CRIS Forms NEWS
1999 postings

December 10, 1999

The project lists were updated 12/10/99 with data from CRIS which adds projects not previously on your list, inserts accession numbers for those that were pending at the time your list was generated (10/25 or 11/22), and updates certain other information that may have been changed at CRIS since the lists were generated. However, extensions done by memo may not be captured in this process. We're working on it. If you made a term date change that suddenly doesn't show up, please let us know! This is a new, rather complicated process, but will help to keep your project lists current with the data in CRIS.

You can now ADD projects to your checklist using Manage Project Information IF the project has an Add to Chklst button. To use this feature, select the "List with Change option" in "Review / Print / Modify information on the Project List". Be sure to select a subset of projects or the individual project rather than your entire project list. Any projects that CAN be added to the checklist and are not already on it, will have a button that says "Add to Chklst."

November 16, 1999

The letters from CSREES requesting annual reports will be mailed from the CRIS office this week. You can get them here now:

• AD-419 and AD-421 Request
• Salary Analysis Information

October 29, 1999 Some new features were implemented today:

AD-416/417 changes:

• The next time you submit an AD-416/417 to CRIS, you will be asked to provide a mailing address for the signing individual's office. Once entered, it will be displayed in the signature information you are asked to verify each time you submit AD-416/417s, where you can correct it any time as necessary.
• Revisions will now require you to select a project from a list rather than type an accession number. PIs can select projects to revise from a list of projects having their name as first investigator. To revise a project from the Admin functions AD-416 edit table, enter the investigator's name, or the dept if you are not sure, or the project number -- the program will show you if any projects in that category have AD-416/417 forms in progress, and if not, click the button to initiate a revision -- you can then select from all active projects in that category.

• In an effort to help PIs remember to mark their reports complete, the Report Complete button is now at the top in a yellow-highlighted area.
• To help you spot progress reports when termination reports are due, whenever reports have been marked complete as Progress but the termination date is on or earlier than the reporting period ending date, a red message will be displayed in the AD-421 display table on both the edit and print only tables.
• Also in the AD-421 display table, reports already submitted to CRIS now display the date submitted.

October 26, 1999 The 1999 Checklists are being generated today and will available later today, Tuesday, October 26.

October 19, 1999

The 1999 CRIS Checklists will be available on the Web soon. If you submitted your site's FY 2000 Program of Research / Checklist verification on or before the the October 15 due date, your checklist will be ready by October 25; a week or so later for late submittals.

You must submit your FY 2000 Program of Research / Checklist verification in order to have your checklist correctly updated. Please complete any changes and submit them to CRIS before you submit your Program of Research / Checklist You do NOT need to complete overdue termination reports -- the message displayed on the Program of Research / Checklist is primarily to help you spot projects that need to be extended or have already been extended but somehow the information has not been updated at CRIS. All this is so that your 1999 Checklist will be as correct as possible.

IMPORTANT - - - If you have any AD-421s currently in progress in the Web Forms, they are in the 1998 checklist file. You must complete and submit them to CRIS or YOU WILL LOSE THEM! This does not mean you have to submit all termination reports that are due before the new checklist comes -- it just means if someone has already taken the time to enter the report, it must be marked complete and submitted to CRIS or else it will be wiped out when the new 1999 checklist file arrives. Termination reports can be done at any time in any checklist... you just don't want to get caught in the middle.

We do have contingency backup which can be used for extenuating circumstances, but please complete any reports in progress on the 1998 checklist. Use Administrative functions to display the table of reports in progress; select the option to include all reports that contain text, whether marked complete or not. Review these and submit all that should be submitted to CRIS. Again, you must do this before your new 1999 checklist arrives.

If you submitted 1998 reports using the Web forms and you want to download 1998 AD-421 reports for your own purposes you must do that before the 1999 checklist is implemented. You can do that using "Export data" in Administrative functions. Once your 1999 checklist is there, the 1998 checklist and its associated reports will no longer be available on the Web Forms -- you can always view past reports on CRISTEL.

