The first stage in the hearing lifecycle is scheduling the hearing. If the hearing appeal has one appellant, four types of hearing can be scheduled: a telephone hearing, a home hearing scheduled at the appellant's home, a location hearing scheduled at an organization location, and a desk-based hearing where the hearing official makes a decision on the hearing appeal based solely on statements and evidence provided by the case participants. If the hearing appeal has multiple appellants, only location and desk-based hearings are available as scheduling options when scheduling the hearing.
Scheduling telephone, home, and location hearings requires that relevant information is maintained for the hearing. For example, hearings to be held in an appellant or respondent's home require the appropriate address information.
For all scheduled hearings, a notice is sent to all case participants required to attend the hearing notifying them that the hearing will be taking place. This notice includes the date by which statements must be received in order for them to be considered. Home, phone, and location hearings also require that relevant user attendees are invited to the hearing. Each user's attendance can be updated once the hearing is held. Additionally, users can be removed from the attendance list which effectively un-invites them from the hearing.
As all hearings for hearing appeals are presided over and decided by a hearing official, the main part of scheduling a hearing is to select an available hearing official. Hearing officials can be selected by entering a date and checking hearing official availability for that date or by having the system automatically search for the next date where hearing officials are available. Automatic scheduling is available for all hearing types except desk-based hearings. The desk-based hearing is held at the discretion of the hearing official. There are no other hearing attendees and hearing transcriptions cannot be requested. For location hearings, the system automatically searches for the next date where a user and a specified location is available.