December 19, 2005

Minor changes implemented Friday December 16 and Monday December 19:

SERD Science and Education International Program grants require semi-annual reporting, due December 31, 2005.
AD-416s for Extension RREA activities require 2 additional fields: dollar amount allocated and fiscal year.

December 5, 2005

CSREES has updated and expanded the Research Problem Areas (RPAs) for the AD-417 CRIS Classification. These are now called "Knowledge Areas (KAs)" instead of RPAs. Other than minor wording, the only changes are the addition of 5 new codes and re-written narrative describing all the KAs to better encompass the education and extension components. Reclassification is not required for any existing projects, but you will now have the option to use the 5 new codes:

136. Conservation of Biological Diversity
141. Air Resource Protection and Management
704. Nutrition and Hunger in the Population
724. Healthy Lifestyle
806. Youth Development

Other minor modifications:

Non-Technical summaries for the AD-416 can no longer be modified using change mode (this had been allowed in order to add these narratives to projects that did not have them prior to the field becoming required).
Formats for dates and phone numbers on all forms are now more restrictive.
When revising an AD-416, you cannot change the project type.
You cannot include your own state in the list of cooperating states.

November 16, 2005

New features were added today to help with anniversary date reporting for FY 2005 and later grants.

The CRIS checklist is basically just a list of all the active projects at your site, and in the past, you could fulfill the CRIS reporting requirements for all of them by choosing either calendar year or fiscal year reporting for AD-421s and submitting them all by the due date in one bulk process. Because the new grants require progress reports on the anniversary date, this traditional "checklist" is still the list of active projects but it is no longer a list of projects with reports due by February 1 or April 1. Since each site handles their reporting process differently, we've added some options to give you flexibility in how you go about collecting and submitting reports for these new grants. Some of those anniversary dates will coincide closely enough with your regular report collection time that you may want to include them in the "checklist" so that you collect them at the same time as all the other projects. But for those that are due several months later, you may not want to collect those until closer to the due date. Or you may want to keep the new grant reporting process completely separate.

2 new options have been added to modify the checklist:

You can choose to omit all of these grants so that your list reflects only those projects to be reported on the calendar or fiscal year basis (due February 1 or April). CRIS will be sending out monthly notices (by the 10th of each month) requesting the reports for grants that require anniversary date reporting that month. So in a sense, you get your regular checklist once a year, and your grant reporting "checklist" each month. In addition to the CRIS requests, the Administrative function Display / Edit AD-421 includes a new option to list all those grants with reports due that month (or past due).

You can choose to include only those FY 05 and later grants that coincide fairly well with your regular reporting period. Your checklist selection screen identifies whether your site is set up to report on the calendar or fiscal year basis, and depending on that, your "checklist" can include those grants with anniverary reporting due dates that coincide reasonably well with your regular reporting period. So if you report on the calendar year basis, anniversary date reports due from November through April can reasonably be included in your regular "checklist" and be collected at the same time as your other reports. However, if you normally wait until April to submit them, you may need to submit those with due dates in November, December, and January prior to the rest of your reports.

As a third option, you can just use the full list of all your active projects noting the due dates of the reports (shown in purple for these grants). PI and department users will see their full list of projects, but the grants needing anniversary reports are displayed in a separate shaded table with the heading: "Reports for grants shown below should cover a one-year period based on the anniversary of the project start date and are not due until notification from CRIS".

One other small change -- the "Full project information" option is now the default instead of "text-mode table". As you go through this process for the first time, if you have any ideas about what would make it easier, please let us know and we will try to add whatever would help.

November 7, 2005

New features have been implemented:

Beginning with FY 2005, CSREES made a change in the Terms and Conditions so that all grants awarded on or after 10/01/2004 are to have progress reports submitted to CRIS annually at the start date anniversary, with a 90 day grace period. For example, the progress report for a grant with a start date of 10/01/2004 is already 37 days past due and will be delinquent as of December 30, 2005. If your site normally reports on the calendar year basis you cannot wait until April 1 to submit this report. Even if your site reports on the fiscal year basis, you cannot wait until February 1 to submit this report without it being delinquent.

