To manage your resource allocation processes, there is a minimum set of data that XRAS needs to know. At the moment, you will need to provide some of this information to the XRAS team, but we are working to provide interfaces that will allow you to enter and edit these values. You will find most of these interfaces by selecting “Client Settings” under the XRAS gear menu.

Data Provided via the XRAS Team

The following data must be provided to the XRAS team to spin up your instance of XRAS. You can customize these aspects of XRAS for your site, or you may choose to use the values used by ACCESS.

• Initial Allocation Administrator (required). When first configuring XRAS, you must designate someone from your organization to be an Allocation Admin. Once that person has been given administrative access to XRAS Admin, they can grant admin access to others.

• Allocations Process and Client information (required). Your institution’s name; your preferred abbreviation for your institution; your institution’s logo; your institution’s contact help email. The abbreviation is displayed on the Submit, Review, and Admin interfaces and used in the default URLs (https://submit-orgAbbrev.xras.org, https://review-orgAbbrev.xras.org, https://admin-orgAbbrev.xras.org). Even if hosting your own submit interface, we will still create and host the Review and Admin sites for you.

• Allocation Process Manager (required for Notifications). An email address or email list to which XRAS will send notifications targeted for your site’s allocation administrators.

• Action Types. The set of actions with which users make requests or manage their allocations. XRAS currently recognizes new and renewal requests as well as transfer, extension, supplement, appeal, and advance actions, as well as actions to allow researchers to submit progress reports and final reports. 

• Fields of Science. If your institution requires selecting a primary and, optionally, a secondary field of science when submitting a project allocation request, you can provide a custom list of fields and their abbreviations.

Client Settings

The following settings can be customized to your site’s preferences by you or another XRAS Admin. These features are available under the XRAS gear menu by selecting “Client Settings.” Further customization can be managed via the Rules interfaces. 

Request Number Format

You can customize the format that XRAS uses to generate project numbers for successive submissions. It must at a minimum include a number sequence field. The template may include letters, numbers, underscores '_', dashes '-', and dynamic template fields enclosed by vertical bars '|'. Currently, XRAS allows dynamic prefixes based on the field of science value associated with a submission. 

Available template fields

Examples of Request Number Templates

ORCID Configuration

If your organization is an ORCID member, you can use XRAS to post allocation award information to your users’ ORCID profiles. Using this feature requires several settings to be configured.

Under the Client Settings: ORCID Configuration, you must enter the information about your organization that is required by ORCID. The information must include a Research Organization Registry or RINGGOLD identifier as well as basic geographic information. If you enter your ORCID client ID and secret here, the default XRAS Submit UI will let users connect their ORCID identities and grant permission to post your allocation awards to the users’ profiles. You can also separately allow your users to link their local usernames at your site to their ORCID identifiers. You can support the ORCID linking via an external web interface and send the ORCID tokens to XRAS via the Identity Service API. 

Next, you must also use the Rules UI to “Enable Public Request Pages.” You can only post to ORCID allocated projects that have a public page, which XRAS can provide.

Finally, you must ensure that your resource(s) in the Cyberinfrastructure Description Repository (CIDeR) have a public page or other persistent identifier associated with them.

Once configured, XRAS will automatically post allocation awards, for the allocation types that have public request pages enabled, to the ORCID profiles of users who have granted the necessary permissions whenever you have XRAS post awards to your local accounting service.

Allocation Types 

The Allocation Types interface is where you define types of allocations or projects; these are typically described in your allocation policies. You need to define at least on Allocation Type for XRAS to work. Using this interface, you can create a new allocation type by giving it a name, a description to help users understand the type of project you are offering, and the relative ordering for this type within the Submit UI. By default, XRAS makes this new allocation type available for creating new opportunities immediately. You can inactivate allocation types and create new ones if your policies evolve over time.

Once you have created an allocation type, you must select it from the list of available allocation types and finish defining the rules, review phases, and associated resources.

Opportunities. The first tab on the allocation type page lists all opportunities of that type and lets you create a new opportunity of that type.

Rules. For each allocation type, you can specify rules that XRAS can help enforce. Click on the relevant allocation type name to go to its page, then click on “Allocation Type Rules” tab to see what different rules you can establish. In general, XRAS will work with no additional rules, but you can use rules to more closely match your allocation policies and practices. For example, you can define which fields you would like to be required during the submission of an allocation request, or set page limits on required and optional documents.

Review Phases. XRAS has full support for multi-phase review processes. An allocation type will have one review phase by default; no further action is needed if your organization does not use multiple review phases. But if you have, for example, a Technical Review and a Scientific Review in your process, you can define a separate review phase for each. Each phase can have its own panel and review form template. When creating an opportunity that has a multi-phase review, the details related to creating an opportunity will change slightly to allow you to configure each review phase. 

Available Resources. For each allocation type, you must specify which of your resources can be requested in opportunities of that type. To associate resources with a given allocation type, you must configure those settings in the Cyberinfrastructure Description Repository (CIDeR). See the CIDeR appendix for instructions. At any time, you can check which resources are being offered as part of an allocation type by using the Available Resources tab on the Allocation Type page.

IMPORTANT: The various interfaces for XRAS may behave unexpectedly if there are no resources associated with an allocation type.

Allocation Type Resource Emails

When a request is approved, the system will send an email to the associated address for any resource and allocation type that match a rule. This feature is designed for clients that may have several resources each managed or overseen by different teams or individuals. This form will allow you to create the rules to associate an email address to combinations of resources and allocation types.

To add emails, select a resource, then select one or more allocation types. Enter one or more email addresses in the email box. For multiple email addresses, separate each one by a comma. To delete emails, click the trash can next to the combination that you wish to delete. You can click the undo button if you click one by mistake.

