Inside eRA, August 1, 2002 (Volume 3, Issue 9)

July Deployment Update

The IMPAC II July deployment, considered extremely difficult from both a systems and a data standpoint, was successfully completed over the weekend of July 19–22. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) was performing various maintenance tasks that same weekend, making the IMPAC II deployment more difficult. As of Monday, July 22, however, all scheduled upgrades had been successfully completed.

With more than 50 maintenance and new development items reflected in this release, one of the most significant was the successful migration of Summary Statements into IMPAC II. With this deployment, Summary Statements are now in Phase 4, meaning they are generated exclusively in IMPAC II.

Other highlights of the July deployment include:

Users may have noticed that some the areas did not deploy as smoothly as the rest. Most of the issues resulting from the July deployment were resolved in the week following July 22; others are still being resolved. 

Server performance:

As a result of the deployment, every record in the database shows a “last updated” date of July 19–22. Because each IC extension system uses this date to determine which records to download from the system, every IC system has been trying to download every record in the database, overloading the system and slowing it down considerably. This problem should resolve itself as each IC completes their downloads. 

 Institutional Profile File (IPF) Numbers: 

The number of digits in IPF numbers was increased to eight digits. However, IMPAC I was not modified to accept these larger numbers as they were not expected to be used immediately. Because several of the 8-digit IPF numbers had already been assigned, the bridge to IMPAC I failed for the larger IPF numbers. 

Increased Column Width in Ext Orgs Table:

At least one column width in the ext orgs table was increased from 30 to 32 width. This change was not reflected in the schema changes, and caused difficulty for several ICs’ updating jobs.

Reports Server:

The Reports Server (IMPPRD) has been experiencing intermittent performance problems. Something is causing the database to get too busy to promptly service requests. The Operations Team reports that it is not unexpected that there will be some stabilization time required to get the system re-tuned (indexes, long running queries, etc...) after a deployment. Also, the large volume of data updates to the system during deployment may be another reason for the server problems. 

Closeout Still in Pilot:

The Closeout module was not deployed to the public due to server instability. It remains in pilot phase.

 Commons Not Deployed:

Commons was not deployed as planned due to coding changes required to get replication working. Release is planned for late August (see article in this issue).

 The next IMPAC II deployment is scheduled for the last week of October.

 For more details of the July deployment, please see the article in this issue. For additional information, contact Tim Twomey ( TwomeyT@od.nih.gov ) or Chip Groh (GrohN@od.nih.gov ). To report any problems resulting from the July deployment, contact the eRA Helpdesk ( helpdesk@od.nih.gov )

Projections for the October Release

Although the July deployment delivered what was promised (see article in this issue), eRA’s under-funding (see July 9 Article) has meant reevaluating the scheduled October release. Projected development costs exceed eRA funding by approximately $6 million, in part because the costs associated with J2EE migration were not part of the original cost estimates in FY 2000. Consequently, the Project Team and the Steering Committee have reprioritized what will be included in the scheduled October deployment.            

Oracle Development:

A 20 to 30 percent reduction in scope is planned for: Grants Payment Module; Grants Management; Person Module; ICSTORe; Receipt and Referral; SITS; X-Train; Type 4, 6, 7; and Population Tracking.

J2EE Development Recommendations

E-SNAP and Financial Status Report (FSR) are the only two modules that will be developed with little or no reduction in scope.

Scope will be reduced for CM Fast Track; Internet Assisted Review; E-Notification; and Program Portal.

Maintenance releases are scheduled for GM Closeout and IM Module.

All business area Advocates and user groups are already aware of the decreases in scope for the October deployment, and have made necessary (and much appreciated) changes and sacrifices.

Committee Management Fast Tracked for J2EE Deployment

The Committee Management System (CMS) has been selected as one of the first IMPAC II systems to be migrated to J2EE (Java, version 2, Enterprise Edition). CMS provides data entry, query, and reporting capabilities (including the Federal Register Notices) for managing committees and subcommittees. The J2EE implementation allows interface to applications through a Web browser, and CMS is a stable, low-risk application that would greatly benefit from access to Web technology. 

The CMS migration has been slated for accelerated development, or  “fast-tracked.” It would, however, have been unrealistic to migrate the entire CMS and meet a November 2002 pilot deployment schedule. Therefore, to meet the November deployment and to reduce risk, it was decided to migrate the Meetings Data Module only, rather than the entire CMS. The Meetings Data Module was chosen because of its complexity and emphasis on heavy-duty functionality.

