[legalxml-courtfiling] Thought on CMS interface

["Dallas Powell" <dpowell@tybera.com>]

Last week I was working with some clerks, their IT staff, and the CMS vendor to launch efiling at a new court.  We were analyzing and mapping all the processes required to integrate to their existing CMS and DMS.  In this case the CMS is a case maintenance system not a case management system and the behavior is different.  During this process I continued to reflect back on the use cases that we were discussing in SLC.  The reality of the situation is that the communications between the CMS and our software requires workflow that clearly was not identified in the use cases.

 

After thinking about the situation, it occurred to me that the current use cases that we were including in Blue were use cases that support the functions that support the functions of an external court source (formerly known as the EFSP functions).  The use cases do not address the complexities of workflow to automate clerk behavior and actions.

 

The court we are working with wants to minimize clerk entry and review, thus capture the necessary data so that the interface between the receiving function at the courts will perform the actions the clerk would  do if they receive paper documents.  Some submissions require human intervension and decisions and those submissions cannot be completely automated.

 

My interest in sharing these thoughts with the group is to manage expectations of courts that eventually will request their CMS vendors to support the CM API in Blue.  We do not want the courts to think that the use cases we are working on are all that is needed to automate their efiling process.  The CMS use cases in Blue are designed to support the external efiling submission process and it does not completely address the automation processes that may be embedded in the clerk review functions.

 

Dallas