When your new checklist arrives, the default reporting period dates for your site will automatically be changed to the 1999 reporting period (either FY or calendar year 1999). The default reporting year for AD-419s will also be set to FY 1999.

You must remember to do the following using the Administrative Function "Edit Site Information":

• select whether or not you want users to be able to access the AD-421 forms, the AD-416/417 forms, the AD-419 forms (at this point, you may want to disable access so no one gets caught in the middle of the transition from the 1998 to the 1999 checklist).

• set the passwords for your site -- you can have separate passwords for AD-421s, AD-416/417s, and AD-419s. By default, the AD-416/417 and AD-421 passwords are the same (your current site password), and the AD-419 password is the same as your admin password. (Changing the password is another way to prevent anyone from entering a report on the 1998 checklist before the 1999 checklist arrives.)

• correct any names and email addresses for the Site and AD-419 contacts that may have changed since last year.

Sue Lang slang@zoo.uvm.edu
Pat Downer pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu

September 27, 1999
2 new options have been added for selecting projects to be modified in the "Manage Project information" Administrative function: you can now select projects by a string in the project number or by PI.

Also, a last minute addition to the "Program of Research / Checklist verification -- tables that display all Grants and State projects in CRIS for your site were added on Monday, Sept. 27. If you are reviewing printouts generated prior to that date, you will not see the Grants and State Projects; you may want to generate a new printout that includes them.

September 20, 1999
The Manage Project information function has been enhanced with the additional feature to review and submit your Program of Research and/or Checklist Verification as requested in the memo from CSREES dated September 3, 1999. If information in your Project List is not correct, use the link provided to modify and submit changes to CRIS. A summary of how to carry out this process was sent by email to all CRIS Web site contacts. If you have any problems with this new function, please contact Pat Downer (pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu ).

August 18, 1999
The Administrative function "Modify information for projects" has been replaced with a new "Manage project information" function. This works from a complete list of your site's projects as of August 16-18, 1999, allowing you to submit certain project information changes to CRIS. This is a good time to review your projects and correct anything that may be incorrect at CRIS. As you submit new and revised AD-416s via the Web forms, these too will be added to this project list.

To use the new feature, choose Administrative functions and "Manage project information" in the General column of the table. You may want to print the text of the explanation in "manage.htm".

In addition to the new project list feature, there are several other minor changes:

• you will no longer be able to save an AD-416 that contains a non-unique project number -- that means you cannot leave more than one blank, and you cannot reuse the same numbers for at least 2 years (this will correct the problem with duplicate project numbers that some of you are having when you or PIs use their browser's Back button instead of the "Return" button provided on the "Confirmation Screen")

• the proposal number should now be entered for all grants and cooperative agreements... it is not required by CRIS, but may be required for certain grant types (you should go by the written instructions you receive for the grant documentation).

• the AD-416 forms on the screen should now match the new paper forms released Februray 1, 1999 (the blue section is gone that highlighted the new AD-416 fields -- they are not "new" anymore).

• all reference to "Regional" projects has now been replaced with the new designated term "Multi-State" on all applicable forms

• a bug associated with the Cooperating States field has been fixed (previously states whose names had 2 words were handled as though they were 2 states -- sorry...). We are working on correcting all of these both in the Web forms and in CRIS. At the same time, we are correcting the errors where Cooperating states were entered for Multi-State projects -- this field is not to be used for Multi-State projects, and we have added an error check for it now. You should also not enter your state in that field, as your state is assumed to be cooperating since it is the grantee.

• You can now select projects for the AD-421/419 checklist or for the AD-416 work table based on a substring within the project number. For example, if you use a sequence of letters or numbers to identify departments within a project number such as VT-AS-1234, where AS means Animal Science, you can now select only the projects containing 'AS' in the project number. You can also use this to select only one project by tying in the whole project number or a unique sequence of letters or numbers in that project number.
• The departments list is now displayed as upper/lowercase.
• The checklist statistics produces 2 tables, one for the Site checklist which includes all changes made since CRIS generated the list, and the CRIS checklist which is the original data from CRIS. The order of the tables used to be CRIS checklist first, now the Site checklist is first.
• The title of a project can now be 140 characters instead of 100. Also the Fiscal Year on grants and cooperative agreements must be typed as all 4 digits of the year.