The third critical design review (CDR) for this project was held in July. Each CDR is followed by joint application development (JAD) group meetings to validate module requirements. The JAD also ensures that the requirements encompass the widest possible range of Institute and Center (IC) functionality. The last JAD meeting is scheduled for August 7. 

A production version of the Meetings Data module is scheduled for December 2002.

Paperless Business Practices Group (Scanning) Reports Great Progress

Between January 1 and June 19, 21,797 new grant applications were scanned, representing approximately 99.8 percent of all incoming grant applications. Of these 21,797 scanned applications, more than 30 percent were scanned in seven days or less, and the process continues to improve, shortening the timeframe. In some cases, the applications are being scanned within one day.  

In addition, more and more CD’s containing grant applications for specific Peer Review Study Section meetings are being purchased for reviewers. Designed to replace the conventional books of grant applications distributed to members of a study section, each CD contains all the documentation for each grant application assigned to the study section meeting. Between January 1 and June 19, 6,121 individual CDs were ordered, allowing approximately 245 study section meetings to provide their reviewers with CDs.

For more information about scanning, see previous Inside eRA articles:

For more information about CD orders, see previous Inside eRA article:

For additional information, contact Michael Cox, eRA analyst and Scanning Task Manager, at mc70k@nih.gov, or Dr. Steve Hausman, Advocate for Paperless Business Practices, at hausmans@od.niams.nih.gov.

Redesigned User Interface Highlights NIH Commons Release

NIH Commons Version 2.0 will be deployed in several stages, beginning in August with the Commons Working Group institutions. Following that, the current Commons Version 1.0 institutions will be granted access. Finally, registration will reopen to institutions not currently enrolled in the Commons.

Commons 2.0 will include a redesigned user interface with improved performance, as well as the following enhancements:

• Admin Module:

For the first time, institutions will have single point of ownership for their own profiles. Only key institutional officials at grantee institutions will be able to create or change an institutional profile, and only Commons users will be able to create and maintain their own professional profiles or delegate this responsibility to a designated staff member. NIH staff will not routinely possess rights to edit profiles associated with Commons accounts. This procedural change will significantly improve the quality of profile data in the NIH eRA database. The major downside to the single point of ownership concept is that it fully obligates the owner of the profile to keep it current.

• Status Module:

A new Status subsystem will enable users to print Type 5 Face Pages and generate related reports.

• Integration with X-Train Interface:

After logging on to Commons 2.0, users will be able to access X-Train Version 1.7 without a separate logon. X-Train provides options for tracking National Research Service Awards (NRSA) appointments, reappointments, and terminations.

eRA to Publish Procedure for Updating IMPAC II WRK Addresses

Beginning June 25, 2002, score mailers have been generated from IMPAC II rather than IMPAC I. Since that time, several IC’s have reported problems with missing Program Official (PO) return addresses on score mailers. These problems have resulted from procedural ambiguity surrounding the entering of the WRK addresses for POs. This issue is not an IMPAC II system problem.

To address this issue, the eRA project is formulating a procedure for federal staff, including POs, SRAs, and GM personnel, that will clearly explain how WRK addresses should be entered into IMPAC II. The finalized procedure will be sent to the user community within the next few weeks via the IMPAC II Technical Notice listserv. The User Support Branch (USB) will work with specific ICs to handle cases where no PO has been assigned to a grant. For example, the Batch Assignment Module can be used to assign a default program official when no explicit assignment has been made.

The WRK address update procedure will also be published on the IMPAC II site. For assistance or questions, please contact the eRA help desk: helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

NIEHS Seeks Partners for New Publication Analysis Tool

The Program Analysis Branch (PAB) of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recently developed a new tool, known as SPIRES (Scientific Publication Information REtrieval System), that allows for detailed analysis of various NIEHS grantee publications. SPIRES, featuring robust searching and reporting capabilities, enables NIEHS to gather detailed information on publications by its grantees.

The SPIRES database, currently populated with records for 10,870 publications issued from 1995 through June 2002, links grant data in the IMPAC II Reporting Database (IRDB) with publications data in the National Library of Medicine (NLM). SPIRES allows NIEHS to perform biometric analysis on its grantees by examining publications, impact factors (total citations/journal articles/year), and literature citations.

