Quick Help for Using ARK/RPS |
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This help file is intended to give a quick introduction to those who are
not familiar with the ARK Remote Proposal System, or ARK/RPS. It is
short, so please read it completely.
A detailed manual on how to use
ARK is available. There is also an ARK
FAQ. RPS-specific FAQs are answered below. Quick step-by-step instructions on what you need to do:
- In order to submit your proposal to ARK/RPS, you must first
create an ARK account
and/or join the relevant RPS group.
- If you already have an ARK account, login first and select "Join
Group" from the menu next to RPS group for which you desire to submit
a proposal.
- If you do not already have an ARK account, enter your e-mail
address in the input field provided and click on the check box next to
the group for which you desire to submit a proposal and then click on
the Join ARK button. Check your e-mail. Within a few
minutes, you should receive an e-mail from ARK. Click on the
activation code found therein. Fill out the ARK registration form
and submit. Your ARK account should be created and you should now
be a member of the ARK group you specified earlier.
- Next, proceed to your My ARK page and
click on the group for which you desire to submit a proposal. On the
following page, click on the "Submit a new proposal" link. Fill out
the proposal form(s). Click on the Verify button to make sure you
have entered the form information correctly. Once the form verifies
successfully, you may then click on the Submit button.
- After doing so, go "Back" in your browser and then click on the
PostScript button to generate the PostScript file for your
hard-copy submission and upload. Alternatively, the PDF button
can be used instead if that format is preferred. (The LaTeX
button allows you to tweak the LaTeX code before manually generating
the PostScript file yourself, but that is usually unnecessary and is
not recommended.)
- Go to the group's "Recent Activity" page. The information for the
proposal that you just submitted should be listed here. Click on the
Files button next to it, if it is present. Proceed to upload
the file(s) specified. If you have submitted your form electronically
and uploaded the required files (if applicable), then you have
successfully completed your RPS electronic submission.
The RPS user, regardless of experience, should develop
the habit of saving his/her work often. We recommend that you use the
Save button on the ARK/RPS form page periodically.
Note that the Save and Submit buttons do very different
things. The Save button downloads a text file containing the
fields and the values you entered. If for some reason your browser
crashes before you Submit, you can Reload your saved form,
for example. The Submit button submits your proposal to the
mission, effectively fulfilling the electronic submission aspect of RPS
(not including any file uploads).
The Save and Reload buttons can also be useful if you
have a large number of targets/observations. Some users find that filling
out the text file is easier or faster than filling out the web form,
especially with a large number of targets. The plain text representation
of the ARK form utilized by the ARK Save and Reload
buttons also lends itself to automation. A simple script might fill in
any number of fields for an arbitrarily large number of targets with
ease. When you're done editing the text file, just use the Reload
button to upload your changes to ARK. Prior to the deadline, you can still Modify or Discard
any proposal you have submitted, using the group's Recent Activity
page. Visit the RPS browser support
page to see which browsers are supported. Mission-specific questions should be addressed to the relevant
Guest Observer Facility (GOF) for that mission. Short description of each RPS form button that you may encounter:
- Add - Add or clone a specified subform.
- Add Targets - Upload a list of targets. Only found on ARK/RPS
forms that have target subforms.
- Delete - Remove a subform. You must first set the delete flag to
"Y" at the top of the subform you wish to delete.
- Feedback - This is for sending questions, comments, complaints, etc.
to the RPS Help Desk
- LaTeX - Generate the LaTeX version of your form.
- PostScript - Generate the PostScript version of your form.
- PDF - Generate the PDF version of your form.
- Reload - Reload an ARK/RPS form that was saved using the
Save button. (Note: Do not use this button to reload HTML files.
Use your browser's file opening mechanism for that.)
- Save - Save the values you entered in the form boxes to a text
file which can be Reloaded later.
- Submit - Submit the electronic version to the proposal database.
The Submit button will not appear until after the form has been
successfully verified.
- Verify - Checks the form for any errors or inconsistencies.
Q: How do I reload a saved form using the ARK/RPS web
interface?
A form saved using the ARK Save button may be
reloaded by using the Reload button on the RPS group's form page.
