Data Intake Family Records Overview
Data Intake provides the Group Customer with the ability to send files of data specific to employee/sponsor changes/additions.
The data intake files include both updates (changes and terminations) and new record information for employee and dependents.
The information is handled via a standardized format known as Family Neutral Record or FNR.
- The Family Neutral Record will be comprised of the Sponsor (Primary Insured, Employee) identifier and set of Member records. The Member record contains the Member identifier, processing order, and record data for the addition/deletion/change.
- Each Member record within the file will result in a change or many changes made to OIPA for the employee, spouse, dependent, or combination of.
- It is possible to have one or more records that exist in the same FNR for the same member (employee or dependent) on the same file.
- In order for OIPA to be able to process multiple records pertaining to the same individual member, a process order (activity sequence) must be specified that dictates the order of processing for the records within the FNR.
Information Received
The data in the files may result in changes such as the following:
- Adding a new employee to OIPA (Personal and/or Employment Data)
- Changing the Employee's elected coverage
- Enrolling/Adding a dependent or spouse to coverage
- Auto-Canceling coverage for an employee
- Updating employee information (hours worked, status, salary)
How it Works
OIPA is responsible for receiving a file and corresponding family records, and executing the file as a set of changes to entities in the system. Each Family Record contains the information to be processed on an employee and dependents for a Group Customer. The file will contain an identifier for the Group Customer to easily identify the employee and related dependents for the Group Customer. The IDs are used to identify the file type from the Group Customer Data Intake Preferences (typically identified on the Group Customer Screen) and the identification of the file type being received. See Data Intake File Types for more information.
Data Intake Process Flow - OIPA
Flow of Processing Diagram - OIPA
Importing the File
The Group Customer sends the file to the client. OIPA will receive the file and corresponding family records. The file will be executed as a set of changes to entities in the system.
Loading the File
The file may be loaded onto the Company's system responsible for handling incoming files submitted by the Group Customer. The Company's system submits each Group Customer file to OIPA as a separate file.
OIPA Bridge: Listens for messages from the Company's system handling incoming files. The OIPA Bridge is also responsible for making the appropriate calls to OIPA to load and process files.
Calculate Missing Records
The calculation of missing records only applies if the configuration is present in the Intake Profile Definition the file is using for processing. This process involves a look up performed by OIPA for all the FNRs that have ever been received for a Group Customer and Intake Profile. Each member record in an FNR is reviewed to determine missing members for the current file.
The process varies for a Full-Population File versus a Changes Only File.
Important | To reference the Data Intake Solution document for more details on the calculation of missing records - outside of CSR Guide*** |
Pre-Processing
OIPA will perform the following Data Intake functions:
- Each record will be loaded individually and the file will go through validation and pre-processing. Please refer to Data Intake Pre-Processing for more information.
- Pre-Processing: determination that the file can be successfully executed. The system validates fields and examines the file and the changes against acceptable thresholds. If the validation fails, the file will not be processed and a message will be triggered.
- If Pre-Processing is successful, OIPA will calculate the changes to be applied to the system for each family record within the file.
- Data Intake Screen tracks the number of expected versus number of received, active, and pending records.
- Each Record in a Family Neutral Record will be processed in the order that is provided to OIPA. The order of processing is determined by the Company's system responsible for handling incoming files submitted by the Group Customer. The record with the lowest process order is processed first.
- Each Record goes through Pre-Processing configuration attached to the Data Intake Profile.
Threshold Processing
Threshold Processing is the next step after all records for the file have completed Pre-Processing.
After Pre-Processing has completed, activities have been created, information, changes, warnings, and statuses have been stored in OIPA.
Threshold processing runs Math in order to calculate statistics, executes Validate Expressions in order to determine if a file is valid and able to be processed, and if so, activities generated for the records in the file are processed.
Processing and Execution of Activities
Process Data Intake Transaction:
A Data Intake Record Transaction / Data Intake Transaction exercises the record. The Intake Record Transaction contains the following:
- Math: to calculate variables used downstream in the transaction, for determination of what to do with the record, and provide the ability to create Activities at various levels (Client, Policy, Client Relationship).
- Business Rules: executed against the record to determine if the record is valid. Expressions in the rules can check field values and evaluate variables calculated in the Math.
- Supporting record fields can be set. For example, if a member record is identified as an 'Auto-Cancel' a supporting Auto-Cancel field can be set to True.
- Activity Sequencing: An Activity Sequence Process can be created to transmit the changes for a member record into OIPA. Activity Sequencing provides the ordering for which the activities and entities will be processed in the system.
Note: Activity Sequencing Process creates the activities, but does not process them. The activities are processed after the threshold processing completes for the file.
When the Data Intake Transaction completes, the information for a single transaction, including the warnings and changes are stored in the system.
Threshold Processing - Pending Validation
Included as part of the file processing, Threshold Processing holds the records as 'Pending Validation' until all records complete processing and the File Validation can execute.
- If Validation fails, the records are removed into an application validation failed status.
- If the Validation succeeds, records move to execution where all of the member activities will be processed. A valid record will reflect an applicable pending validation status.
Execute Activities
After the file is successfully validated, all records are moved from pending validation to pending execution status. The OIPA Grid processes the activities. The OIPA Grid supports parallel, high volume execution of tasks across a grid of interconnected computing nodes.
File Record Spawns and Rollbacks
OIPA will support reversal of the last file that was successfully processed.
- The last record processed during forward processing will be the first record reversed during reversal processing.
- If a record fails during the reversal and an error is generated, all subsequent records to that record will be blocked.
- The file with a reversal error remains the only eligible file for reversal at that time.