Author Topic: Showing and searching by Case Subject (Read 2956 times)

cleanclothes · August 04, 2010, 07:49:39 am

When adding a new case, you are required to fill in a Subject, but it never is shown anywhere afterwards. So the field is there, it's just not being shown properly.
It would really be helpful to show, sort and search on it, because then you could also use your own internal Case Designation (often a combined alphanumeric 'code' like DESA 2010-02 or something along those lines) as the Subject.

Ideally, this would be shown in all case overviews, as it's much more useful then the automagically generated numerical ID...

PJ · August 04, 2010, 11:24:56 am

Hi there. At the Physician Health Prgram of BC for the use of unique numbers such as case designation numbers we simply created some custom ID numbers in the admin console area and assigned it to open cases.
So we put our case ID in these fields are these are searchable or can be used inside reports if required.

interesting point about the subject not showing up anywhere or even being searchable, have not looked into this. Maybe the Civi Dev team could shed some insight.

Hope this helps as the custom created ID numbers works for us. We even made one a required field as you can see.

PJ

demeritcowboy · August 04, 2010, 07:05:08 pm

The standard activity report shows the subject but doesn't include case activities. The repo at http://svn.civicrm.org/php has a variation of it that does. Just filter the activity type to only show Open Case.

Dave Greenberg · August 04, 2010, 10:18:09 pm

The subject you enter when opening a case is actually the Open Case Activity subject. There is a subject in the case record schema, but it's not populated / used in the UI. Alternative approaches to include additional, searchable identifiers for cases include:

1. Use the "custom field(s)" on Open Case Activity approach that Phys Health uses (above). Downside is that you need to use Find Activities, Full Text Search, or Activities pane in Advanced Search to find matches - and those searches don't return Case row (they return Activities or Contacts).

2. Use the new 3.2 feature of Tagging for Cases. Tags can be set up that just apply to cases. They can be added during Open Case, and they can be added / edited from the Manage Case screen. They are searchable from the Find Cases search form.

CAVEAT: I just reported a bug in the case tagging function in 3.2.0. This will be fixed in 3.2.1 and a patch should be available shortly. Meanwhile - you can "try it out" by setting up a few tags and assigning them while opening cases. Issue to track: http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-6594

Andrew Perry · August 27, 2010, 02:33:06 am

We are doing a lot more work with CiviCase lately and also think it would be great/is important to have the Subject exposed in the UI. Is this something we could contribute?

Donald Lobo · August 27, 2010, 07:41:38 am

yes, that would be helpful

wanna write down a brief spec as to where this field will appear etc so folks are clear

lobo

stephen · September 01, 2010, 05:39:56 pm

I work with Andrew and have been using CiviCase and have the following suggested improvements:

insert the subject into the "subject" field in the case table (so it becomes both a Case subject and a Open Case activity subject)
show the Case subject on the Dashboard pages, preferably between the Client and Status
in the Case Summary, merge Case Type and Status in the same way the contact and phone number currently is, and insert a new column for Case Subject after the Case Type/Status column

I think that'll make it easier to see what the case is about at a quick glance.

Dave Greenberg · September 02, 2010, 12:47:44 pm

Those modifications sound reasonable to me. I've asked a few other CiviCase stakeholders to check in on this as well. Assuming consensus, you can go ahead and file an issue for 3.3 and assign it to someone on your team. (I know Rui is setup to have issues assigned. If you need to be set up that way, let me know you're Jira user name.)

kylejaster · September 02, 2010, 01:36:18 pm

Seems reasonable, but might I make a small UI/IA proposal? Sounds like the way that this field is being used is more as a "Case Name" than a "Case Subject" - would it be reasonable to change the label? Otherwise, makes a lot of sense to me.

demeritcowboy · September 02, 2010, 01:42:02 pm

hook_CaseSummary was designed exactly for the purpose of tailoring the manage case screen, since EVERYBODY wants it to have something different on it. And with the css changes in 3.2 it's easier to style as desired.

Having said that I don't see this particular modification causing any functional problems other than maybe moving the following data down a little farther on the screen.

Dave Greenberg · September 03, 2010, 10:40:52 am

You can follow work on this modification here:
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-6778

Rémi · September 07, 2010, 08:33:24 am

I would find it really usefull too

Rémi

Rémi · September 10, 2010, 04:05:23 am

I couldn't wait so I did a simple tweak to show cases subjects in the case tab.

Mail me if you need this code =)
(it's really brut force)

Rémi

lcdweb · September 29, 2010, 11:47:03 am

just want to chime in and concur with the proposed modifications.

in addition, the file on case, and copy/move activity functions should append the case subject in the quicksearch popup. one of the problems now is that if a single contact has multiple case records of the same case type, there's no distinguishing trait to select one over the other.

SweetTooth · October 14, 2010, 02:36:51 am

Quote from: Rémi on September 10, 2010, 04:05:23 am

I couldn't wait so I did a simple tweak to show cases subjects in the case tab.

Mail me if you need this code =)
(it's really brut force)

Rémi

Rémi, I sent you a P.M. haven't heard back.

Does anyone know about progress re official fix / patch / update etc?

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