Digital Agent Locator - How it Works

Last Updated : Jun 15, 2020 

Welcome

Hello! If you’re reading this document it means you want to know more about the Locator functionality built into Digital Agent, and that is just swell! 

This document will cover the following:

What is Locator?

“Locator” is a feature that essentially allows Digital Agent to share Individual, Team, Branch and Regional information with third-party services. Some examples of the data shared may be:

For Individuals

• An advisors first name, last name, job title, profile photo etc.

• The Branch or Region they are located in

For Teams

• The team name, team email and team profile photo etc.

• The Branch or Region the team is located within

• The Team Members associated with the Team

For Branches and Regions

• The address of the Branch, the Branch website URL (if applicable)

• The Team and Individual profiles located within that Branch or Region (in the DA Organizational Group structure)

Sometimes referred to as the “Find My Advisor” ability, the Locator's core goal is to allow other parties (Clients, or other third-parties hired by clients) to create a Locator or Find My Advisor experiences on websites outside of the Digital Agent platform.

For reference: a Locator, or Find My Advisor experience, typically gives visitors to a website (members of the public) the ability to search for Advisors in their area they may want to connect with

In practice, we have seen existing clients use this to create Advisor search functionality on their corporate websites.

What is Locator Technically Speaking?

Technically speaking, Locator is an index of all profile and location information within DA, and their associations to one another. You can think of this index as purely a data store that is made available online (with authorization) for others to consume. This means that Locator DOES NOT include any sort of UI, front end or other end user experience that the average person my actually see.

Locator is built in this way to give our clients the flexibility to build their own front-end experiences by simply connect their desired experience to data from DA.

TL;DR

Locator is an index of data that third parties can access to build online advisor search features that links directly to Digital Agent.

Examples of Locator in Use

Two of the most popular examples of Locators are the RBC US and RBC Canada corporate websites. Observe how both of these search experiences are slightly different, highlighting the power of separating the data in DA from its presentation on the web.

RBC US: https://www.rbcwealthmanagement.com/us/en/find-a-wealth-advisor/advisorsbranches-directory/

RBC Canada: https://www.rbcwealthmanagement.com/ca/en/find-a-wealth-advisor/advisorsbranches-directory/

Getting Data into the Locator Index

In a sentence, any approved profile whose job title appears in the whitelist will automatically be added to the Locator index.

To explore in more detail how data is added to the Locator, let’s look at each part of how data may be included.

The Locator Whitelist

A whitelist is effectively a list of items that is permitted to pass through a particular process. In the case of Digital Agent, the “Whitelist” refers to a feature called the Job Title Whitelist located in the Admin HQ > Global Settings > Profile Configuration Tab of any DA environment with Locator enabled.

The Job Title Whitelist is a list of job titles that are provided to tell Locator which Profiles should be allowed to go into the Locator Index.

Since Job Title is a required field in Digital Agent, this means that if a Profile has a job title that IS INCLUDED in the Whitelist, then that Profile will be added to the Locator Index (and will therefore appear in the final locator experience).

Conversely, if a Profile has a Job Title that IS NOT on the WhiteList, that Profile will NOT be added to the Locator Index.

Profile Approvals

In addition to needing a Job Title that is in the Job Title Whitelist, Profiles also need to be indexed to be included in the actual Index file that is made available online.

In order for a profile to be indexed, that profile needs to go through some form of approval. An approval is given anytime a piece of content is:

• Submitted through workflow and approved by a Compliance Officer

• Submitted through the application and auto-approved (where workflow is turned off)

Whenever a profile is approved, the Locator automatically reindexes that Profile to ensure any changes to that profile are made publicly available right away.

Important Note: If a profile is not sent through the approval process then it will not be automatically reindexed by the Locator. This means the changes will not be made publicly available until the Locator is fully reindexed. This situation may happen in one of two scenarios:

• A change to a profile was made directly into the Database

• A profile change was implemented by the Data Feed feature in Digital Agent

Since both of these methods circumvent the approval process, Locator will not know to reindex the Index file automatically. To resolve this, a user of the application may manually reindex the Locator so all profiles are refreshed.

Manually Reindexing the Locator Index

In certain scenarios, the Locator may not be automatically reindexed, meaning some new Profiles, or changes to existing Profiles will not be made available.

The Locator Index can be manually reindexed by clicking the Reindex Locator Data button located in the Admin HQ > Maintenance Tab of any DA environment with Locator enabled.

Warning: Manually reindexing the Locator will mean all data from the Locator will be made unavailable until the full reindexing has been completed. 

This will render any experiences build with Locator data inoperable until the process is complete (which may take several minutes depending on the number of profiles).

Team vs. Individual Profiles

In Digital Agent there are two primary types of Profiles: Teams and Individuals. The Locator has the capacity to return both of these types of profiles, but there are a few nuances to be aware of between the two.

Individual Profiles

Individual profiles are the profiles of actually people, and are often owned (in a business context) by Individual Practices or Advisors that work alone (or are only supported by a small team of assistance or associates). The Locator has the capacity to return any data from the individuals Profile, as well as a link to their website.

Note: Since one Digital Agent Account can possess more than one Profile, it is possible for the Locator to return more than one Profile with the same name or email (assuming one user may have a Profile on several websites). 

Team Profiles

Unlike Individual Profiles, Team Profiles do not represent one person, but rather a collection of people working and managing a website together. A Team in DA can include a number of Profiles, but the Locator is primarily concerned with the Team Profile that is actually returned when searched for.

While the Team Profile takes precedence in the Locator Index, all Profiles that are part of a Team are connected to that Team Profile, meaning the third-party that is building the Find an Advisor search experience can choose what to do with Team members that are part of a team profile.

For example, if Marcus, Isabelle and Naomi are all part of the Maple Wealth Management team, if a visitor searches for “Maple Wealth,” what should be returned? What should be returned if they search for “Marcus”? Since all Profiles are connected to the Team Profile, the third-party can decide if:

• Only “Maple Wealth Management” is returned

• If all Team Members are returned

• If all Team Members + Maple Wealth Management are returned

• Some other presentation of these profiles is presented!

Branch/Region Correlation

In the same way that Team Members are connected to their Team Profile, all Profiles (Individuals and Teams) are connected to a Branch or Region. This provides additional flexibility in the final Locator search experience by allowing visitors to search by Branch or by using their Location to find Profiles near them.