Appraisal Scope 2021 Year in Review

We’re finishing 2021 strong, but before we do, we’d like to look back at the enhancements and improvements made to Appraisal Scope this year. As always, our priorities included addressing your feedback and adding capabilities to the platform with a particular focus on three major areas:

  • The experience that your team, clients, and appraisers have in the platform

  • Vendor Management

  • Security and performance

User Experience

We’re always listening to your feedback about ways we can make the platform easier, more intuitive – and if possible – more delightful to use. Sometimes, it’s a small change that eliminates lots of clicks, other times it’s a simple adjustment to shave a few seconds off a common task. In any case, we’re committed to making your valuation workflow as efficient as possible for your team, clients, and appraisers.

Your team

  • When bidding, staff users can select all appraisers displayed in the assignment pool with a single click allowing the user to quickly broadcast multiple bid requests.

  • The Appraisal Assignment Snapshot document can now be saved to the order’s documents when an order is auto-assigned. The Assignment Snapshot provides transparency to the appraiser search results at the time an order was assigned.

  • When updating the Per Page value within the Email Office view, the preference will be used the next time an order contains a large number of email messages, resulting in the view being paginated.

  • Changes made to the Dashboard configuration by a user are now properly saved and re-loaded during subsequent user sessions.

  • You are now able to select multiple updates within the UPDATES tab, up to the entire displayed page, and process them at the same time.

  • We've adjusted the Payment Options dialog to provide a more concise workflow when a Staff Admin user chooses to pay the technology fee by Invoice or Credit Card.

  • Improved user experience by providing information within the platform when Authorize.net is non-responsive. This update will provide Staff users who view the payment status of an order more insight into the integration’s status.

Your clients and appraisers

  • The layout of the Appraisal Assignment Snapshot document was enhanced by standardizing columns and improving the data displayed to your Clients.

  • A new [Company Logo] tag was introduced to all email templates that automatically inserts your logo into generated documents and email notifications on-the-fly based on the currently uploaded graphic from the SETTINGS → COMPANY INFORMATION view.

  • Documents created using Templates can now be populated with various appraiser Tags.

  • We’ve improved the dialogue messages displayed to Client and Vendor users when failing to successfully log in to your Appraisal Scope instance.

  • When a client or vendor uses an incorrect URL to access your Appraisal Scope platform, visitors who use an incorrect address will see information to better assist them in redirecting their search.

  • We've improved the user experience for appraisers when using the option to update both the Inspection Completed and the Estimated Report Completion dates for their individual orders. 

Vendor Management

As one of the core functions of Appraisal Scope, we know you rely on our technology for effective vendor management. This year, we built improvements for your workflow to simplify vetting your appraiser panel, monitoring licenses and certifications, and intelligently assigning orders to keep turn times as low as possible while maintaining a high appraisal quality.

  • The FHA-approved status for appraiser vendors is now managed automatically and updated daily based on the current FHA roster. This can be configured at the global and individual profile level, allowing you to have complete flexibility and control for each vendor.

  • The automated FHA Roster Status was enhanced so that the FHA roster status for appraiser licenses will be updated within the Directory as well as the Appraisal Scope platform.

  • When registering appraisers from the Directory, Appraisal Scope will automatically omit any bank account data upon import, ensuring that outdated details are not used during the payment process.

  • We've improved the workflow for Staff users who use CU risk scores to manage the distribution of orders to appraisers. The number of orders used to calculate appraisers' average CU Score in Appraisal Scope was expanded, making the score more relevant and reliable.

  • To reduce the burden on Staff users who were manually correcting license numbers for appraisers in Hawaii, we've adjusted the platform to accommodate the unique format of appraiser license numbers in that state.

  • We’ve added clarity to the invitation buttons found in the ASC and Directory sections of the Users tab.  Instead of seeing an Invite Sent button that conveys no additional action, the button will now be displayed as Resend Invitation.

Security and performance

We're proud of Appraisal Scope's features, but the most amazing tools in the world don't mean a thing if they're not fast, reliable, and secure. This year, we've prioritized the security and performance of the platform to enable your team to stay ahead of incredible appraisal volumes.

Security

  • If password visibility is enabled for your platform, you can show the password by clicking the small ‘peek’ icon next to the hidden password.

  • The Staff user permission for Delete Client Instruction is now properly enforced, preventing Staff users without permission from being able to delete configured client instructions or their associated documents.

Performance

  • Updating an appraiser’s Address for Assignment was optimized and now saves changes faster.

  • We've upgraded the scripting language which is part of the infrastructure that powers the platform. This provides greater operational efficiency, stability and resilience.

  • A new service was created to manage how Appraisal Scope platforms retrieve, store, and manage company information. This improvement substantially reduces the load on the database which allows Appraisal Scope to be even more responsive.

  • We improved the code that powers the Rule Logic features so automatic Staff assignment is faster and more reliable.

  • We’ve made upgrades to database environments that improve the speed and reliability of Appraisal Scope.

  • Our initiative to modernize the Appraisal Scope codebase began in late 2021 and will continue over the next year.

Conclusion

The enhancements made to Appraisal Scope this year demonstrate CoreLogic’s commitment to the platform as our premier collateral-valuation solution for AMCs. There is much more in store for 2022, so we’re excited to continue to bring you new features, more connectivity, and even better performance and reliability throughout the next year and beyond. Thanks for your ongoing business and support!