This release makes vendor stats and ratings more relevant and useful by calculating them based on the previous 18 months of orders. There’s more to this update, so check the release notes for complete details and read on for the highlights.
Improvements to vendor stats and ratings
When viewing the Statistics tab in a vendor's profile, you'll now see the Order Placed drop-down menu has changed slightly. While the default selection is still Last 12 months, it now includes Last 18 months. The previous options All and Previous calendar year have been removed.
Vendor ratings are now calculated based on the previous 18 months, which is particularly handy because there is no selection for date ranges in the Ratings tab. Previously, ratings were calculated based on all historical orders which, for some accounts, might be more than a decade. Based on your feedback, the new timeframe will make ratings more helpful, especially when using them as criteria for automatic vendor selection.
Mercury Network is ready to archive historical orders
The changes to stats and ratings were made—in part—to enable Mercury Network to archive historical orders, an initiative we've mentioned before. By archiving orders that have no activity for 18 months, the platform's performance will be improved, paving the way for exciting upcoming features. Plus, it will make searching for orders faster and your view in Order Management will be cleaner and easier to use.
Wondering how archiving will affect your workflow? We’re happy to tell you that it should be basically unnoticeable. An order will be archived when there’s been no activity (status changes, documents attached, borrower viewed the appraisal online, etc.) for 18 months. After that, the order will be archived and can be found in the Archived database using the same search tools you use today; just select Archived in the Find tool. If you open an archived order, it will be removed from the archive until midnight. If any changes are made to the order, it will be considered Active for another 18 months.
You'll still have unlimited storage of historical orders at no extra cost, as you always have. And, you’ll be able to access all archived orders as easily as you would active orders.
No orders for active customers are being archived right now. We'll soon begin a phased approach to archiving, so we'll proactively contact customers before their historical orders are archived. After archiving has begun for your account, the most noticeable change will be the order counts in your status folder… they’ll likely decrease if you have a bunch of orders older than 18 months.