eRA Commons: New Features and Fixes
New features and fixes added to the Commons module are listed below:
Features
Early Stage Investigator (ESI) eligibility determined and flagged.
Scientists who have attained their last degree or completed their medical residency or equivalent within the last 10 years and have not received a substantial NIH research grant may be eligible to be categorized as an ‘Early Stage Investigator.’ Once PD/PIs update their Personal Profile in eRA Commons with their degree information and medical residency completion dates, the system will determine their eligibility – effective with this software release. R01 grant applications will be flagged as Early Stage Investigator applications beginning with the February 2009 R01 submissions; these applications will receive special consideration during review and award.
The features to accommodate ESI are as follows:
- Modify Commons’ Personal Profile to allow users to enter Medical Residency Information and store data:
- The Commons Add Degrees/Residency screen was modified to allow
users to enter:
- The end of their Medical Residency training date (this is a required field with month and year in the MM/YYYY format).
- The area of Medical Residency (an optional field)
- Modify Commons Personal Profile to Display Residency Info for all users and ESI Info for PI, IAR and Trainee and Delegates
- The system will now display Medical Residency information for all users and will calculate ESI Eligibility information for users with PI, IAR, and Trainee roles and their Delegates roles on the Degrees/Residency screen.
- A new Medical Residency section was added to the Degree screen.
This section contains:
- Area of Medical Residency
- End Date or Expected End Date of Medical Residency
- Early Stage Investigator Status
- End of Medical Eligibility Date
- A link to FAQ’s for ESI Eligibility
** Also note that you will have the ability to Edit and/or Delete a Medical Residency record and the ability to ‘Add’ new Medical Residency information. The Add New Residency section will not be available if degree information is not entered.
New reimbursement system introduced for reviewers
A new, simplified registration process will be in place with this software release to facilitate disbursement of honoraria and expenses to reviewers for their participation in peer review meetings. The new system will require reviewers to log in to eRA Commons and update their Personal Profile. Reviewers will then click on a link to a secure payment system, managed by the NIH Office of Financial Management (OFM), and enter their banking information. The new system replaces the U.S. Central Contractor Registration (CCR) system that NIH previously used for this purpose.
The features to accommodate the new reimbursement system are as follows:
- The location of the secure payment link — titled Secure Payee Registration System (SPRS) — was changed from the Reviewer screen to the Residential Address screen. Reviewers are now asked to enter their home or other reviewer location in the Residential Address screen in order to activate the link to SPRS.
- The new system requires reviewers to log in to eRA Commons (https://commons.era.nih.gov/commons)
with their user name and password and update their Personal Profile with
the following information:
- Residential address, phone number, and email; and link to the SPRS to enter social security number, bank routing number, and bank account number.
Note: Please follow the step-by-step instructions for registration at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/peer.htm. Only users with the Internet Assisted Review (IAR) role will be able to view the link and log into the SPRS system. All required fields, including the email address, must be filled in.
Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)
- Added a note to the Financial Conflict of Interest – Initiate screen to let users know that an attachment is optional after the initial Save.
Fixes
Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)
- Allow the FCOI grant number field to accept the entire record, not just the required information. Users will no longer receive the following error message: Grant was not found or not awarded.
xTrain
- Resolved the issue where an account with both BO and ASST roles did not display the Process TN (termination notice) link.
- Removed the Termination email sent to the user when a BO account is deleted.
- Ensured that for both the 2271 form and the TN, the original document will no longer be altered when it is amended.
- Ensured automatic population of personal information into the 2271 form with the data used at the time of nomination.
- For early terminations, the system will automatically amend the latest appointment to include the original stipend amount and the new stipend amount in the Amendment section (Total support amount includes Tuition fees and Travel Fees in addition to stipend amount). The original appointment form information will not be altered. All TNs, Amendment records and PDFs affected by this will now show the correct stipend amount.
xTrain User Guide Coming Soon
- An xTrain User Guide will be posted soon on the xTrain Web page on the eRA Web site.
Features
Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)
NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-09-001 - NIH Announces a New Business Process for Reporting an Identified Financial Conflict of Interest for Grants and/or Cooperative Agreements beginning October 10, 2008.
- New Commons service that allows institutional users to:
- initiate and prepare FCOI reports
- electronically submit reports and supporting documents to NIH
- search and view FCOI reports previously submitted through the Commons
- edit or rescind submitted reports with NIH involvement
- access history of actions
- Pilot expanded to include all Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) members and a small sample of non-FDP members
Electronic Non-competing Award Process (eSNAP)
- Added text at the top of the eSNAP Edit Business page to clarify Human Subject codes
- Added the capabilities in Zip Code for foreign applicants to enter letters and numbers (digits and numerals)
Personal Profile
- Added text at the top of the Personal Profile Degrees screen to clarify process
xTrain
- System aligned with recent xTrain policy change regarding requirement
for signed paper copies of all post-doc trainee actions
- Appointment forms and termination notices submitted through xTrain will serve as official documentation. System will no longer prompt user to print, sign and mail signed appointment forms and termination notices for post-doc trainees.