CRIS will be sending out progress reporting requests for all grants awarded in FY 05 and later during the start date anniversary month. To help you identify grants that require reports, we have added 2 new selection options in Display / Edit AD-421 so that you can view all your grants that fall under this reporting requirement or just those that are due or past due. This will show any projects with reports due this month or past due that have not yet been submitted. Grants with start dates prior to 10/01/2004 do not fall under this requirement and should be reported during your regular reporting cycle. However, over time, all grants will fall under this requirement.

There is also an option in the Reporting Checklist function that shows just the grants that fall under this reporting requirement. These grants will still display as always on your checklist, but in the full project identifying information option, you will see the progress report due date in purple. When PIs view their list of projects, they will see any grants that fall under anniversary reporting with the due date in purple. Some grants will have due dates that coincide with your site's regular reporting cycle, but those falling at other times of the year will need to be submitted to CRIS within 90 days of the start date anniversary.

You will want to use the new option to view reports that are due or past due at least monthly to tract whether these reports have been entered and to submit them to CRIS at the appropriate time.

A customized explanation of whether an AD-421 report should be "progress" or "termination" has been added to help reduce the number of reports submitted incorrectly.

You can now select the option to enter AD-416/417/2008s for 4 types of Extension activites. If you are required to enter and submit AD-416/417s for Extension activites, select the Administrative function Edit Site Information, scroll down to the newly revised section that allows you to determine which types of projects you will manage. Check the Extension option(s) on the list of allowable project funding types for your site. If there are project funding types that you do not wish to appear on the dropdown box for field 14. Project Type, you can uncheck those. Be sure to save your changes at the bottom of the page.

If you are asked to assist with documenting an Extension activity and your administrative organization is not set up to provide such assistance, please contact the CRIS office so that an alternative can be arranged.

As always when something new is implemented, there may be unforseen downstream effects, so please let us know right away if you encounter any problems.

October 20, 2005

Beginning in November this year, CRIS will accept documentation for some types of Extension funded efforts, specifically activities funded by the Renewable Resources Extension Act (RREA) and the Smith-Lever 3D grant programs. The award letters will instruct recipients when CRIS forms are required.

RREA fund recipients will be required to submit the CRIS forms AD-416/417/2008 and a proposal outline (which can be submitted as a PDF file along with the web forms as for research projects). RREA programs will be forwarded to a CSREES reviewer for approval. Extension grant recipients will be required to complete the CRIS forms AD-416/417. These grantees and recipients will be directed to contact their institution's CRIS site administrator for assistance when completing CRIS forms.

By November, all sites currently using the CRIS Web Forms will be able to select an option to enter Extension activities. To select this option, go into "Edit Site Information," scroll down to the section called "Allowable Funding Sources," and select the new source(s). All your currently allowable funding sources should already be selected in this list, so you should add only those that you will need.

For most sites, the simplest method will be to provide the grantees/recipients with the instructions you currently use for your CSREES-funded investigators. If your administrative organization cannot accommodate assisting these Extension grantees or recipients, please contact the CRIS office so that alternative arrangements can be made.

July 18, 2005

New features have been implemented:

If you have any SERD grants at your site, the SERD grant option has automatically been selected for you. If you find that you have SERD grants that do not belong at your site, or if you do not want to manage any SERD grants at your site, contact Carolyn Deckers (cdeckers@csrees.usda.gov). Remember, if you have SERD grants on your list, you will be responsible for submitting the AD-416/417/419/421 for them.
SERD projects now have the same features for managing them as for all other grants except that they must still be submitted to CRIS separately from other projects.
When you submit an AD-416 for a SERD grant, it will not appear on your project list until the next update from CRIS.
The Administrative user at your site must now submit SERD AD-421 reports, not the individual grantees as before.
If you use Export Data, you will now see additional SERD-specific data fields appended to the end of each record.

As always when something new is implemented, there may be unforseen downstream effects, so please let us know right away if you encounter any problems.

July 14, 2005

The 2006 Program of Research is due by August 15, 2005.

