Claim description might be overly restrictive

[maertan]

Currently, claim description only takes in alphanumerics and spaces. As a financial agent, the user might need to record claim descriptions that include symbols like commas, slashes, etc, especially if the description is longer or has multiple sentences.

[soc-pe-bot]

Team's Response

Thank you for your feedback! While we feel that it is a valid concern, we feel that this only happens on very rare occasions and there is usually a simple workaround for users. For eg, using the example you have provided, the agent could have saved it as separate claim medical expenses and treatment due to a fracture in the hand and medical costs arising from a surgery for leg fracture.

The team also feels that this bug qualifies as NotInScope. In rare cases where the agent really needs to include special characters, fixing it is less important than the work done in the current version of the product, hence it is considered not in scope.

As this cases are very rare with simple workarounds, the team also feel that a severity of type Low is more suitable.

The 'Original' Bug

[The team marked this bug as a duplicate of the following bug]

Claim description cannot have special characters

Description

When adding a claim, the user cannot include special characters, such as slashes /, in the CLAIM_DESCRIPTION.

I understand that this is clearly documented in the UG (see screenshot below).

However, I feel that this is a rather problematic limitation that will cause users frustration because they will feel limited in how they can describe a claim.

As the description of a claim does not follow any fixed format, it is likely that any given user will eventually run into this limitation and have to change the wording they use to describe the claim.

I don't think that it is a dealbreaker as it is still possible to add claims, but I do think that many users will take issue with this.

Screenshots

Error message when trying to include a slash / in the CLAIM_DESCRIPTION:

UG clearly stating CLAIM_DESCRIPTION only supports alphanumeric characters and spaces:

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_{[original: nus-cs2103-AY2425S1/pe-interim#1701] [original labels: severity.Medium type.FeatureFlaw]}

Their Response to the 'Original' Bug

[This is the team's response to the above 'original' bug]

Thank you for your feedback! While we feel that it is a valid concern, we feel that this only happens on very rare occasions and there is usually a simple workaround for users. For eg, using the example you have provided, the agent could have saved it as specialist appointment at polyclinic.

The team also feels that this bug qualifies as NotInScope. In rare cases where the agent really needs to include special characters, fixing it is less important than the work done in the current version of the product, hence it is considered not in scope.

As this cases are very rare with simple workarounds, the team also feel that a severity of type Low is more suitable.

Items for the Tester to Verify

:question: Issue duplicate status

Team chose to mark this issue as a duplicate of another issue (as explained in the Team's response above)

• [ ] I disagree

Reason for disagreement: [replace this with your explanation]

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## :question: Issue response Team chose [`response.NotInScope`] - [x] I disagree **Reason for disagreement:** Thank you for your response! I understand your argument that there are workarounds for user to write claim descriptions without having to use punctuation. However, I believe that the issue here is overzealous input validation. As stated in the course website, "Allowing such flexibility can in turn allow the software to be used in ways you didn't even anticipate while overzealous rejection of inputs can annoy the user". It is true that there are ways to phrase things that don't require punctuation, but in this case, there doesn't seem to be any reason to restrict the user from doing so. Punctuation can in fact make claim descriptions more readable. One case might be where the user is recording claim descriptions that have been already submitted, maybe through another platform. But if these claim descriptions contain punctuation, they would not be able to copy word for word. Overall, allowing punctuation and other symbols only brings more flexibility and freedom for the user to input anything they might need, rather than having to rephrase their description into a phrase that doesn't use any punctuation.

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## :question: Issue severity Team chose [`severity.Low`] Originally [`severity.Medium`] - [ ] I disagree **Reason for disagreement:** [replace this with your explanation]

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