pedwfrontend/memory-bank/productContext.md

Product Context — PEDW FrontEnd

Primary user workflows

1. Public discovery

   • Search planning cases (basic, advanced, address, DNS).
   • Open case summary pages and review documents/history.

2. Authenticated portal (/myportal/**)

   • Sign in via magic-link email.
   • View dashboards/worklists (my cases, watched cases, awaiting submission, representations).
   • Start or continue appeal/representation submission flows.

3. Role-shaped behavior

   • General users can create appeals and representations.
   • LPA users get authority-scoped views and representation actions; raise-appeal behavior is restricted.

Core domain concepts

• Case / Incident: core planning entity shown in search, detail, and portal journeys.
• Appeal type: controls collection/field behavior and some UI logic.
• Representation window: date-gated period controlling whether representation actions are available.
• Watched case / email notifications: user subscriptions to case changes.
• DNS: Developments of National Significance-specific journey and pages.

Business logic patterns visible in code

• Case summary UI varies by appeal type and case attributes.
• Representation actions are conditionally shown by appeal type, role, and date windows.
• Representation participation now appears to form one broader business decision model: whether a participant can engage in representation or consultation activity for a case at that point in the process.
• Locale-sensitive behavior affects links, routes, labels, and email template choice.
• New-case-reference notifications include preferred-language checks before template selection.

Current representation participation state

• Technical discovery/documentation for Representation Participation Availability is complete.
• The current behaviour is best understood as a coherent participation-availability policy with layered appeal-type, process-type, participant-type, consultation, and date-window exceptions.
• Business validation is still required before any further representation-policy adoption, expansion, or behavioural change work.
• Reference documents:
  • docs/representation-participation-availability.md
  • docs/representation-participation-business-review.md

Likely next discovery candidate

• Case Lifecycle / Status Decision Model Discovery
  • expected focus: case progress, stages, statuses, closed states, dashboard grouping, and lifecycle messaging
  • should be treated as discovery-only pending review of the new representation participation documentation

Important user-facing behaviors

• Welsh route aliases are mapped in next.config.js and must remain in sync with page behavior.
• Breadcrumb/back-navigation behavior is actively maintained across search -> case -> portal routes.
• Document visibility/download flows are central to case transparency and must remain stable.