The following address validation enhancements help you comply with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reporting requirements, and ensure taxes are properly applied based on the service address.
Enhanced address validation (Cotality) automatically updates census block, census tract and latitude/longitude information on service and contact addresses. This information is viewable in Customer Care and the Audit Log web application.
When using standard (USPS) validation, you can manually enter and update the latitude, longitude, census tract, and census block information on service and contact addresses in Customer Care.
Some configuration is required as described in Setup below.
Setup
To use enhanced address validation on service addresses:
Note
The Cotality purchase feature toggle must be enabled. There may be additional charges associated with using Cotality. For more information on using Cotality, contact your Account Manager.
In addition, these two settings must be enabled in Desktop Client > Applications > BackOffice Management > Address Validation > Enhanced Address Validation Configuration:
Enable Enhanced Address Validation
Enable for Service Addresses
With both settings checked, service addresses will use Cotality enhanced address validation, and the census, latitude and longitude information will be read-only.
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Note
To support manual entry on service addresses that use standard validation, just the top Enable Enhanced Address Validation setting must be checked.
For contact addresses, enhanced address validation can be supported on a contact type basis. Convey to IDI specifically which contact types need to support enhanced address validation. The IDI implementation team will complete the setup for you.
In addition, the Enable Enhanced Address Validation setting must be enabled in Desktop Client > Applications > BackOffice Management > Address Validation > Enhanced Address Validation Configuration.
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Mode
The Mode lets your company test address validation as if Enhance Address Validation were active, but without actually going out to the Cotality web site and incurring charges for each validation. Instead, it uses a query of core tables to obtain a valid address and FIPS code to manufacture a realistic response.
The Current and Production environment and machine names interact to determine whether Enhanced Address Validation must run in Test Mode or whether you may choose to run it in Production mode. This prevents inadvertently incurring Enhanced Address Validation costs when production core database has been copied to a test environment. Your ability to choose the mode is determined by the following rules:
If the Current and Production environment and machine names all match, the Mode check box is enabled and you may choose Test or Production mode.
If the Production environment name doesn't match the Current environment name, or if the Production machine name doesn't match the Current machine name, the Mode check box is disabled and the mode is set to Test automatically.
Note
If you select Production mode, the system displays the following caution: Running Enhanced Address Validation in Production mode will incur additional charges, collectible by Info Directions.
Advanced Settings
These are for carriers that use CoreLogic address validation:
Enable Township FIPS validation lets you enable/disable address validation at the township level. Check to enable township FIPS validation. This setting is disabled (unchecked) by default.
Note
This may incur additional charges when enabled.
Enable for Services Addresses enables enhanced address validation for service addresses as well as contact addresses; otherwise, only contact addesses for specified contact types will use it.
Validation Settings
Validation Settings are rules used under specific conditions to determine whether to send an address to Core Logic for validation or re-validation.
Re-validate age (Days) - The number in the Re-validate age (Days) field determines when an address (with no changes since its last validation) can be re-validated via Cotality.
If the date of the last validation is older than this setting, the re-validation occurs.
If the date is younger than this setting, no re-validation is attempted.
Fail Attempts Threshold - The Failed Attempts Threshold setting is used to determine how many times the system will attempt to validate an address through Enhanced Address Validation that has already failed previous validation attempts (with no changes to the address from when validation was last attempted).
Viewing and Editing Service Addresses
For services addresses, this information is available for a specific customer account on the Service Address page under the Additional Information section via Account > Services > Service Addresses, and system wide on the Service Addresses management page via MANAGE > Service Addresses. Below shows the Service Addresses page for a specific account.
Read-only Information with Enhanced Address Validation
When your system is set up to validate service addresses using enhanced address validation, the information is automatically updated on validation and read-only.
Manual Entry With Standard Validation
For addresses that use standard validation, the fields are presented in the same locations as described above; however, they are not populated with information until you choose to enter it manually.
Note
The census track comprises State+County+Trac (2+3+6=11 digits total). The complete census block comprises State+County+Tract+Block (2+3+6+4 = 15 digits total).
Viewing and Editing Contact Addresses
For contacts, this information is available on the Contacts page via Account > Contact, and Add/Edit Customer page.
Read-Only Access with Enhanced Address Validation
Below shows this information on a Primary Customer Contact validated with enhanced address validation.
Manual Entry With Standard (USPS) Validation
For contacts that use standard validation, the fields are presented in the same location as described above; however, they are not populated with information until you choose to enter it manually.
Note
The census tract comprises State+County+Trac (2+3+6=11 digits total). The complete census block comprises State+County+Tract+Block (2+3+6+4 = 15 digits total).
Add/Edit Customer Page
Latitude, longitude, census tract, and census block information for contacts are presented in the Contacts Information section on the Add/Edit Customer in Customer Care. For existing customers this page is available via Account > Account Details.
Below shows these fields as auto-populated and read-only for the primary contact using enhanced address validation, and as requiring manual entry for the billing contact using standard validation.
