Pizza tracker experience for e-filing?

[nonprofittechy]

Goal

Add a "pizza tracker" style progress indicator to the individual filing status/detail page so a filer can quickly understand:

1. where their filing is in the court's review process,
2. what is happening now,
3. whether they need to do anything, and
4. whether the amount of time they have been waiting is normal.

This should be a presentation layer over the filing statuses we already receive from the EFSP/Tyler, not a second filing-status model.

The existing My Cases / Filing Statuses list should remain compact. The new tracker belongs on the individual filing detail page, where we have enough room and context to explain the current state.

Proposed user-facing stages

The normal path should be represented as:

Sent → Received → Clerk review → Court decision

Once there is an outcome, replace the generic final step with the actual result:

• Accepted, or
• Returned for changes

A returned/rejected filing should not look like a successful "100% complete" state. It is a terminal outcome that requires attention.

Mapping existing statuses to tracker stages

Existing status	Tracker presentation	Suggested primary message
submitting	Sent (in progress)	Sending your filing. LITEFile is sending your documents to the e-filing system.
submitted	Received	Waiting for clerk review. Your filing reached the e-filing system and is waiting for the court. No action is needed right now.
receipted	Received	Received by the court. Your filing is waiting for clerk review.
under-review	Clerk review	The court is reviewing your filing. A clerk is reviewing the filing and may accept it or return it for changes.
reviewed	Clerk review	The court has reviewed your filing. We are waiting for the court's final filing status.
accepted	Accepted	Your filing was accepted. Show the acceptance date, case number if available, and links to file-stamped documents.
rejected	Returned for changes	The court returned your filing for changes. Show the clerk's explanation prominently and the correction/resubmission action when available.
returned	Returned for changes	Same user-facing treatment as rejected unless we later have a meaningful reason to distinguish them.
failed	Did not go through	Do not show this as ordinary forward progress. Explain whether we know it failed before reaching the court.
cancelled	Cancelled	Do not show this as ordinary forward progress.
served	No additional tracker step	Service is a different concept from clerk review/acceptance and should not be shown as the next stage after acceptance.
unknown/new status	Neutral / unknown	Sent to the court. We do not yet have a more specific status to show. Do not guess which stage it maps to.

Contextual status copy

The tracker should do more than display a sequence of dots. Under the tracker, show a short status explanation answering:

• What is happening now?
• Do I need to do anything?
• Is this wait normal?

Examples:

Waiting during business hours

Waiting for clerk review
Your filing was received by the court. No action is needed from you right now. Courts typically review filings within 1–3 business days.

Submitted after court business hours

Where court hours/time zone are configured, we may add context such as:

Waiting for clerk review
Your filing was received at 6:15 PM. The clerk's office is typically closed after 4:30 PM local time, so review may not begin until the next business day.

The 4:30 PM time must not be hard-coded as a universal court rule. Court hours/time zone should come from jurisdiction/court configuration if we support this message.

Weekend / non-business-day context

Where we can determine the court's local business calendar with reasonable confidence:

Waiting for clerk review
You submitted this filing Friday evening. Saturday and Sunday are not normally court business days, so Monday is the first business day the court is likely to review it.

Avoid making claims about holidays or unusual court closures unless we have authoritative configured data for them.

Longer than the typical review window

After a configurable threshold:

Still waiting for clerk review
This filing has been waiting longer than the typical review period. That does not necessarily mean there is a problem. If you would like an update, contact the clerk's office below.

If court contact information is configured, it should already be available on this page and can be emphasized when the filing has been pending unusually long.

Information to show with the tracker

Use factual information we already have when available:

• submitted/received date and local time,
• Envelope ID,
• court name,
• current court status,
• accepted date,
• assigned case/docket number,
• clerk comments/rejection reason,
• links to the court's/file-stamped copies after acceptance.

Do not manufacture a timestamp for a stage when Tyler/EFSP has not supplied one.

UX / presentation

The tracker should appear near the top of the individual filing detail page, replacing or expanding the current single status badge.

Possible visual model:

✓ Sent ━━━ ✓ Received ━━━ ● Clerk review ━━━ ○ Court decision

Waiting for clerk review
Your filing was received yesterday at 6:15 PM.
No action is needed from you right now.

After acceptance:

✓ Sent ━━━ ✓ Received ━━━ ✓ Clerk review ━━━ ✓ Accepted

After a clerk return:

✓ Sent ━━━ ✓ Received ━━━ ✓ Clerk review ━━━ ! Returned for changes

The status must remain understandable without color alone. Use text labels, icons/shapes, and appropriate accessible markup.

Acceptance criteria

• The individual filing detail/status page displays a visual filing-progress tracker near the top of the page.
• The My Cases / Filing Statuses list keeps its existing compact status treatment; this issue does not add a full tracker to every list item.
• The tracker derives its state from the existing EFSP/Tyler filing status and does not introduce a competing persisted workflow status.
• submitting, submitted, receipted, under-review, reviewed, accepted, rejected, and returned have deterministic user-facing mappings.
• accepted ends in an Accepted state rather than a generic "Court decision" state.
• rejected and returned end in Returned for changes and are visually distinct from successful completion.
• failed and cancelled are represented as exceptional/stopped states rather than forward progress.
• Unknown future Tyler status codes fall back to neutral wording and do not crash or disappear.
• The current stage includes plain-language explanatory copy describing what is happening and whether action is required.
• Existing clerk rejection comments remain prominent for returned/rejected filings.
• Existing Correct and resubmit behavior remains available when the local filing can be corrected.
• Accepted filings continue to surface file-stamped/court copies and the accepted date when available.
• The tracker does not display a stage timestamp unless the underlying filing data provides one.
• The component is usable with keyboard and screen readers and does not communicate state by color alone.
• Mobile layout remains readable without requiring horizontal scrolling.

Optional business-hours enhancement

This can be implemented with the tracker or as a follow-up, depending on configuration work required.

• If the court/jurisdiction has a configured local time zone and normal business hours, a pending filing can show context when submitted outside those hours.
• Business-hour copy uses the court's local time, not the user's browser time.
• Court closing time is configurable; 4:30 PM must not be assumed for every court.
• Weekend language may be shown when applicable.
• Holiday/closure language is only shown if backed by authoritative configured calendar data.
• These messages are informational only and do not change the underlying filing status.

Limits / non-goals

• Do not predict a precise acceptance/review time ("expected by 2:30 PM tomorrow").
• Do not imply that the tracker represents real-time clerk activity beyond what Tyler/EFSP actually reports.
• Do not infer that a clerk is actively looking at a filing unless the supplied status supports that statement.
• Do not treat elapsed calendar days as business days.
• Do not imply that a delayed filing has a problem merely because it has exceeded a typical review window.
• Do not hard-code one jurisdiction's business hours for all courts.
• Do not add Served as a fifth progress stage after acceptance.
• Do not remove the detailed status information already available below the tracker (documents, fees, clerk notes, contact information).
• This issue does not require notification/email/SMS features.
• This issue does not require maintaining a separate historical event log if the upstream filing API does not provide the corresponding stage timestamps.

Implementation note

There is already a natural source of truth in efile/services/filings.py: STATUS_PRESENTATION normalizes Tyler status codes for filer-facing display. The tracker should ideally build on or refactor that mapping so the badge and tracker cannot disagree.

The existing user guide also describes the filing lifecycle as Submitted/Pending → Under Review → Accepted/Rejected. The tracker should preserve that simple mental model while making the current status easier to scan and adding useful timing/context where we actually have reliable data.