Starting an Intake - department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow GitHub Wiki

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.

In order to start an intake, the user can visit https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/intake where they can select the form they will be intaking. Then, they will type in the user's SSN or VBA file number to begin the intake.

Before the intake is started, Caseflow Intake performs a handful of automated checks:

  1. It validates that there is a Veteran that matches the SSN or file number entered
  2. It validates that the user performing the intake has the appropriate access level for the Veteran, based on the Veteran's sensitivity.
  3. It validates 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: "Canceling an intake").