To ensure a smooth transition from IMPAC I, the pilot phase of the IMPAC II Summary Statement process has been extended through December 2001 to address performance concerns and to enable the user community to provide additional design input. ICs will be required to use the IMPAC II system to generate summary statements for the June 2002 council cycle. The eRA Project Management Team encourages all ICs to participate in the current pilot phase of the IMPAC II Summary Statement process. The pilot is open to all Peer Review users.

During the pilot phase, the "official" summary statement text will continue to be entered in and released to final in IMPAC I. Pilot users will test the process of entering text but not finalizing it in IMPAC II.

Beginning in January 2002, IMPAC II will be the only comprehensive source of summary statements. Although ICs will be able to generate individual summary statements in IMPAC I that will be bridged to IMPAC II, summary statements generated in IMPAC II will not be reverse-bridged to IMPAC I. The Summary Statement Preparation User's Guide provides detailed instructions for creating summary statements in IMPAC II.

IMPAC II offers significant advantages in summary statement generation and management. Users create summary statement "bodies" in Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, which supports rich-text features such as boldface, bullets, underline, italics, Greek characters, and tables. After the bodies are submitted to the IMPAC II database, summary statements are generated in Adobe Acrobat portable document format (PDF). Any user who downloads the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe's website can view PDF files.

IMPAC II also enables users to view current and previous summary statements online through the Grant Folder. A summary statement sort screen in the IMPAC II Peer Review, ICO, and QuickView modules enables users to request central printing, merge PDF files into one file for local printing, or request a zip file of individual PDFs.

When the summary statement process is transitioned to IMPAC II in January, program officials will benefit from automatic email notification of summary statement availability. To prepare for full deployment of the module, ICs must update and maintain program officials' WRK address type in the IMPAC II User Administration (UA) module. Online documentation provides step-by-step assistance.

In addition, ICs must replace IC Council Book batch jobs with equivalent IMPAC II or Electronic Council Book (ECB) functions. Beginning in January, IMPAC II will be the only complete repository of summary statements.

The Human Resource Development Division (HRDD) offers training in summary statement generation as part of its Peer Review class. For more information, consult the HRDD website. The Office of Extramural Research (OER) will offer summary statement training prior to the January 2002 deployment.

To participate in the pilot or to request assistance in converting current procedures to run from IMPAC II, email the IMPAC II Helpdesk at helpdesk@od.nih.gov. Be sure to include your IMPAC II user account in the email.