Preemptions

A preemption is an event that occurs when two or more jobs are created from the same base policy period. The first job to be bound preempts the second job. If you want to continue with the second job, it must be modified to handle the changes made by the first job. Preemptions occurs most commonly with policy changes.

For example, suppose that there is a bound personal auto policy with a single car. A policy change is started to add a motorcycle to the policy. Then, while the first job is still in progress, a second policy change is started that adds a van to the policy. The motorcycle job has no knowledge of the van, and the van job has no knowledge of the motorcycle. If the motorcycle job is bound first, it will preempt the van job. The policy now has both a car and a motorcycle on it. The van job was only aware of the car. Before the van policy change can be completed, it must be modified to include the motorcycle.

PolicyCenter provides support for working with preemptions. PolicyCenter identifies when a job has been preempted. It provides a list of information on the preempting job that is not present in the preempted job. It also provides "handle preemption" functionality that copies information from the preempting job over to the preempted job. For more information, see the Application Guide.

Similarly, Cloud API provides support for preemptions. For a preempted job, you can view information about the preempting job and execute "handle preemption" functionality. Similarly, when a policy change is bound and there is an existing renewal for the policy, you can apply changes from the policy change to the renewal.