Caseflow: Legacy Appeals: Add special issues

Created on 12 Feb 2020 · 13Comments · Source: department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow

User or job story

User story: As a attorney and or/judge, I need to be able to flag the following special issues, so that the data can be captured for reporting purposes:

Burn Pit
Military Sexual Trauma (MST)
Blue Water
US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC)

A "No Special Issues" checkbox needs to be added as a selection must be made on this page.

Acceptance criteria

[x] Please put this work behind the feature toggle: :special_issues_revamp
[x] This feature should be accessible to the user groups with current access to Special Issues: Judges, Attorneys, & BVA Dispatch
[x] Attorneys are able to select the above new special issues that apply to a case during the legacy workflow before submitting the case to a judge
[x] Attorneys are able to select the "No Special Issues" checkbox if no issues apply to the case during the legacy workflow before submitting the case to a judge
[x] Judges are able to edit/add special issues during the legacy workflow that attorneys identify apply to a case before submitting the case to dispatch
[x] Include screenshot(s) in the Github issue if there are front-end changes
[ ] Update documentation: Need to update training documentation
[x] Special issues data is acceptable for reporting team

Release notes

Designs

UPDATE The below mockup is outdated. Please move the "No Special Issues" checkbox above "About the Appellant"

Legacy Appeals_Special Issues

Background/context

Under law and regulations, a Veteran who served in Vietnam from January 9, 1962, to May 7, 1975 is presumed to have been exposed to herbicides. Furthermore, a particular set of medical conditions are presumed to be service connected for anyone who has been exposed to herbicide. Historically, the definition of "served in Vietnam" has been limited to Veterans who served on the landmass of Vietnam or its inland waterways, also know as brown water.

Last year both a court decision and bill passed by Congress expanded the presumption of exposure to herbicide during that time period to any Veteran who served within not more than 12 nautical miles from the coast of Vietnam, also know as blue water.

The goal of this project is to provide the Board for the Board of Veterans’ Appeals the ability to flag/mark Blue Water along with MST, Burn PIT, and CAVC contentions in Caseflow for data capture purposes only.

Technical notes

This data is needed for reporting purposes in Tableau so both engineering teams will need to synch to ensure the data we are providing is in the format they are requiring.

Tracking specialty appeals like this was common practice in VACOLS for legacy appeals, see image below. The Board is likely looking for something similar that would be completed by an attorney at the time they close their writing task and send their appeal to their judge for review.

Resources/other links

Product Brief

Medium caseflow-queue BVA Echo 🐬 Enhancement

Source

D-L-Ware

Most helpful comment

@lomky confirming the new special issues do not require any special handling like those above at the point of dispatch. The designations are solely for reporting purposes at this point.

araposo-tistatech on 2 Apr 2020

🚀1 👍1

All 13 comments

Special Contentions

D-L-Ware on 12 Feb 2020

@D-L-Ware is the board still granting a "stay" on these? I found the the below ticket and was wondering if implementing stays would need to be considered in this request:

11288

araposo-tistatech on 19 Feb 2020

Special issues data is acceptable for reporting team

Who/How should we contact/communicate with the reporting team?

yoomlam on 19 Mar 2020

@yoomlam my understanding is the team member working this ticket will need to connect with @alisan16 for guidance on how to proceed with working with the reporting team.

araposo-tistatech on 19 Mar 2020

_what is this chart?_

1 | 
2 | |||
3 | ||||||
5 | ||||
8 |

Add some fields/columns in a caseflow model. Add check boxes to Atty/Judge checkout. make those boxes update the caseflow fields. Add to controler flow.

Reporting needs? Hunter to bring up in tech leads. "Data acceptable to reporting team" comes from issue template.

Why 2?

Pretty standard change in both places.
Straightforward
Low uncertainty

Why 3?

Adds to the front end
Modifies controller, database and model
Touching Legacy model

Why 5?

Touches frontend/backend
Time for updating tests in frontend/backend
Schema updates

yoomlam on 19 Mar 2020

@lomky please move the "No Special Appeals" checkbox to the above the "About the Appellant" Title instead of the bottom of the page.

araposo-tistatech on 25 Mar 2020

@araposo-tistatech For making sure these changes are compatible with the reporting team, you can check with @pkarman by tagging him here or posting in the #appeals-delta channel.

alisan16 on 25 Mar 2020

@alisan16 Done! Slack convo

lomky on 26 Mar 2020

👍1

@araposo-tistatech @D-L-Ware Questions about each of these new special issues:

EDIT: BLUF: do any of these 4 new Special Issues require special handling at point of Dispatch?

Are any of these unhandled Special Issues?
- Meaning: do they require specific handling at Dispatch to alert on the case to a specific person/group?
- Most Special Issues are not. Examples of existing unhandled Special Issues would be:
  - VAMC
  - Pension - United States
  - Nation Cemetary Association
  - Insurance
- For any of these new ones that are unhandled, Caseflow requires:
  - an email address to contact at dispatch,
  - the associated regional office
. Are any of these regional station of jurisdiction Special Issues?
- Meaning: The Station of Jurisdiction on these appeals should be set to that _Appeal's_ Regional Office upon dispatch
- Most Special Issues are not. Examples of existing regional Special Issues would be:
  - Spina Bifida
  - Rice Compliance
  - Non-rating Issue
  - Incarcerated Veterans
- For any of these new ones that are regional, Caseflow requires:
  - No additional info, just to label them as regional
. Are any of these routed station of jurisdiction Special Issues?
- Meaning: Similar to regional, except the Regional Office is set by the Special Issue, and not per appeal
- Most Special Issues are not. Examples of existing routed issues would be:
  - All U.S. Territory claim special issues set to the associated Regional Office
  - Mustard Gas sets to Muskogee, OK - 351
  - Foreign claim - compensation claims, dual claims, appeals sets to Pittsburgh, PA - 311
- For any of these new ones that are routed, Caseflow requires:
  - location name & key for the routing

lomky on 2 Apr 2020

@lomky confirming the new special issues do not require any special handling like those above at the point of dispatch. The designations are solely for reporting purposes at this point.

araposo-tistatech on 2 Apr 2020

🚀1 👍1

UI Changes (currently behind a feature flag!)

User & Page | Before | After
------------------|----------|--------
Attorney @ Checkout | Screenshot_2020-04-03 Draft Decision Select special issues(1) |
Judge @ Checkout | |
Dispatch User @ Establish Claim | Screenshot_2020-04-03 Caseflow Dispatch(1) |