Meet Application, Complaint, and Case Objects

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe each application object.
  
• Explain the purpose of complaint and case objects.
  
• Describe the role of participants in complaints and cases.
  

Regulatory Frameworks, Complaints, and Cases

Public agencies play a vital role in upholding community safety and wellbeing. Agency governance requires a complex interplay of regulations, citizen engagement, and investigative action.

It all begins with regulatory frameworks: the laws and processes that govern everything from business licenses to public events. When those frameworks are breached, complaints arise, sparking investigations that can lead to enforcement actions.

In this unit, you explore the key objects that support regulation and authorization, including how public agencies use ICM to reach these goals.

• Establish compliance through regulatory applications and business licenses, ensuring individuals and organizations meet the standards to operate.
  
• Respond to concerns by tracking public complaints and initiating cases to investigate potential wrongdoing.
  
• Identify key players through meticulous documentation of participants involved in both complaints and cases.
  

While it might not be as thrilling as chasing down seedy criminals in the dead of night, maintaining and implementing regulations quietly safeguards communities everyday.

Regulatory Application Objects

The first stop on your Investigative Case Management journey is applications and authorization requests. After all, authorization is an important part of many regulatory frameworks. To adhere to laws and regulations, businesses and individuals apply for licenses and permits to conduct business, operate vehicles, hold public events, and engage in many other activities that require oversight. Some licenses or permits require an investigation by a public agency to confirm compliance prior to authorization.

In Public Sector Solutions, the regulatory code object defines a specific rule, standard, or guideline established by a government agency. To learn more about regulatory codes and the other regulatory framework objects, view the Explore License and Permit Management for the Public Sector trail.

Create individual applications and business license applications so that constituents can digitally submit all of the necessary information for the request. These applications sometimes require a regulatory transaction fee, which you learn about later in this module.

Agencies review applications to ensure that applicants meet all of the requirements and standards to perform the activity. For example, when a company applies for a business license, the agency confirms that the business is qualified to operate within the jurisdiction. Inspectors perform an onsite visit to make sure the business is up to code before granting the license.

This diagram illustrates the application and license objects in the Investigative Case Management data model.

The table lists the application objects highlighted in the previous diagram and gives you some example scenarios. Learn how the objects fit into the overall data model as you progress through the module.

Applications establish a basis for compliance and sometimes lead to investigations, but what happens when a business or individual breaks policy and violates a law or regulation? That’s where complaints and cases come in.

Complaint and Case Objects

Many investigative cases start with a complaint. Government agencies often rely on the public to report problems they experience or observe in the community. Issues can be anything from a rodent infestation at a local restaurant to a robbery that a pedestrian witnessed while walking down the street. When someone alerts the agency of a potential crime or safety issue, the agency launches an investigation to gather information.

To notify the agency of an issue, constituents or their legal representatives file a public complaint, which is a detailed report about the incident. In Investigative Case Management, the reporter can file the complaint through a digital form on the agency website, or they can call the agency and an intake officer records information about the complaint.

Here’s a public complaint form that an intake worker fills out on behalf of a constituent.

Alternatively, when constituents call the agency to report an issue, the intake officer can use a complaint intake guided flow to systematically record details about the incident, participants, and allegations.

When a complaint requires further investigation, the caseworker creates a case directly from the complaint. The case record stores information and notes, and the actions required to investigate and resolve the complaint. Depending on the type of case, these actions might include an onsite visit to further assess the incident, or a care plan to support a constituent experiencing hardship.

To learn more about social program cases and care plans, see the Social Program Management Data Model in Public Sector Solutions module.

Use the complaint case junction object to link multiple complaints to a single case. This object also allows you to associate a complaint with several cases when an investigation spans across multiple departments or agencies.

Participants

It’s critical for agencies to track the people involved in complaints and cases, and the relationships between those people. During complaint intake, the agency employee identifies each complaint participant and defines their role, such as reporter or perpetrator. When a complaint converts to a case, each complaint participant becomes a case participant. Learn about tracking all the people that take part in case proceedings as case proceeding participants later in this module.

You can link one of two objects as participants on a case or complaint.

• A person account combines fields from a business account and a contact to represent an individual.
  
• A business account represents an organization, such as a household, government agency, or law firm.
  

Here’s a diagram that shows the relationships between these objects.

Notice that each person account or business account connects to a contact.

Use party relationship groups to represent important associations between people, between establishments, or between people and establishments. Party relationship groups are a great way to track households, trusts, or other logical connections that are pertinent to your case.

To learn more about party relationship groups, view the Manage Party Relationship Groups in Public Sector Solutions article in Salesforce Help.

To illustrate cases, complaints, and participants in investigations, consider this scenario. In Cosville, an employee at Stealthy Financial Services files a grievance against the company. The reporter allegedly witnessed an executive engaging in illegal business practices, including bribery and fraud.

The intake officer at the agency reviews the complaint, enters additional details about the incident, and records the involved participants. He then creates a case for Carmen, the case manager, to follow up. The participants in the complaint carry over to the case record, and Carmen adds more participants as the investigation unfolds. She isn’t keen on having fraudsters running amok in her town, so she works quickly to plan out the agency response.

On the case record, Carmen can use the Casework Overview to quickly get an overview of the records related to the case.

On the Casework Overview, you can view or add participants, custody items, custody chain entries, violations, complaints, and case proceedings. You also get a perspective of the relationships between these records and a chronological view of the case activities. This screen is quite helpful for managing the many moving parts of the case as it grows in complexity. You’ll learn more about custody items, violations, and case proceedings later in this module.

This diagram shows the placement of participants, cases, and complaints in the data model.

The table describes how cases, complaints, and participants fit within the Investigative Case Management data model.

Notice some gaps in the diagrams? Don’t worry: As you progress through the module, it reveals additional components in the data model.

To understand the visual components of data model diagrams, see the Salesforce Data Model Notation.

You’ve now reviewed applications, complaints, and cases. Next comes enforcement.

In the next unit, you’ll learn about objects for tracking visits, violations, and evidence as part of a case.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Understand Regulatory Compliance in Public Sector Solutions
• Salesforce Help: Licensing and Permitting in Public Sector Solutions
• Salesforce Help: Inspections in Public Sector Solutions
• Salesforce Help: Manage Party Relationship Groups in Public Sector Solutions