Document Generation Using SAS Visual Investigator

Did you know that in SAS Visual Investigator, administrators can configure templates to enable end users to generate documents containing entity information? These document templates have customizable layouts and have the flexibility to meet each organization’s unique business needs.

In this post, I will provide you with a detailed walkthrough of how to configure such a document template for the use case of Auto Insurance, covering concepts core to document generation, such as blocks and user prompts.

Document Templates

Overview

A document template is a customizable layout. It’s associated with a specific entity type and it’s not reusable across different entities. As a reminder, entities are representations of real-life objects such as insurance claims, policies, customers and vehicles. Document templates have a many-to-one relationship to entity types, meaning there could be multiple document templates defined for a given entity.

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A document template is composed of blocks, which are units of entity-related information. They are formattable and customizable by the administrator and can be reused by document templates of the same entity type.

Some block types also support the use of user prompts, which are user-entered fields populated at the time of document generation.

The diagrams below represent a document for the auto claim entity. Its components include:

A HTML layout block displaying plain text and auto claim entity fields that have been formatted with HTML.
A text input user prompt indicating which investigator verified the claim information, to be populated at the time of document generation.
A date user prompt indicating the date the investigator verified the information, to be populated at the time of document generation.
A related objects block containing information about vehicles related to the auto claim.
A footer block containing the current page number, duplicated on every page.

Note that in order for the end user to generate documents using the pre-configured document templates, the Generate a Document toolbar item must be configured for the relevant entity.

Auto Insurance Example

For our fictious insurance company, Sunnyside Insurance, there's already a process in place for claim adjusters to evaluate claims, which includes the generation of a claim document using an existing PDF form. Sunnyside Insurance would like there to be a seamless integration between their existing process and the use of SAS technology. To accomplish this goal, we will build a document template based on their existing claim PDF form. In this step-by-step example, I will show you how.

Below is a first look at the PDF form used by claim adjusters. It consists of the following fields:

Claim ID
Claim Type
Claim Value
Claim Outcome
Claim Adjuster Name
Claim Adjuster Note

They can be categorized into entity fields populated automatically by SAS Visual Investigator and user prompts populated by the end user at the time of document generation.

I will begin by creating the three user prompts we require. In the SAS Visual Investigator Admin UI (Manage Investigate and Search), go to the Pages tab, the Document Templates subtab, followed by User Prompts. Click on the New user prompt button to create a new user prompt.

Create three user prompts:

Claim Adjuster: The input type is User Group, the output is Name and the user selection strategy is Users and Groups. This will allow the claim adjuster to select a user from a list of existing users at the time of document generation.
Claim Adjuster Note: This is a simple text input that has multiple lines and up to 1000 characters in length. This will allow the end user to add a text note at the time of document generation.
Claim Outcome: This is a drop-down list whose values are populated using a reference data list I’ve built previously for all the possible outcomes of a claim. The end user will select the appropriate claim outcome from a drop-down menu at the time of document generation.

Next, I will create the new document template that uses these user prompts. To do so, go to the Pages tab, Document Templates subtab, followed by Document Templates. Lastly, click on New document template.

In the New Document Template window, define the name, select Auto Claim as the entity type and SAS Visual Investigator as the Solution.

Our new document template is empty. Recall that the building bricks of a document template are blocks. Under the Blocks section, click the new icon to define a new block. Once defined, blocks can be added to the template.

In the New Block window, select Auto Claim as the entity type, as the block must have the same entity type as the document template. Under the Block type dropdown menu, nine block types are listed. In this example, I will select the PDF Form block type, which will enable me to leverage Sunnyside Insurance’s existing form.

In the PDF Form Block window, define the basic properties of the PDF Form block under the General tab. For the PDF file field, select Sunnyside Insurance’s PDF form.

Once saved, navigate to the Form Fields tab. Here, all the available fields from the imported PDF form are listed. Click on each row to select the data source, which can either be a Field (Claim Id, Claim Type, Claim Value) or a User prompt created earlier (Claim Outcome, Claim Adjuster Name, Claim Adjuster Note).

Once the form fields have been linked to their corresponding data source or user prompt, the block can be saved and added to the document template.

Now the end user is able to generate a document using the new document template in the Investigator UI (Investigate and Search Data). To perform this action, they will first find the auto claim they are interested in, followed by clicking the Generate a document toolbar button. If multiple document templates exist for this entity, they will appear in the dropdown list for the end user to choose from.

Once the end user selects the document template they wish to use, they will be asked to fill in the user prompts. The Claim Outcome is presented as a dropdown list, the Claim Adjuster Name prompt allows the end user to select a user name, and the Claim Adjuster Note area allows the user to enter a text note. Once the end user has filled in these user prompts, they can configure the Page Setup and generate the document using the Export button. The document will be automatically downloaded.

Please see below for the document generated using our newly created document template. As you can see, the document is identical in layout and design as the original PDF form we imported, and it has been populated with the entity-specific information and user-entered values.

In summary, the document generation functionality combined with the use of the PDF form block type can easily allow you to leverage SAS Visual Investigator to meet your document creation and reporting requirements.