Remove VLJ assignment requirement from AMA Hearing Cases

[araposo-tistatech]

User or job story

Job story: When the priority case distribution job runs, AMA hearing cases do not need to be tied to the VLJ who held the case, but rather have an "affinity" for the attorney, so that the priority case distribution job distributes cases evenly.

Acceptance criteria

• Verify AMA hearing cases are not required to go back to the VLJ who held the hearing
• Verify even distribution of cases is higher priority then the affinity of assigning AMA hearing cases to the VLJ who held the hearing
• This feature should be accessible to the following user groups: VLJs

Release notes

Out of scope

Designs

Background/context

"Affinity" means that it is desired, but not legally necessary, for the appeal to go to a certain VLJ/AVLJ. For legacy and AMA, it is preferred that non-hearing post-remand appeals go to the A/VLJ that signed the last remand. For legacy and AMA, it is preferred that non-hearing CAVC appeals go to the VLJ that signed the decision that went to CAVC. For AMA, it is preferred that hearing cases go to the VLJ that presided over the hearing. The only requirement is that legacy hearing cases go to the VLJ that presided over the hearing, unless the VLJ is no longer with the Board and the appellant has waives her/his right to a new legacy hearing.

Technical notes

Other notes

Resources/other links

[hschallhorn]

How we currently determine "affinity":

caseflow/app/queries/hearing_request_distribution_query.rb

Lines 76 to 80 in 55b1e7c

	def not_tied_to_any_active_judge
	judge_css_ids = JudgeTeam.pluck(:name)
	inactive_judges = User.where(css_id: judge_css_ids).where("last_login_at < ?", 60.days.ago).pluck(:id)
	where(hearings: { disposition: "held", judge_id: inactive_judges.append(nil) })
	end

A case becomes "genpop" if the judge the case is "tied" to has not logged in for 60 days

[yoomlam]

what is this chart?

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

Disregard prior constraint of the number of days (for judge-tied cases) must pass before trying to distribute to another judge.

Why 1?

Why 2?

• Job already exists, just adding additional logic

Why 3?

• Unfamiliarity with ACD job
• ACD is a tricky bit of code

Why 5?

• Simulate and verify desired results
• Bumped up due to ACD testing being hard

[yoomlam]

Caseflow is tying AMA cases with held hearing to VLJs:

caseflow/app/queries/hearing_request_distribution_query.rb

Lines 32 to 34 in 55b1e7c

	def not_genpop_appeals
	base_relation.most_recent_hearings.tied_to_distribution_judge(judge)
	end

[araposo-tistatech]

Represented in Jira as CASEFLOW-89

[yoomlam]

Affinity is removed by PR #16326