The screen layout
Every Guidewire app uses the same frame:
- Desktop is your personal workspace: your activities, your claims or submissions, your queues.
- Search finds accounts, policies, claims, invoices, contacts and so on.
- Team shows a supervisor their group's workload.
- Administration holds users, groups, roles, business settings and plans.
Most screens open read-only. Clicking Edit switches to edit mode; Update commits your changes as one bundle (see module 02); Cancel throws them away. Validation errors appear at the top of the screen and nothing is saved until they're fixed.
Wizards and worksheets
Multi-step processes run as wizards: a sequence of steps with Back and Next, saved as a draft between steps. Quoting a submission in PolicyCenter and the new-claim (FNOL) flow in ClaimCenter are the two you'll use most.
A worksheet is a panel that opens at the bottom of the screen so you can do a side task — write a note, look up a contact — without leaving where you are.
Users, roles and permissions
Access is built from small pieces:
| Piece | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Permission | One allowed action, defined by the system | Create claim, view invoice, edit reserves |
| Role | A named bundle of permissions | Adjuster, Underwriter, Billing clerk |
| User | A person with one or more roles | Mette, senior adjuster |
| Group | A team in the organisation tree, with a supervisor | Motor claims – Aarhus |
| Region / security zone | Limits which records a user can see | Only claims for one business unit |
Users get the union of the permissions in all their roles. Screens and buttons check permissions, so the same page can look different for two users.
Testers often log in as a super-user and miss that real users can't see a button or a tab. Always test stories with a user that has only the production role.
Activities, queues and assignment
Work is represented as activities: tasks with a subject, a due date, a priority and an assignee. Some are created by hand; many are created automatically by rules or by activity patterns (templates that pre-fill subject, due date and priority).
- An activity is assigned to a user or to a queue belonging to a group. Anyone in the group can pick work from the queue.
- Assignment rules decide automatically who gets new claims, exposures and activities, typically by group, by load or round-robin.
- Overdue activities escalate, usually to the supervisor, via a background process.
Authority limits
Permissions say what you can do. Authority limits say how much. They matter most where money or risk is involved:
ClaimCenter
An authority limit profile caps the reserves and payments a user can make per exposure or claim. Above the limit, the transaction goes for approval.
PolicyCenter
An underwriting authority profile says which underwriting issues a user may approve, sometimes up to a value such as sum insured. Above it, the issue is referred.
Approval requests become activities for the approver, so they appear on someone's desktop just like any other task.
What lives in Administration
Administration is where a lot of "configuration without code" happens. Depending on the app, you'll find:
- users, groups, roles, regions and authority profiles,
- activity patterns and holidays (for due-date calculation),
- BillingCenter plans (billing, payment, delinquency, commission),
- PolicyCenter underwriting authority profiles and, with product tools, rating and product changes,
- script parameters and other runtime settings.
Admin data is data, not code. It must be migrated between environments, usually through an import/export process or a data-loading tool. Agree early who owns the master copy, or test and production will drift apart.