Introduction and Purpose

The Correspondence page of Caseflow Queue was created to allow Caseflow Mail users and The Board to track and report items (like rejected appeals or correspondence) that relates to a particular Veteran/Appellant, even if no appeal is ultimately docketed, in Caseflow. This is to ensure the completeness and existence of uploaded records. For example, in VACOLS, we have a diary/mail tab that allows the Board to track correspondences even if it does not relate to a particular appeal. This can include, but is not limited to, Congressional inquiries, rejected 10182s and status requests.

This feature introduces a new top-level object aptly called "Correspondence" which is synonymous to the "Appeal" object in functionality, and serves as the root object that all subsequent documents and records are attached to.

Major Components

Correspondence Queue

A list of Veterans with Correspondence Cases can be accessed by a MailTeam or MailTeamSupervisor user from the Caseflow Queue page. This landing page serves as the primary access point to the other Correspondence pages. The Correspondence Queue is a set of two different queues -- Your Correspondence for the current users' correspondence tasks and Correspondence Cases for a Supervisor or Superuser to view all Correspondence related tasks.

Review Package

The Review Package page displays the CMP information, General Information, and Documents associated with the selected Veteran. There are options a user can perform to edit, delete, and update the status of a Review Package and move it to the next step in the review process

Intake Form

The Intake form allows a user to associate a Correspondence with prior mail, add new tasks, and link a Correspondence to multiple existing appeals or create a new appeal to associate to.

CorrespondenceTasks

Similar to Queue, Correspondence uses CorrespondenceTask objects to record and maintain the history of actions a specific Correspondence Case has undertaken, and where it currently sits in the review process. The CorrespondenceTask contains information regarding who assigned a task, who the task was assigned to, and the specific type of task to be performed.

This is overview of the tasks available for a Correspondence:

1. Correspondence Root Task
2. Review Package
   1. Split Package
   2. Merge Package
   3. Reassign Package
   4. Remove Package
3. Intake
4. Mail Tasks - This is a set of tasks adding during Intake that are automatically marked completed.
5. Tasks not related to an appeal - This is a set of tasks adding during Intake that indicate additional actions need to be taken on the Correspondence.

When tasks are created within Caseflow, all correspondence tasks are children of a single CorrespondenceRootTask, similar to appeals tasks.

UML Diagrams

Correspondence

Correspondence Appeal

Correspondence Intake

Correspondence Document

Vbms Document Types

Correspondence Relationships