June 14, 1999
Three new useful features:

• Recently we added a Reclassification list which is the same as the table but without the buttons
• You can now mark the Reclassifications ready to submit from the Submit link -- look for the message box and use the mark ready link instead of the Proceed button, then go back and submit when ready.
• For those who are new to the Web Forms administrative process or would like a little refresher, visit the Overview link and try the new Tour of the Web Forms for Administrative contacts.

May 19, 1999
You may find the following clarification of recent changes and summary of suggestions for enhancements useful.

May 3, 1999
The following materials are available to help you get started using the CRIS Reclassification process:

• Research Reclassification in Perspective
• Administrative Site Contact instructions
• Instructions for Investigators

April 15, 1999

We will be demonstrating and allowing hands-on access to the Research Reclassification process at the CSREES Administrative Officer's Meeting in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, April 28 and Thursday, April 29. The programs will be available for actual use in the Web Forms beginning May 3 when we return from the meeting. In the meantime, if you are anxious to test the process before May, contact Pat Downer (pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu) by Monday, April 19 for information about how to access the test site.

For quick information about these current topics:

• new field added to the AD-421
  
• new AD-421 form
• new fields added to the AD-416
• new classification codes for the AD-417
• Y2K information

March 2, 1999

Here is summary of the changes to the AD-421 process:

• A new impact statement field is now available and is currently optional.
• The fields have been renumbered on the revised AD-421 form.
• Tutorial help pages are now available for the AD-421 forms; administrative help pages will be available soon.
• Return buttons have been added where needed in order to return to updated pages; you can display only reports with NO text (the ones not completed yet!); and reports can be displayed for an individual funding type.

Here is a summary of the major changes you will see:

• A new tutorial mode is available. Tutorial mode sets up a frame for viewing help information with the processing screen still in place. So whenever you click on a help link, it will appear off to the side in a separate frame; no need to use your browser's back button to return to what you were doing. However, if you don't use tutorial mode, the same help links will be displayed however your browser displays targeted frames, usually by launching another session. Old browsers that do not handle frames cannot use the tutorial mode, but all the same help files are available by clicking on the "Help for this Screen" image. Tutorial Help is only available for the AD-416/417/662 and Administrative topics... the AD-421 tutorial help will be implemented March 1.

• The Administrative Functions table has been placed in a frame so that you will not need to use your back button to select a different function.

• The new Ad-416 form includes several new additional information fields; all the same fields are still there, but have been renumbered. When you fill in an AD-416 form in the Web forms, you'll see the exact same fields in the same order, with the new fields in a blue section at the end. This will help in the first few days of the transition, but soon the new fields will be placed on the screen in the same order as the printed form.

• A few other changes have been made to AD-416 forms: (1) the objectives and approach can now be up to 3200 characters each; (2) for grants, if you enter the words "NOT YET AWARDED", you will be allowed to leave the award date, amount, and the start and term dates blank; (3) you can now review all AD-416s submitted via the Web forms back to a specified date using the Administrative Function "Display..."

• The new classification system has been implemented for the AD-417. Not only is the process simpler (all combinations are allowed and there are no Activity or Special Codes); but in addition, we've added "Classification Assistance" which lets you check off applicable codes from the list.

The new revised Manual of Classification can be viewed, printed and downloaded as a PDF document (using Adobe Acrobat reader) or as an HTML document from the new revised manual link at the bottom of the home page.

The Web forms will incorporate the new AD-416 and AD-417 forms on February 1, 1999 for all new projects and revisions entered via the Web forms beginning on that date. At the same time, other enhancements, including tutorial assistance will be implemented.

On March 1, 1999, AD-421 enhancements will be implemented. These changes will cause your current AD-421 instructions to investigators to become obsolete, so get your reports in to CRIS by the March 1 deadline in order to avoid confusion!