Caseflow: Lightweight Case timeline for RAMP appeals pilot

[laurjpeterson]

Let's try to design and implement a lightweight Case timeline for RAMP appeals pilot (does not need to be ready exactly on Oct 1).

For AMA appeals only.

AC

• Create another "tab" in Case details for Case timeline
• Case timeline elements:
  
  
  
  • NOD date
  
  
  • Decision date
  
  

[mkhandekar]

I've added a few questions (yellow with black border - @laurjpeterson can you take a peek?) and sketches to the mural started by LP!

See mural

NOD recieved, decision pending

Since the timeline is pretty sparse, added a line about what to expect in this area soon.

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NOD recieved, decision made (dates at the end of sentence)

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NOD received, decision made (dates before checkbox), deep links to specific forms/documents in Reader

I prefer the dates before the checkbox at this point, but could change my mind / approach when we design the entire timeline. When we do design the entire timeline, I will also add bolding, smaller text sizes and other design elements as well.

[laurjpeterson]

Looks great to me! I think this is a feature we would prioritize development after October 1 launch. At that time, we can determine which engineer can take this on!

[laurjpeterson]

Oh one more thing! For this initial timeline, I think we should just include the NOD date and BVA decision date. Extension request ruling is an administrative action that co-located would be working on and I agree would eventually be in the Case timeline, but not for this first pass.

I'd suggest the copy is just "BVA decision date".

I prefer the version with the dates before checkbox! I think it is easier to see and digest the date the action was done.

[mkhandekar]

Brought this into sketch, borrowing from Case Status timeline design work, which I think works well (at least in the lightweight version of the timeline):

NOD received:

BVA decision made:

[laurjpeterson]

Related support ticket about viewing prior locations so co-located knows what judge to email questions to - https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/appeals-support/issues/3040

[laurjpeterson]

Related support ticket about task information from the attorney disappearing when the case is put on hold. Co-located user would like to see the attorney's instructions, not only the fact that they moved the case from new to on hold, in the Task information section of case snapshot - https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/appeals-support/issues/3041

Both of these support tickets may not be resolved with Case timeline, but posting here for visibility.

[mdbenjam]

FYI the case status UI resides in vets.gov, which means it's unlikely we'll get much reusability here.

Something I'd love to chat about is displaying tasks in case timeline or maybe their own section. Like a task hierarchy, where we can show all the tasks in the tree. Who completed each of them and when. I think this would solve a number of the issues that co-located users brought up. But maybe is a separate discussion from case timeline.

[mdbenjam]

Are we building case timeline for both legacy and AMA?

[mdbenjam]

Also we currently do not capture which NOD form and decision document correspond to this appeal, so we can't really do the linking thing at the moment.

[laurjpeterson]

Something I'd love to chat about is displaying tasks in case timeline or maybe their own section. Like a task hierarchy, where we can show all the tasks in the tree. Who completed each of them and when. I think this would solve a number of the issues that co-located users brought up. But maybe is a separate discussion from case timeline.

• Agree on this! Showing tasks should be part of case timeline, but because of the design lift involved, not this initial lightweight version that I'd like to get out during the pilot.

Are we building case timeline for both legacy and AMA?

• Eventually, yes. For this ticket, I was thinking just AMA because it would be easier. If you think it's just as easy to do this same thing for legacy, go for it! We'd want to add in Form 9 date (in addition to NOD and decision date) for legacy, though.

Also we currently do not capture which NOD form and decision document correspond to this appeal, so we can't really do the linking thing at the moment.

• Sounds good, we can leave the links out.

[mdbenjam]

I'll also need some images for this.

[mkhandekar]

images live here (for the green check mark and gray dot): https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/appeals-design-research/tree/master/Projects/Caseflow%20Queue/images

[mdbenjam]

Is the BVA Decision made when the judge sends it to BVA dispatch or when BVA dispatch sends it out?

[mdbenjam]

For legacy should we show the same thing that exists in appeals status?

[laurjpeterson]

It should be the date on the decision doc which should be the same date the decision is mailed. Can you remind me - we get that date from the IDT right?

If not, we can show the date the decision was outcoded - when the BVA dispatcher finished what’s in the IDT. In that case, we can change the copy to say something like “Date dispatched from BVA”

In the future, we may need to ask a user to input the decision date if we don’t have a way to get it programmatically.

If we’re doing legacy, yes, the same as appeals status.

[mdbenjam]

It looks like we currently only have the date we outcode. So I'm going to change the copy for now to Date dispatched from BVA.