Appraisal Firewall Enhancements
Scheduled for Friday, August 19th, 2022
Release Information for Administrators
 
Starting Friday morning, August 19th, 2022, a new version of Appraisal Firewall will be available for you. We are releasing three new features: the ability for Administrators to edit appraiser profiles, altering Date Requested to Date Ordered, and sunsetting UAD checks. Continue reading for a complete description of these brand-new enhancements.

Looking for additional training materials? Check out our Help Center articles HERE. 

Edit Appraiser Profile and Settings

To eliminate some of the challenges appraisers encounter when creating or maintaining their Appraisal Firewall account, we are introducing the ability for Administrators to edit profile and settings information for their appraisers! Through this enhancement, you can better assist your panel of appraisers in maintaining their credentials, ensure contact information is accurate, aid in orders getting accepted in a timely manner, and more! For transparency purposes, all edits made by an Administrator to an appraiser’s account will be tracked and pose as Pending changes. Please note: for any changes to take effect, the appraiser MUST approve the edits. Additionally, an appraiser can reject any edits an Administrator makes to their account. Upon appraiser approval, all edits the Administrator initiated will be updated. In a future release, we will add this same functionality to appraiser group members. This current iteration is only applicable to individual appraiser accounts and appraiser group administrators.

How To Use This Feature:
This feature is only accessible to Administrators with access to Relationships. Login to your Appraisal Firewall account, select Relationships along the left-hand side of the screen, and choose the Lender Appraisers tab. Expand the appraiser you wish to update and choose either Edit Profile or Edit Settings.



Once you have made the necessary updates, be sure to select the SAVE button at the bottom of the section. This will trigger a notification to be sent to the appraiser alerting them of the changes that were made on their behalf. Once the appraiser approves the changes, Appraisal Firewall will apply those edits to the corresponding appraiser account.

For detailed guidance on how to edit an appraiser’s account, check out our Help Center articles How to Edit an Appraiser’s Profile or How to Edit an Appraiser’s Settings.

Date Requested Updated to Date Ordered

We are altering the Date Requested field to state Date Ordered to alleviate any confusion parties may have when it comes to differentiating between Date Required and Date Requested. By adjusting the terminology, Date Ordered is the date the appraisal order was placed within Appraisal Firewall, while Date Required is the date the appraisal report is due back from the appraiser. Through this slight vernacular adjustment, appraisers and managed users alike can easily verify when an order was placed and when an order needs to be fulfilled.

How To Use This Feature:
All fields that previously stated Date Requested have been automatically updated to state Date Ordered for your convenience. This includes the column chooser and Export All feature on the dashboard, Edit Details and the print view via the Property Information tab, and the Open Orders and Order Fields within a custom report via the Reporting section.

Sunsetting UAD Check Feature

After careful consideration, we are announcing that the UAD Check feature will be discontinued, effective August 19th, 2022. The technology that is responsible for generating the UAD Check is no longer being prioritized by the vendor who processes and generates the results output. Due to the lack of maintenance, there has been an increased volume of ‘stuck’ or ‘failed’ UAD Checks, which are preventing users from being able to view the appraisal report. This delay in the order lifecycle has adversely affected the timeframe in which the borrower can review their appraisal report and ensure appraisers receive payment in a timely manner. Since most major form types are now required to be submitted to UCDP or EAD (resulting in successful or unsuccessful SSRs), running the UAD Check as a precursor for those SSR results has become redundant. For your convenience, Appraisal Firewall will be disabling the UAD Check in the background for all applicable orders that would be automatically submitted to UAD, therefore bypassing the check so your order can move on to its next phase, i.e., auto submit to UCDP/EAD, order moves to done status, etc. Please note: the UAD Check division setting will continue to be accessible, but the functionality will be removed. Additionally, in a future system update, we will be removing the UAD check from the division settings entirely.