To begin this tour, select Administrative functions by clicking this link. Do this now before proceding below the line. Select your site and enter your administrative password.

The Administrative functions band down the left side of the page displays all the functions available to the user of the administrative password. Normally the words in this band will display fully, but you may need to scroll right and down on your screen because the frame is compressed into half of the screen in this tour. Click Help for admin functions at any time for an explanation of each function.

No matter what you do, the function band remains displayed in the left frame and everything you choose to do happens in the right frame.

The Status Screen that you see in the right frame shows you important information about the various forms you or others at your site may be working on. Click the for more explanation.

The 2 most important General functions The first thing every CRIS site contact must do is a little bit of set-up for the site. Click on Edit Site information in the light yellow group of functions at the bottom of the list. This is where you can change your administrative and site password, determine whether you want to be actively collecting forms from site users or not, enter the name and title of the person who signs the AD-416 and CSREES-662 forms at your site, and identify yourself as the contact person for site users. Enter your name and email address for the appropriate contacts. Also enter the signature information for your site. For this tour, you need to make the AD-416s and AD-421s available to site users by selecting the "Active" radio button for these 2 forms. Click the Proceed button at the bottom of the screen to save your information. For optimum security, you should not give out the administrative password to anyone else, and you should change your password from time to time. Always be sure that your administrative password is different from the site password. The other function you will probably use a lot Display / Edit Project List (this is placed near the top of the list in bright yellow). This allows you to make changes to your project information, and to submit those changes to CRIS. Submitting the changes to CRIS also updates your checklist, which displays the information investigators see when they are doing their annual and final reports. Click on the bright yellow option Display / Edit Project List. The output style option selected by default will show you a list of all the active and pending projects that CRIS has for your site. You can narrow your list by selecting one department, one funding type, one investigator, one project or all projects containing a certain string of characters or numbers. There are also options for including terminated projects and for selecting a sort order. For now, just scroll to the bottom and click Proceed. If your site is new and does not yet have any projects, skip down to the next (blue) section on the AD-416/417 form for now, but you may want to come back to this section when you do have projects to learn about how to make changes to project information after it has been submitted to CRIS. Even if yours is a large site, this list should not take very long because it does not have any procedural buttons... you can only view the projects. Click your browser's Back button, scroll back up to the top of the selection page and select the change option. Also select just one department at your site by selecting the department content option and then select a department. Click Proceed. The only difference between the format of this list and the first is that this one has a Change button for each project. Buttons require more information to be sent to you, so it takes longer. It is very helpful to select the smallest possible group of projects whenever you are working with lists, preferably just one project when that is all you are going to work on, and if you only want to view information, select the list without Change buttons. Now click one of the Change buttons. The project identifying information will appear at the top to verify that this is the project you intend to change, then under it, the information fields that you can change. When you make changes, they will automatically appear on your project list, but will NOT appear on your site's checklist for AD-421/419 reporting UNTIL you submit the changes to CRIS.

