Caseflow Intake - department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow GitHub Wiki
What is Caseflow Intake?
The Caseflow Intake feature facilitates data entry of AMA decision review requests, and converts them in to structured data that can be used to process and report on those decision reviews. It also contains triggered data flows between different VA systems upon the completion of AMA reviews.
Before getting started
Why Caseflow Intake? - read more about the background and purpose of Intake
Intake Permissions - information about access and permissions
When processing a form using Caseflow Intake, it is expected that the user has access to both the form they are going to intake, the receipt date of that form, and either the VBA file number or the SSN for that Veteran. For Compensation and Pension lines of business, the Mail Portal is used to queue and display incoming mail. Business lines with smaller volumes sometimes have more manual processes for managing incoming mail.
NOTE: The Mail Portal is also responsible for uploading the document to the Veteran's VBMS eFolder. For this reason, intake does not handle uploading the document to the eFolder or any other document store.
Starting an Intake
Users can start new intakes at https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/intake There are 5 steps in Intake
Select Form
On this step user will select the Form they are intaking.
There are three types of AMA decision reviews:
- Appeals
- Higher level reviews
- Supplemental claims
Higher level reviews and supplemental claims can be referred to as Claim Reviews.
Search
On this step the user will search for a Veteran by entering a SSN or a VBA file number.
Before going to the next step Caseflow will
- validate that there is a Veteran that matches the SSN or file number entered
- If Caseflow is not aware of the veteran a call to BGS will be made to find the veteran
- validate that the user performing the intake has the appropriate access level for the Veteran, based on the Veteran's sensitivity.
- validate that no other user is currently performing an intake for the same type of form. In these cases, there is high risk of duplicate work being performed.
NOTE: If an intake stays open for longer than 24 hours, it is considered to be expired, and other users will be allowed to perform an intake for that Veteran again.
If the search succeeds, Caseflow will record the user who started it, and when the intake was started. This data can be used to form a paper trail of actions performed related to a Veteran's decision review forms, or collect data on how long it takes employees to process a form intake. It will also prevent that user from concurrently intaking any other form - they must either successfully complete this intake, or cancel it (see: Cancel Intake).
Review
This step is considered the beginning of an Intake and can be Cancelled out of.
The user adds data about the decision review on the review request page at https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/intake/review_request
This step includes entering data from the AMA form, including:
- Receipt date
- Claimant (and payee code if required)
- Whether the veteran is opting to move their legacy issues to the AMA process
- Docket type (Appeals only)
- Benefit type / business line (Claim reviews only)
- Additional options
- Selecting same station review (Higher-level review only)
- Requesting an informal conference (Higher-level review only)
Read more about the review request step.
Add Issues
Once the basic form data is entered, the user adds information about the issues that the veteran is contesting on the add issues page at https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/intake/add_issues. This step can Cancel the Intake.
Eligibility rules
End product codes
Some request issues are processed in Caseflow, and some are processed in VBMS. Issues processed in Caseflow include issues on board appeals, and issues for non-compensation or pension lines of business. Issues processed in VBMS include compensation and pension issues for supplemental claims and higher level reviews.
If an issue is processed in VBMS, it gets added as a contention to an end product. Please see below for more information about end products, including how they are selected.
Cancel intake
If the user deems the intake as not able to be completed for any reason, they can cancel the intake by selecting the "Cancel Intake" button at the bottom of the screen in Review and Add issues. Caseflow records the reason for canceling the intake, and this data can be used to better understand how Caseflow can be improved.
Once a user has started an intake for a veteran, other users are not allow to start another intake for that veteran until the current user completes their current intake, cancels it, or it expires after one day.
Confirmation
Once a user submits an intake, they'll be taken to the confirmation page at: https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/intake/completed
The confirmation includes reminders about which issues are ineligible (in order for the intake user to notify the veteran), unidentified issues that need to be resolved, and other information about what happens when submitting the intake, such as:
- Creating end products
- Creating tasks
- Requesting same station review or an informal conference
Read more about what happens when an intake is submitted.
After an intake
After an intake is completed, it moves onto other processes where decisions are made on the issues. During this process, the issues can still be edited.
Editing, removing or withdrawing a decision review
Deciding issues for lines of business
Processing decisions - what does Caseflow do after issues are decided
Additional technical documentation
Rapid Appeals Modernization Program
Rapid Appeals Modernization Program (RAMP), is a program that allowed veterans to participate in a simplified version of the AMA process more than a year before the AMA launched by converting eligible legacy appeals into supplemental claims or higher level reviews. Intake was originally built to orchestrate the actions required for processing a RAMP forms.
Read more about the Rapid Appeals Modernization Program.