Mechanisms for integrating PolicyCenter and a billing system

PolicyCenter uses two mechanisms to connect to a billing system application:

Web services for incoming requests – PolicyCenter exposes web services for other applications to query for information or to notify PolicyCenter about important actions. The network protocol that you use does not have to be SOAP but must provide the same functionality.

Plugins for outgoing requests – Plugin interfaces define a strict contract between a Guidewire application and additional code that performs a task. PolicyCenter exposes plugin interfaces that the application calls to request or provide information. For example, if you issue a new policy in PolicyCenter, PolicyCenter calls its billing system plugin to notify the billing system of the new policy. For a new policy, the plugin might send the billing system information on how to charge the insured.

PolicyCenter provides two billing plugin interfaces, which the following table describes.

Plugin Name	Interface to Implement	Description	PolicyCenter uses during bind, issue, policy change, or renewal
Billing system plugin	`IBillingSystemPlugin`	The primary mechanism for PolicyCenter to get information from a billing system or to notify the billing system of changes to a policy.	Yes. PolicyCenter calls the billing-related plugin methods in `IBillingSystemPlugin` during critical parts of the process of creating or modifying a policy in PolicyCenter. For example, for a new policy the `IBillingSystemPlugin` provides a list of billing plans to choose from in the user interface. The billing system plugin behavior is critical to how PolicyCenter works with billing information about a policy.
Billing summary plugin	`IBillingSummaryPlugin`	To support the PolicyCenter billing summary screens in the account file and policy file, implement the billing summary plugin. PolicyCenter uses the information that this plugin returns only for the billing summary screen.	No. In theory, you can remove the billing summary screen from the PolicyCenter user interface, and PolicyCenter continues to work normally in other ways. In such a case, PolicyCenter would not call this plugin.