Once you've added or removed emails, click the Save Changes button to finalize the changes.

Category Types

XRAS allows you to manage requests submitted to an opportunity by assigning each request to a category. By default, no categories are defined. This optional feature is most useful for opportunities with large numbers of requests; for example, you might categorize requests as part of assigning them to different parallel review sessions. The Category Types interface allows you to create, edit, or inactivate the categories appropriate for your allocations process.

Conflict Types

XRAS provides a user interface to define conflicts of interest (COIs) types that a reviewer may have with a request. Once a request is submitted, XRAS can automatically identify COIs, based on request roles, institutions, and other factors, for panel members assigned to review that particular request. All conflict types that are defined may also be self-reported by reviewers through the XRAS Review UI.

Document Types

You can customize the document types associated with your allocations policies. The Document Types interface under Client Settings allows you to add and remove document types that can be associated with your different allocation types. The “Display Name” entered for the document will be shown in Submit, Review, and Admin components. (To define which documents are required or optional for each allocation type, use the Rules interface for Required/Optional Documents.)

Grant Types

You can provide another level of categorization to your projects with Grant Types. For example, you may have a “Small” allocation type that you use for many purposes. By defining Grant Types, you can have the submission form ask requesters to state a kind or purpose the Small allocation. The Small allocation might be for “Classroom” use, for “Software Development,” or other purpose that you want to track. Grant Types are different from Category Types in than Grant Types are external facing (selected by researchers and requesters), while Category Types are internal facing (used by administrators and reviewers to support the allocations workflow).

Person Status Types

When creating new users to be associated with an allocation request, a user’s status type (Graduate Student, Faculty, ...) can be selected. You can use these person status types in XRAS rules to define, for example, who is eligible to submit an allocation request. XRAS allows admins to create a comprehensive list of categories a user may fall under, such as “Faculty,” “University Research Staff,” and “Graduate Student.” These values should match those used in your local account management system and passed via the Identity Service endpoints to XRAS.

Request Role Types

The different personnel roles associated with an allocation request. Examples include Principal Investigator (PI) or Project Lead, User, and Instrumentation PI. These are typically individuals who have responsibilities or privileges different from other individuals associated with the work. XRAS requires the “PI” role type, but you can customize the displayed name for that role. 

Request Role Types

The different personnel roles associated with an allocation request. Examples include Principal Investigator (PI) or Project Lead, User, and Instrumentation PI. These are typically individuals who have responsibilities or privileges different from other individuals associated with the work. XRAS requires the “PI” role type, but you can customize the displayed name for that role. 

Allocations Documentation

You can specify an optional allocations policy documentation page that you would like to be visible to your allocation reviewers in the XRAS Review UI. 

Meeting Review Tags

The optional tags that are available for use in the Meeting App of XRAS Review are controlled via this tool. You can add new tags and activate or inactivate tags that are already defined. You can define tags to help manage the handling of requests during a meeting. For example, you might define tags for “approved in full” or “rejected” to help designate these outcomes quickly, instead of typing out notes.

Reviewer Agreement

The Reviewer Agreement tool allows you to create an Agreement that Reviewers will be required to agree to when logging into XRAS Review. They will be unable to use Review until they check the “I agree” checkbox.

When creating an agreement you can specify the text that the user must agree to, the length of time the agreement is good for (listed in days), and a checkbox that controls if the agreement requirement is active or not.

Custom Review Forms

By default, XRAS defines a review form with a single long-text field for all action types. XRAS provides a user interface to let you define and manage customized review forms for use on XRAS Review. These forms allow you to add multiple types of custom questions for reviewers to fill out as part of their review.

When creating a new Custom Review Form you will be asked to specify which combination of Action Type, Allocation Type, and Review Phase you want the review form to apply to. You only need to specify one of these to create a review form and each additional selection will increase the specificity of the rule. For example if you choose “New” for the action type, the form will appear for all requests that have an action type of “New”. If you specify “New” for the action type and “Research” for the allocation type, the custom form will only appear for requests that match both of those options.

A Custom Review Form has two general options: “Form Active” and “Uploads Enabled”. Checking the “Form Active” box will allow the form to display for reviewers in XRAS Review. Checking the “Allow Uploads” box allows reviewers to upload documents as part of their review.

The Form Fields section of the editor allows you to specify what kinds of fields you want displayed on the custom form. Clicking on “Add a Field” will open the editing window and give you the following options:

• Displayed Text: This is the text of the “question” or what will be displayed next to the form field.

• Data Type: What kind of data is displayed. The different options in this list control how the field is displayed and what kinds of data the user can input.

  • Label: This will just add a static text to the form, in case there are instructions or other data you want to communicate to the reviewer

  • Radio Buttons: A set of options for the user to select from

  • Text: A simple box for the user to type into

  • Date: A box that will show a date picker if the user selects it

  • Integer: An input box that will only allow the user to input whole numbers

• Form Element: The specific type of form element that will be displayed. The options that appear in this list depend on the Data Type that you select.

  • Radio Buttons (Radio Button data type only)

  • Input Field. A standard one-line text input box. (Text, Date, and Integer only)

  • Text Box. A multi-line text input box (Text only)

• Radio Options: The different options that a user can choose from. (Radio Buttons data type only)

• Required: If checked, the reviewer will be unable to submit the review unless this question is answered

• Min Value: The minimum number a reviewer can enter (Integer Only data type)

• Max Value: The maximum number a reviewer can enter (Integer Only data type)

• Custom CSS Style: For advanced users, custom styling can be applied to this form element using CSS rules

Once the fields have been created, they can be reorganized to change how they are displayed to the reviewer. By using the three horizontal bars icon to the left of a form element that element can be dragged up and down to change the order.