Explain page for Appeals
Caseflow has an explain page for administrative users, specifically those in the CaseflowSupport and BoardProductOwners organizations and Caseflow engineers. The page reveals the underlying data for an appeal and presents it using various visualizations, towards the goal of data democracy (making data available to more users regardless of technical know-how) and data self-service (empowering users to investigate problems themselves). The visualizations facilitate quick understanding of an appeal and reveal associated data that users may not be aware of.
There is no link from any Caseflow page to the Explain page. The Explain page for any appeal is accessed by replacing queue in the Case Details URL with explain, so the URL syntax is https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/explain/appeals/<uuid>. The page was implemented for AMA appeals; legacy appeals should also work but the presented data may be limited.
If you don't have the uuid (for AMA appeals) or vacols_id (for legacy appeals), use this URL syntax instead:
- for AMA appeals:
https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/explain/appeals/ama-<id> - for legacy appeals:
https://appeals.cf.ds.va.gov/explain/appeals/legacy-<id>
The Explain page contains the following:
- links the appeal's Case Details page and related appeals
- Tree renderers: presents a tree view of the tasks, intake entities, and hearing entities. For more info about the task tree, see https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/dsva-vacols/issues/166.
- Timeline Chart: presents a timeline of activity for the appeal
- Network Graph: presents an ERD (entity-relationship diagram) to reveal associated data. For more info about Caseflow's database schema, check out the ERDs at https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow/wiki/Caseflow-Database-Schema-Documentation.
- Narrative Table: presents the activity associated with an appeal when investigating a problem, such as task assignments/cancellations, hearing type changes, and request issues modifications
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sanitized json export: for engineers -- see https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow/wiki/Exporting-and-Importing-Appeals#exporting
This page has restricted access based on which environment the user is in.
- Demo
- Any user
- UAT
- Preprod, Prodtest, Prod
- System Admin CSUM role
- Global Admin CSUM role
- Board Product Owners organization
- Caseflow Support organization
| Section | Screenshot |
|---|---|
| Task Tree |  |
| Intake Tree |  |
| Hearing Tree |  |
| Timeline Chart |  |
| Network Graph |  |
| Narrative Table |  |