May 3, 2005

A NEW OPTION for submitting new SERD grants is now availalble. If your site wishes to enter and submit AD-416/417s for SERD grants awarded to your PIs, you can now do this. To enable SERD grants for your site, select the Administrative function Edit Site Information , scroll down to the new section that allows you to determine which types of projects you will manage. Check the SERD option to add SERD grants to the list of allowable project funding types for your site. If there are project funding types that you do not wish to appear on the dropdown box for field 14. Project Type, you can uncheck those. Be sure to save your changes at the bottom of the page. Now you will see a new button at the top of the AD-416 work table for initiating a new SERD grant.

When complete, mark the forms "ready" and then you can submit to CRIS as usual -- almost -- you must click the Submit to CRIS button under the project number (SERD projects must be submitted separately). Also, you will not see SERD projects on your status screen or the project list at this time (coming soon though).

For those of you unable to attend the 2005 CSREES Administrative Officer's Conference in North Carolina, the powerpoint presentation is available. This provides slides with notes about the new SERD option implemented today. A web archive file is also available which is only viewable in Internet Explorer.

OTHER CHANGES: The project form selection screen for PIs has changed... they must now select the project funding type in order to initiate a new AD-416. This is so that we can display the correct fields for each project type.

Multistate projects are now referred to as Hatch Multistate and are identified separately from regular Hatch within the AD-416 web forms. However, they will be submitted to CRIS as project type H = Hatch and the multistate number provides the identification of Multistate to the CRIS system.

March 2, 2005

A minor modification has been made to the AD-421 reporting process for investigators. Instead of selecting a project and clicking a "proceed" button, the user just clicks an icon to enter or edit a report. This should make the page more intuitively obvious.

A bigger change has to do with SERD reports. A SERD grant is any non research grant that is awarded by the CSREES Science and Education Resources Development office. All SERD grant reports must be entered using the SERD web site option, even if the project appears on your site checklist. In order to ensure that SERD projects are reported using the SERD site, the investigators are now automatically redirected to the SERD AD-421 site for any SERD project they have selected. Because SERD reports have additional requirements, there is no option for them to enter the regular AD-421 report, only a SERD report can be done.

SERD reports are submitted directly to CRIS by the investigator, so if a SERD report was completed by the PI according to the SERD request instructions, it may appear on your site checklist that no report has been submitted, depending on exactly when the SERD report was done. SERD projects are now identified on your checklist in red. Reports for SERD projects can no longer be submitted to CRIS as a regular AD-421 by you as the administrative user, even if a report is entered and marked complete... the SERD projects will not be included in the file prepared for CRIS even though the submit screen may show it.

If a regular AD-421 report has already been entered for a SERD project on your checklist but not yet submitted to CRIS, the investigator will find that text already entered on the form in the SERD site, so he only needs to add the additional SERD information. If a SERD project appears on your site checklist, the investigator can access it either from your site or the SERD site using the password provided by the SERD office in the AD-421 report request.

February 28, 2005

There is no longer a database lookup for a Multistate project title, objectives, and start/term dates which must match exactly those of the Multistate project on which the Hatch project will participate. You can either type in the information you may already have for a Multistate project, or use the direct link provided to NIMSS where you can browse the outline and find the information you need there.

February 8, 2005

The updated on-line CRIS Manuals for preparing the AD-421 and AD-419 are now available on the home page link "CRIS Manuals" and using links on the AD-421 form.

Another new feature to note is that this year the impact field on the AD-421 was pre-filled with the impact summary available for editing if one was previously submitted to CRIS. This is to assist PIs by showing what they had submitted in the past along with the non-technical summary displayed above it. Together, the non-technical summary and the impact should provide a brief synopsis of the work in non-technical terms suitable for the general public.

January 6, 2005

A new minor feature for McIntire-Stennis AD-421 forms was implemented today. Graduate student years (GSY) is required for all McIntire-Stennis projects. Previously, this information was to be entered in the progress/termination narrative, but a new field has been added for this number. GSY is required and the report cannot be marked complete until this information is entered. The field will only appear on McIntire-Stennis forms.