Completing and submitting AD-416/417/662 forms In the Administrative functions band, select Display / Edit AD-416 in the blue group. You have several options for working with AD-416/417 forms; click the Add new button. This will be a new project, so you must assign a unique project number to identify this individual form, it can be anything you want. Enter a project number, then scroll down to field 14. and select the project type, then click the Check data button at the bottom. This displays the information you entered on the AD-416 form as well as a message box identifying all the information that must be completed before the project can be submitted. Click the Save information button at the bottom to see a "Confirmation Screen" showing you what data has been saved. Click the Return to Admin table button. The system is designed to make it easy for you to ask PIs/program leaders to complete as much of the forms as you see fit at your site. Some sites prefer to complete all of the AD-416/417 information at the administrative site, and if you will be doing that, you would enter all the information on the AD-416 form and from the table, you can access the AD-417 and Assurance Form CSREES-2008 as well. In this tour, you will see how to enter most of the form information as if you were the PI for this project. In actual practice, you may want to originate all projects the way we just did, where you enter "starter" information and then ask the PI to finish, but the PI can also originate an AD-416 form... some of the information may not be correct but you can easily correct it later. This table also allows you to delete any forms in-progress. Duplicate records for the same project can occur if someone clicks the Save information button more than once when adding a new project. You should determine which of the multiple occurrences is the correct one and delete all others that are for the same project. If you want to have PIs enter information directly on the Web, there is an Administrative function to generate instructions for each of the forms. Select PI / Dept instructions in the light yellow section, (be sure the AD-416 instructions option is selected). Then click the Proceed button. Print this by clicking your browser's print button. This can be distributed to participating PIs but should NOT be posted on a web site without modification because it includes the password!! However, you can save the file as HTML and remove the password information and make any other changes you want before printing or posting on a web site. We generally feel it is safe enough to campus-mail instructions with a password included, as all your PIs will be using the same password. But posted on the web, passwords are sometimes discovered and used mischievously by web-surfers. If you will be asking PIs to enter their own forms, see if you can follow the printed instructions to enter the AD-416, 417 and 2008 forms by using the PI last name that you just entered on the starter information. If you will be entering all the information administratively, use your back button to return to the AD-416 work table and complete the forms there. When the information is complete, you will see a check mark in the column for each form. If you have reviewed the information and are ready to submit it to CRIS, mark the project "ready" by clicking the Mark ready button. To submit the forms, select Submit AD-416 in the blue AD-416/417 group of the Administrative functions band, and Proceed. Read this screen carefully. You are obligated to file signed copies of the AD-416. If the signature information needs correcting, you can do this now, otherwise, click the print button for each form and print using your brower's print button. It is wise to obtain the signature before submitting to CRIS just in case that person requires a modification -- once you submit to CRIS, it's like putting the letter in the mail -- it is on its way and you cannot stop it. You may have any number of projects in progress at the same time, and you can collect and submit them in batches rather than one at a time. This screen will always display all the projects marked ready at any point in time -- if you don't want to submit all the projects displayed, you need to go back to the Display / Edit AD-416 option and "unmark" those projects so they are not considered ready to submit. When the projects displayed are indeed ready to submit, click the Proceed button at the bottom of this screen. You should always print the submittal page for reference. Once a project has been submitted, it will disappear from the AD-416 work table which holds forms in-progress. You can always view submitted projects by selecting the appropriate options to generate the AD-416 table showing submitted projects. Related topics: Export data

Completing and submitting AD-421 forms Step one for AD-421s is reviewing the site checklist. The checklist should contain all the projects that require an AD-421 report for the reporting year -- most sites report on a calendar year basis, some use the federal fiscal year -- you should report on the same basis each year. While you may find it useful to use this checklist for other management purposes, keep in mind that it has only one purpose for CRIS -- to give you a list of projects on which to report for the given year. It is generated on or just before October 1, and is therefore a snapshot in time and can only include information that has been processed at CRIS up to that time. For more up-to-date information about your projects, you should use CRISTEL, the on-line CRIS search database. Select Reporting Checklist in the orange section (darker orange bar) of the Administrative functions frame, (the public as well as site users can also display the checklist from the home page). There are a number of options to be aware of. Some sites like to collect annual reports for new projects that began on or after October 1, but most of them are too new to have any progress to report and they are not required until one year after the project start date, so you can make your own choice here. Your "site checklist" is exactly the same as the CRIS checklist unless you make any modifications to project identifying information, such as department, investigator list, termination date, or any other changes after the checklist was generated at CRIS. You can use the Display / Edit Project List option to make changes. You must also submit your changes to CRIS before they will appear on the checklist. Select one of the options to display by investigator, but leave all the other options as they are and click Proceed. This text mode table is the fastest list to generate and gives you enough information to distribute the instructions to all the PIs at your site. Try some of the other output formats as well. In particular, the Checklist statistics option is helpful in determining if all projects have been assigned to the correct department (this is important if you will be assigning responsibilities to departments). We highly recommend having PIs enter their own AD-421s. That makes the process very simple from your standpoint. Generate the AD-421 instructions just as you did the 416 intructions (note the option to include a due date) and print them. See if you can follow the instructions as the PI would and complete a report. Be sure to mark it complete. Select Display / Edit AD-421 in the amber group of the Administrative functions band. Select the department that includes the project for which you just entered a report, leaving the other options as they are and Proceed. You should see a checkmark by the report you just entered. Once a report has been marked complete, site password users can no longer access the report (although you can with the administrative password); you have to "unmark" projects in order to allow PIs access. Other than than, all you have to do is wait for the reports to come in. To save time, always select the smallest part of your data possible, either the PI or the department, unless you have fewer than 20 projects at your site. The larger the work table, the longer it will take to travel over the internet and load in your browser. If a review process is to be conducted, or if you require printed copies (there is no CSREES requirement for printed copies of AD-421's), you can request that PIs or department reps print them and campus-mail to your site. There are several options available for printing and for preparing HTML versions for your own web site. When reports are complete select Submit AD-421. Related topics: Modify information Mark / Unmark Export data