- Signed payback forms for post-doc
trainees in their first year of NRSA support are still required
and the system will provide link to print document
- Business rule checks (i.e., validations) against ethnicity and disability information have been separated from checks against other profile information. Ethnicity and disability became required fields as of May 1, 2008 (part of most recent OMB cleared changes for the 2271 form). The change was necessary to allow proper paper processing of forms submitted prior to May 1, 2008 that did not include ethnicity and disability information.
Fixes
Electronic Non-competing Award Process (eSNAP)
- Users can now revoke ‘Delegate Submit’ authority without an error message being generated
- Implemented new terminology throughout the eSNAP screens:
OLD TERM NEW TERM Principal Investigator Program Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) Key Personnel Senior/key Personnel Performance site Project/performance site
- Made changes within eSNAP to accommodate the new NIH Public Access Policy
- Provided ability within eSNAP to designate a primary Project/Performance site, enter a DUNS number and effect other changes to accommodate the requirements of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA).
Features
- xTrain
- Number of months for Other PHS Obligation support now required
- Disability Status will be required for Trainee
- Provide link to description for Disadvantaged Background
- PI and Trainee now may modify Field Of Training before saving an Amendment
- Add Registration events to the Routing History
- Add a Recall button
- All users may now view the Application throughout full life cycle even when not the current reviewer
- Many new features for internal users to expedite processing of
Appointments and Terminations
- Status
- SO users can now see previously successful application when a subsequent application results in errors
- Search by Grants.gov tracking number for SO users now works the same way as for PI users
- Reject eApplication link may now be seen in General Status screen
Fixes
- xTrain
- Rename buttons from Route to Save & Route
- Having an Appointment period of 12 months and 1 day now triggers the error that 12-month Appointment period has been exceeded
- Middle name has been added to xTrain termination emails
- Tuition and Travel amount in 2271s may now be zero
- Current Reviewer is now displayed for Appointments when Pending Agency Review
- Fixed bug that created another re-appointment when saving the current re-appointment
- Status
- Changes to Progress Report printable face page to include latest Office of Management and Budget (OMB) revisions
- Made modifications to Race and Ethnicity screen to be consistent with OMB requirements
- On the Personal Profile page you may now enter either the last 4 digits or full Social Security Number, but only the last 4 digits will be displayed
- xTrain changes
Note: xTrain is a new Commons service for managing research training appointments/amendments/terminations through the eRA Commons. It is currently in pilot with nine institutions. xTrain is expected to be available for broader use later this year.- Adding middle name to hit list returned when using the Identify Trainee link
- Allow previous PI to perform actions for only their support years and allow current PI to perform actions for all support years
- View routing history once appointment/termination accepted
- TA screen redesign of search for appointments/terminations
- Modifications to the pre-population of the payback form to for printing and paper submission
- Remove requirement to supply Appointment Start Date (From and To fields) from the Search Appointments and Terminations screen (NIH staff users)
- Stipend greater than zero must be entered
- Performance improvement for Work In Progress (WIP) Appointment and Terminations query (NIH staff users)
- Cancel button consistently returns users to previous screen
- Trainee Roster Search options will switch to Latest Awarded Support Year, Latest & Previous Awarded Support Years and All years. Default set to Latest & Previous.
- Address 500 server error received when viewing PDFs and Routing History for actions that share start/end dates
- Address 404 system errors received when routing Termination Notices from Business Official to Trainee
- Correction to Auto-routing message that is sent to Business
Official after 14 days of no action from PI
- General changes
- Remove IPF search parameter from Employments screen of Personal Profile
- Changes to DP1 reference letter processing
- Corrected reference letter email text sent to referee
- Changed reference letter screen to provide flexibility in RFA/PA number format (frequent help desk call)
- xTrain changes
Note: xTrain is a new Commons service for managing research training appointments/amendments/terminations through the eRA Commons. It is currently in pilot with nine institutions. xTrain is expected to be available for broader use later this year.- Screen clean-up
- Workflow corrections
- Corrected pre-population of Payback form
- New search feature: Ability to search for and track electronically
submitted applications from the Status screen using the Grants.gov
tracking number. The Grants.gov tracking number will continue to be
searchable throughout the lifecycle of the application/grant - even
after the NIH assigns its own application ID (i.e., accession number
or grant number).
- Reorganization of the application/grant data into two separate sections:
- Recent/Pending eSubmissions - includes
electronic application submissions that require action to complete
the submission process (e.g., checking errors/warnings, viewing
assembled application). It also includes those that have been
refused by a Signing Official or are within the two day assembled
application viewing window.
- List of Applications/Grants
- includes both paper and electronic applications that have been
submitted successfully and are available for post-submission status
(e.g., review assignments, review results, summary statements,
Notice of Award). It also includes the list of awarded grants
for accessing other Commons functions.
- Recent/Pending eSubmissions - includes
electronic application submissions that require action to complete
the submission process (e.g., checking errors/warnings, viewing
assembled application). It also includes those that have been
refused by a Signing Official or are within the two day assembled
application viewing window.
- Grouping of multiple submission attempts for a single application
to provide a cleaner screen view and consolidated submission history.
- In internal eRA applications, the PI view within the grant folder now includes a link to files added to the grant folder via eAdditions.