You may then resume filling out the form, submit it, etc. Q: Why does the ARK Save button save the form to a
plain text file? In the old RPS web interface, the Save button
saved the form to an HTML file. Why was this changed? I really
want to save to HTML. How do I do that?
We think the plain text file has several advantages over the
HTML file that the old RPS web interface utilized. The text file is smaller
than the HTML file, since it contains only the form information and the
values that you entered, so it will not take up as much space on your
hard drive. The text file can also be used in other ways.
You can edit it more easily outside of your web browser, for example.
Many RPS users have specifically stated a preference for being able to do
just that. The plain text format is also compatible with the
ARK E-mail Server, allowing
interoperability between the web and e-mail interfaces. The plain text
file format is also more robust in the face of changes to the form from one
proposal cycle to the next.
Every web browser supported by ARK
has a mechanism for saving the web page you are looking at to a HTML
file. Just use the "Save As..." or "Save Page As..." item from your web
browser's File menu. We strongly advise you to Verify the form
before saving it in this fashion. As you can see, no functionality has
been lost here. If you truly need or desire to save the form to HTML, you
still can. In order to open a saved HTML file, use the "Open File..."
item from your web browser's File menu. Just make sure you are logged in
to ARK first. Do not use the Reload button to open saved HTML
files. The Reload button only works with files saved using the
ARK Save button. Q: How do I know if I have successfully submitted my proposal
or not? Can I get some kind of confirmation of my submission?
If you see your proposal listed on the Recent Activity page
for the mission/group to which you are proposing, then we have your
proposal. What you see is what we get. If your submission requires any
file uploads, there will be a "num_uploads" column. If you've uploaded
the correct number of files, the background color of that table cell will
be green, indicating you have fulfilled the file uploads requirement. If
you desire another means of confirmation, you might want to activate the
"Please send an e-mail receipt to me for every data record I submit"
checkbox at the bottom of your ARK
profile page and then submit to save this change. Now, whenever you
submit or modify a proposal or upload a file, you will receive an e-mail
detailing the submission. This e-mail confirmation is unnecessary, but it
can be a convenient record of your submission. Feel free to activate this
feature if it makes you more comfortable with the submission
process.
Q: I've already submitted my proposal, but I just noticed that
I entered an incorrect value into the RPS form. What should I do?
Go to the Recent Activity page for the RPS group and click on
the Modify button next to the proposal you wish to change. After
you make the change to the proposal on the form page, Verify and
re-Submit your proposal. Q: I've already submitted my proposal and uploaded my
PostScript or PDF file(s), as required, but I noticed an error in my
scientific justification PostScript file. What should I do?
You should re-upload the corrected file(s). Go to the Recent
Activity page for the ARK/RPS group and click on the Files
button next to the submitted proposal. Next, click on the Replace
button next to the uploaded file you wish to re-upload. Q: How do I use LaTeX mark-ups in the abstract?
We would prefer that you do not use LaTeX mark-ups in your
abstract. The abstracts for accepted proposals are subsequently
distributed in plain text format. They are also ingested into the
HEASARC Browse database, so that they can be
easily searched. LaTeX code is inappropriate for such
usage. Q: Can I enter characters with accent marks or other
diacritical marks into an ARK/RPS form?
No, unfortunately, you cannot. The ARK/RPS system only
recognizes the standard 7-bit ASCII character set. If you do enter ISO
8859-1 (Latin-1) or Unicode characters (UTF-8 or UTF-16), for example,
and submit the form, the characters will be stripped or possibly
transformed into some form unrecognizable from what you
intended. Q: How do I concatenate two or more PDFs into a single PDF in
order to satisfy the file upload requirement for proposal submission?
Some missions may require that a single PDF be uploaded as a
requirement for a successful proposal submission. If you have multiple
documents that need to be combined in order to create a single PDF, here
are some suggestions: First, if the documents are not already in PDF
format, it's best to combine them in some word processor first before
generating your PDF. If that's not possible, then you will need to use
some software to concatenate PDFs. There are many free software packages
available for doing this. We recommend doing a web search, but here are
some relevant possibilities:
We make no endorsement of the above software tools; these are simply some
tools that we found in our web searching.
Note:
This reference
page and the additional comments it has engendered might be useful.
Please refer to the ARK FAQ for answers
to general questions about ARK.
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