Completing and submitting AD-419 forms If your site has been submitting AD-419 data to CRIS electronically using the "tape file" format (NOT ON tape, but using the tape file format), you can continue to submit data to CRIS this way by sending the file on diskette or by FTP. If you have been using some other electronic format, check with CRIS to see if they can continue to accept data in that format (you cannot submit data to CRIS using the old CRISFRMS PC program). You are not required to use the Web forms for AD-419 data as long as you can comply with an accepted format. To have AD-419s entered by department representatives or anyone other than you, requires additional setup in the Edit Site information administrative function. Select this function and enter an AD-419 password which is different from other passwords at your site. Also enter as the AD-419 contact, the name and email address of the person conducting or overseeing the process (and whom departmental reps can contact if they have AD-419 content questions). Select the "Active" radio button to make the AD-419 collection process accessible to those using the AD-419 password. All the AD-419 process participants will use this password. If the AD-419 contact will also be the one to submit the data to CRIS, click on the radio button () to allow this -- otherwise, only the administrative password can submit to CRIS. Like the AD-421s, the AD-419s begin with the site checklist. The only difference between the AD-421 and 419 checklists is that the 419 checklist includes projects that have terminated but may have had expenditures during the reporting year. All sites report funding on the federal fiscal year basis. Select Display Checklist in the orange group of the Administrative functions band, enter your site. Select one of the options to display by investigator, but leave all the other options as they are and Proceed. This text mode table is the fastest list to generate and gives you enough information to distribute along with the instructions to deparment reps at your site. Try some of the other output formats if you prefer more detail. Generate the AD-419 instructions (PI/Dept instructions in the light yellow group) and see if you can follow the instructions as a department rep would and complete a report. Unlike the AD-416s and AD-421s, there is no separate investigator access because typically PIs do not complete the AD-419s individualy. All access is via the Display / Edit AD-419 Administrative function. However, if you set up an AD-419 password, you can distribute that to PIs if you want to have them or depts complete them. If you do this, be sure NOT to enable the ability to submit to CRIS using the AD-419 password! To save time, always select the smallest part of your data possible, either the PI or the department, unless you have fewer than 20 projects at your site. The larger the work table, the longer it will take to travel over the internet and load in your browser. If you require printed copies, you can request that department reps print them and campus-mail to your site. When reports are complete, print the Summary AD-419 by selecting the summary table output instead of the Edit / Print table. When ready to submit, select Submit AD-419's to CRIS. Do not submit AD-419's until ALL are complete. This process always submits all the funding data for your site. You may re-submit if you need to make corrections, but be sure to notify CRIS if it is re-submitted. Related topics: Import / Export data