Engineering Blog · Post #80

Task Management, End-to-End: Why Nothing Falls Through the Cracks in InsightUW

A submission arrives. Clearance breaks. A renewal looms. A broker goes quiet for three weeks. In most workstations, those five signals each become a sticky note. In InsightUW, they each become a tracked task — created automatically, assigned to the right person, with the right priority, and the right deadline.

The Problem

Underwriting work is not a single stream — it is dozens of parallel micro-flows, each triggered by a different signal:

A new submission needs a first read.
A clearance engine found a sanctions hit — someone has to resolve it.
The broker attached loss runs but no financials — someone has to follow up.
A policy expires in 60 days — someone has to start a renewal.
A quote has been out for 7 days with no response — someone has to nudge.
An SLA is 24 hours from breach — someone has to act now.
A bot sent a non-renewal letter — someone has to QC it.

Most workstations leave those "someones" to the UW's head. Work slips, not because anyone is careless, but because no single human can track dozens of context-switching deadlines without a memory aid.

The InsightUW Approach

InsightUW creates, routes, re-opens, and closes tasks automatically from workflow events. A UW never types a task into a to-do list. The system types it for them.

graph TD subgraph Signals["Signals from the workflow"] S1["New submission"] S2["Clearance issue"] S3["Missing info"] S4["Renewal due"] S5["Quote follow-up"] S6["SLA breach risk"] S7["Bot action"] S8["Email arrives"] S9["Trail-off detected"] end subgraph Engine["Task engine"] E1["Auto-create (7 trigger types)"] E2["Multi-task parser (1 email → N tasks)"] E3["Auto re-open on follow-up email"] E4["Due reminders + overdue alerts"] E5["Bulk discard spam/dupes/auto-replies"] end subgraph Outputs["Outputs"] O1["Per-UW dashboard sorted by urgency"] O2["Bell notifications"] O3["Overdue alerts"] end S1 --> E1 S2 --> E1 S3 --> E1 S4 --> E1 S5 --> E1 S6 --> E1 S7 --> E1 S8 --> E2 S8 --> E3 S9 --> E1 E1 --> O1 E2 --> O1 E3 --> O1 E4 --> O2 E4 --> O3 E5 --> O1

1. Auto-Creation from 7 Triggers

Every workflow event the system already observes becomes a task. No human intervention.

Trigger	Task	Priority	Due
Submission received	Review new submission: [Insured]	medium	3d
Clearance issue	Resolve clearance issue: [Insured]	high	1d
Missing info	Follow up on missing info: [Insured]	medium	5d
Renewal approaching	Process renewal: [Insured]	high	14d
Quote sent	Follow up on quote: [Insured]	medium	7d
SLA breach risk	SLA breach risk: [Insured]	high	1d
Non-renewal QC	QC non-renewal letter: [Insured]	high	2d

Idempotent — firing the same trigger twice for the same submission does not create duplicate tasks.

2. Multi-Task from a Single Email

One broker email often lands 4 or 5 distinct asks. The email parser reads the subject + body and fans out into distinct tasks:

"RE: Solaris D&O Renewal — attached loss runs. Need rate indication. Please rush."

→ Renewal task (7d) · Rating task (5d) · Document review task (2d) · Submission review task (3d) — all bumped to high and shortened by 2 days because the email said "rush."

3. Auto Re-Open on Follow-Up

A task marked completed isn't gone forever. When a broker replies on the same submission, any completed task is auto-reopened with a note tying it to the new email. UWs don't have to remember to re-check closed items.

4. Due Reminders + Overdue Alerts

A daily check runs:
- Tasks due in the next 24 hours → notification to the assignee.
- Tasks past their due date → overdue flag + escalation notification to the manager if unresolved 24 hours later.

5. Trail-Off Detection

If a broker stops responding for 10+ days on an in-flight submission, the system creates a follow-up task ("Broker trail-off: Solaris Partners — last email 14d ago"). Catches accounts drifting into "quiet failure" mode before they cost premium.

6. Bulk Email Discard

Not every email becomes work. Auto-replies, duplicates, spam, and vacation responders are flagged by the classifier. Bulk-discard removes them in one click — the UW sees a cleaner queue without spending 20 minutes a day triaging noise.

What a UW Actually Sees

Sorted by urgency, color-coded by due date, grouped when multiple tasks come from the same source.

Under the Hood

Task — single model with trigger type, priority, due at, assigned to, source email id, reopened from columns. Append-only state transitions give a free audit log.
Scheduler jobs — APScheduler runs check due reminders (hourly), scan trail offs (daily), scan renewal prompts (daily).
Idempotency key — (trigger_type, submission_guid, open-or-completed-within-24h) prevents dup spam.
Notifications — single Notification table consumed by the bell + the email sender; SSE pushes unread count to the shell.

What This Means for the Team

No sticky notes. The system creates every task the UW would have written down.
No manual routing. Triggers know the submission, the assignee, the priority, and the deadline.
No orphaned follow-ups. A closed task re-opens itself when the broker replies.
No silent trail-offs. 10 days of silence produces a task, not an unpleasant Q4 surprise.
No inbox triage tax. Spam, auto-replies, and duplicates are bulk-dismissed.

Capability Deep-Dives

Want a task list that writes itself? Request a demo.