InStar Client Portal

We are working on a new set of features that will greatly enhance InStar. We are testing and working on a Client Portal that will allow your client’s to log in and access functions that will make many day to day tasks much more convenient for both agency personnel and clients. See the Story of our Conclusions below.

Functions

• 2 Factor Authentication by Text or Email.
• Download Auto ID Cards on Phone or Computer.
• Add a holder to a basic Certificate of Insurance Published by the agency.
• Chat with agency personnel
• Full Texting capabilities.
• Publish eDocs for secure document download including documents to large to email. Clients may upload documents to the Agency.
• eSignatures on Published eDocs
• List policies
• Pay Invoices with credit card or ACH.
• Client Portal pages display the agency logos and contact information from the agency web site

How it Will Work

2 Factor Authentication for Clients

• The agency does not need to do anything to allow a Client to log in but must have must have a contact with First and Last Name and an email address or mobile phone number.
• The agency client will access the Client Portal from your web site or a link you include in email.
• The agency client will receive a login window in their web browser instructing them to enter their First and Last Name in the format firstname.lastname.
• InStar will determine if the user has 3 items; 1) Contact name is found 2) Has a stored password 3) Has email or a mobile phone.
  • If no password the user can set their password otherwise they enter their password.
  • A code will be sent to email or text.
  • Client enters the code and they now have access to their client account(s)
• Chat feature and Agency Phone numbers available from InStar on all the web pages.

Download Auto ID Cards

• On Client login the system takes the Client to the “Dashboard” which will allow the Client to download Auto ID cards. We will be adding other information to this page like newly published eDocs etc.
• Select cars and drivers and the auto ID card will be generated in InStar and downloaded to the client as a pdf to computer or phone. Agency will be notified and history will be created on the client in InStar.

Add a Holder to a Published Certificate and Download

• Agency can publish 1 or more Master Certificates.
• Client can ONLY add a Holder to the Cert and generate in PDF to phone or Computer. No modifications can be made to any other part of the certificate.
• Agency is notified and Cert shows in the list of Certs including history created on the client.

Chat with Agency Personnel

• Chat in a floating window will be available from any Client Portal page.
• Agency Users will have the capability of making themselves available for Chat in InStar.
• Client selects person with which to Chat or the operator to be designated by the Agency.

Full Texting

• We have an interface with Twilio for full texting. Enter a phone number and send a text.
• This is all done within InStar and the Agency has the choice of using 1 text phone number for multiple users or giving each user their own text number much like their own email address.
• This will create a need in InStar to allow for forwarding of text etc when someone is not available and if an Agency User is marked out of DND the Client sender will receive a text back letting them know the InStar User if not currently available with options to forward text.
• ALL Texts and Chats are stored with Letters just like email and faxes so there is only 1 place to find written exchanges.
• There is a cost for Twilio but it is very reasonable, in line with what most agencies pay for email. See Twilio.com for pricing. Look at SMS pricing. We will assist with setup as part of support.

Publish eDocs for Download and eSignature/Upload of eDocs to Agency

• Check in the “Published” check box on the eDoc details and the items will instantly be available to Client on the Portal.
• Client will be able to eSign published documents and agency will be notified with history created on the client.
• Client will be able to upload documents if they download to sign or fill out. Agency notified of upload and history created on the client.

List Policies

• View a list of active policies
• We plan to make more available on this page.

Make Payments On Line

• We will assist with setting up the agency to receive payments on line.
• Agency personnel will also have a window in which to take CC and ACH payments within InStar.
• Client User may pick from a list of Invoices (agency bill only currently) and pay all or some of the invoice. We will only show the total of the invoice and policies, no detail.
• A cash receipt will be generated in InStar and invoice handled accordingly to the amount paid.
• Client user may also just make a payment “on account” that the agency can then allocate as needed.
• InStar will give the Client User guidance with payments for instance the user cannot pay a new invoice if they have an overdue invoice.
• We use a national payment service and we store no CC or Bank information except for the last 4 digits of credit cards so the user can select a card which the payment service can identify.

The Story of How We Got Here

We have spent the last year studying on how to accomplish a Client Portal for the InStar Users. Many companies are offering upload of your InStar data to make these things available. We were close to contracting with a company to do it for us however I did not like sending your data to a server in the sky somewhere and since the data needed to be uploaded it is not in sync with what you see in InStar, not to mention the price tag of which we will be much lower. We will publish the pricing as soon as we have the various agreements in place.

I met with the Omnis People and some other Omnis programmers at a convention and realized we could do things much better by sticking with Omnis. Primarily your data stays on your server and when you make a change like publishing an eDoc it is immediately available to your Client. (I mean immediately, you could have them on the phone and tell them to refresh eDocs and the document just published will be available.)We hired 2 additional programmers as the task was too large for our small crew. We determined we must move InStar to Omnis version 11 (InStar currently runs on version 4) and have most of that work done. (Don’t anyone panic, we will continue to support version 4 for some time.) This also solves some other issues like running 64 bit programs and will allow users to change 1 workstation at a time from 32 bit to 64 when running Omnis version 11. We have completed testing on InStar in Version 11 of Omnis and will update our office for alpha testing by March 15th 2024.