimCenter, BillingCenter, or ContactManager, there is a side effect in the base configurations. When ContactManager sends the changed contact address to PolicyCenter, PolicyCenter applies the change to the other addresses to which the original changed address is linked. PolicyCenter then sends these changed contact addresses back to ContactManager, and the result is that more than one contact gets an address change. There is no indication in ClaimCenter, BillingCenter, or ContactManager of this side effect—the linked addresses are changed automatically. You can configure the applications to behave differently.

If you change a linked address in PolicyCenter, you have the option of linking or unlinking it from other contacts’ addresses. However, since this feature exists only in PolicyCenter, you do not have this option in the other Guidewire applications.