You can give the Reviewer capabilities to any user in the system so they can act as a Manual Reviewer for your company. The user will then have dual roles in the system. For example, a user might be setup as an appraiser, and when you add them to a Reviewer panel, that user can also have review responsibilities with an expanded view under the same login and function as an appraiser or Reviewer on different orders.
If you have a Reviewer that does not have an Appraisal Firewall account yet - no sweat. You can invite them to be a part of your review panel (see the Setting Up a Manual Review Panel section below). If you are adding a Lender user, an account will automatically be created for them when you invite them to the Manual Review panel. If you are adding an appraiser, they will be sent an email with instructions to create a new account.
Whoever you add to a Reviewer panel, they will have a new tab on their main dashboard called "Review." All orders assigned to them for review will be placed under this tab. In this example, an appraiser has been given Review capabilities.
Setting up a Manual Review Panel
After enabling the Manual Review feature, you can start creating your review panels. Manual Reviewers are panel based and can be set up either at the lender level or division level. When you enable a division for Manual Review, you must create a Reviewer panel to complete the setup process. Reviewers can then be assigned manual review work in a rotation.
Review assignments are assigned to Reviewers based on the date of last assignment - meaning that the Reviewer with the oldest date of last assignment will be next in line to receive an assignment, unless Controlled Reviewer Rotation is setup for that Reviewer. See the section below entitled Setting Up Controlled Rotation for a Reviewer for detail. Additionally, if you have multiple review panels, and an individual Reviewer is set on all the review panels, they may be assigned fewer orders on each panel because Appraisal Firewall uses the date of last assignment across panels to identify who should get the next assignment.
There are two ways to create a panel of Manual Reviewers – per division or at the lender level. Creating a Manual Review panel at the lender level lets you create one Manual Review panel that can then be pushed to all your divisions. Entering a review panel at the lender level is recommended if you manage multiple branches that, for the most part, share the same Reviewers. Creating a Manual Review panel at the division level is recommended for most system users who manage fewer divisions and who may have customized review panels for their branches.
Manual Review Panel Per Division (Recommended)
Follow these instructions to setup a Reviewer panel at the division level.
1. Login and click the Relationships icon along the left-hand side of your account.
2. Locate the division you want to create and manage a panel for, click the down arrow to expand the detail, then click the Manage Reviewers button.
3. On the review panel screen, click Create New Panel and enter the name of the panel. Select the new Create Panel button that appears to begin adding Reviewers to the new panel.
4. Once you have created at least one Manual Review panel, you can begin adding Reviewers to it. Click the Invite Reviewer button to add a user to the panel.
5. Enter the email address of the user you want to add to the panel and click the Send Invite button.
6. If the user is an existing user within Appraisal Firewall, they will be immediately added to the Reviewer list for this division. If the user does not have an account within the system, you can choose to add them as a Lender type of user, or an Appraiser type of user.
a. Lender-type users will be instantly added to the reviewer panel under this division. The email address that you entered on the invite will also be the user’s password. When the user logs in for the first time, they will be prompted to change their password. When Lender Users are created, they will exist in the system as an originator and will appear under the Users list of an Administrator account. Users created here will not be associated with any divisions and will not be able to place orders unless you specify otherwise under a lender’s Users tab. By default, new system lender users invited here will only be available to act as a Reviewer until you specify otherwise.
b. Appraiser-type users will be sent an email inviting them to create an account and will be listed in the Pending Invites section until they accept your invitation to create an account. Once they do, they will be added to your Reviewer panel, but they will not be added as an appraiser to your panel.
7. When you have added a Reviewer to your panel, they will be displayed as shown below in the screenshot. To remove a Reviewer from your panel, click the red "X" that corresponds to the reviewer you want to remove.
8. You can make a Reviewer an Admin Reviewer at any time by clicking the promote reviewer button in the middle of the screen.
When prompted, click Approve to make the Reviewer an Admin Reviewer. Admin Reviewers are helpful when you have numerous Reviewers per division, as they can assign work to Reviewers, as well as reassign work to different Reviewers. They can also approve or reject appraisals on behalf of the currently assigned Reviewer. Admin Reviewers can approve/reject orders they are not assigned to and can see all orders in a Manual Review status under the division.
a. By default, Admin Reviewers are not included in the Auto Assign Reviewer functionality, meaning that they will not be assigned review work when auto- assign is enabled. You can include them in the auto review rotation by clicking the Include in Rotation link once you have upgraded a Reviewer to an Admin Reviewer. See the option highlighted in red below.
9. To setup a controlled rotation for a Reviewer, click the down arrow on the right side of the screen. See the section on using Setting up Controlled Rotation for a Reviewer for instructions on using that feature.
10. Repeat this process for as many Reviewers and panels as you want to add to a division.