The SPIRES query screen enables searching by publication or by project (grant) parameters. The results can then be downloaded into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, allowing the reports to be easily sorted and customized. SPIRES also links to publication summary records containing additional information. Users also can access PubMed to view or print full articles. NIEHS continues to find valuable uses for SPIRES; already, SPIRES has enabled NIEHS to identify principal investigators (PIs) who have not properly cited their NIEHS grants in publications.

Although currently SPIRES only includes data for NIEHS grants, NIEHS plans to expand SPIRES to include publication data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the next few weeks, and plans to eventually partner with other ICs. Their long-term goal is to develop SPIRES into an NIH-wide system.

Any ICs interested in forming a partnership with NIEHS, or for additional information, contact Ben Van Houten ( bh153m@nih.gov ) at NIEHS.

JJ Maurer Rejoins eRA Team

 Jean-Jacques (JJ) Maurer, currently with Ekagra Software Technologies, rejoins the eRA team as an architect of the new eRA systems, and will work closely with Kalpesh Patel. Some members of the eRA team might remember JJ Maurer from his previous work on both IMPAC I and IMPAC II. Mr. Maurer was part of the project team that migrated the IMPAC I file-based system to its current integrated relational database system. He later served as the Chief Architect of IMPAC II, and also as the manager of the Software Engineering Group that designed and developed the IMPAC II system between 1994 and 1998. 

Mr. Maurer brings more than 25 years of experience to the eRA Architecture Group. He worked for Oracle Corporation for 15 years, recently serving as Technical Director. In addition to his extensive work with both the IMPAC I and IMPAC II systems, Mr. Maurer managed the activities of a team of developers for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the last two years. Mr. Maurer, therefore, can advise the Architecture Group about interfacing an NIH Institute with the IMPAC II system, based on his first-hand experience. His extensive knowledge of the IMPAC II system will be a valuable asset to the eRA Architecture Group. The eRA Project Team extends Mr. Maurer a warm welcome!

Operations Team Juggles Variety of Projects

The eRA Operations (Ops) team’s most recent success was the well-planned July IMPAC II deployment (see article in this issue), but this is only one of the team’s many projects. Ops also continues to provide system and database support, including development, testing, Web servers and applications, production databases and servers, for the implementation of the new, J2EE-based Commons Version 2.0 platform, scheduled for deployment in late August. The team has also been working closely with the Center for Information Technology (CIT) and the Security Officer to review, revise, and implement improved firewall configurations for the Commons platform.

Ops, however, is responsible for much more than providing support for IMPAC II and Commons deployments. The team, for instance, recently reconfigured one of the storage area network (SAN) cabinets to add space for database servers for development, training, testing, and staging. The team plans to implement similar changes to the production cabinet in late summer or fall.  

Ops is also preparing a new area to test the upcoming upgrade to Oracle version 9i, which features “Oracle Logical Standby Technology,” providing a current online backup of databases to help decrease down-time should system problems arise, and to improve performance for application users. The team also has volunteered to be the first pilot test group of HEAT, the new helpdesk trouble ticket tracking system.

IMPAC II Releases as of August 1, 2002

 The last IMPAC II deployment took place July 19. Please check the IMPAC II website for release notes.

The Grants Closeout Module will remain in its current pilot phase after this deployment. 

All applications are available for download from the IMPAC II FTP Site ( ftp://impacii.info.nih.gov ) and the IMPAC II Software Installation Page ( http://impactii.nih.gov/install/install.htm ). 

For information about upcoming releases, contact the Helpdesk at 301-402-7469 or by email at helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

IMPAC II Training Schedule as of August 1, 2002

Hands-on Training in the New Population Tracking Module

Following the Population Tracking demonstrations in May and June, there were numerous requests for hands-on training. The Human Resource Development Division (HRDD) will offer this type of training. Sessions began on July 23, with two 3-hour sessions offered each week through August 12. See the table below and the HRDD website for details. The HRDD courses require a training nomination through your IC using the NIH Integrated Training System (NIHITS). Additional classes will be scheduled based on need and interest.

IMPAC II Courses Offered by HRDD

HRDD has scheduled the following IMPAC II courses. Unless otherwise noted, all classes are held at Executive Plaza South. 

The following courses are also offered; however, there are no scheduled sessions at this time or scheduled classes are full. For more information or to request a class, visit the HRDD website at http://learningsource.od.nih.gov or call 301-496-6211.