Existence logic in Product Designer and APD

If you are working with an LOB that was created in Product Designer, be advised that availability and existence are handled differently in APD.

APD combines the concepts of availability and existence into a single usage field called Availability. For a coverage, you set this field to one of the following values: Optional, Required, Suggested, or Unavailable. In Product Designer, you can specify the existence for a coverage as Required, Suggested, or Electible. Existence is required by Product Designer. You specify the availability separately.

For example, in Product Designer, you specify the existence and availability for Coverage A and Coverage B as follows:
  • Coverage A is required when it is available. Coverage A is available only for Ohio.
  • Coverage B is suggested when it is available. Coverage B is available only for California and New Jersey.
There are several different ways to specify existence logic:
  • Set the existence in Product Designer. This setting takes precedence over any configuration in APD or in an Existence Script.
    • In Product Designer, set the existence to Required, Suggested, or Electible.
  • Set the existence in APD App. This setting takes precedence over any configuration in an Existence Script.
    • In Product Designer, set the existence to <Defined by Script>.
    • In APD, set the availability to Required, Suggested, or Optional.
    • Remove any Existence Script logic.
  • Set the existence in an Existence Script. In this case, existing Product Designer logic is preserved because in APD Optional is the default setting for coverages.
    • In Product Designer, set the existence to <Defined by Script>.
    • In APD, set the availability to Optional.
    • In the Existence Script, set the existence to Required, Suggested, or Electible.
  • Accept the default existence setting, Electible.
    • In Product Designer, set the existence to <Defined by Script>.
    • In APD, set the availability to Optional.
    • In the Existence Script, set the existence to <None>.
The precedence for existence settings is shown in the following diagram.
Product Designer       APD App     Existence Script     Default
================       =======     ================     =======
Required
Suggested
Electible
<Defined by Script> -> Required
                       Suggested
                       Optional -> Required
                                   Suggested
                                   Electible
                                   <None>        ->     Electible
Java