Processing requests and actions are the steps available to an Administrator to turn a Request or requested action into an approved Project or transaction and communicate the Project information to your local accounting system.

Dashboard: Pending User Requests

XRAS supports an extensive range of activities and actions associated with allocation requests. Such actions may not be tied to fixed cycles, and thus may be submitted by users at any time. The XRAS Dashboard shows a summary of current, recent, and upcoming opportunities, and a sortable list of pending user submissions that may require your attention.

The Dashboard shows New and Renewal requests to continuous opportunities as well as actions (Supplements, Extensions, Transfers, Appeals, and Advances) related to ongoing projects. Within each row of the list, links are provided to take you to the main summary page for the associated request, the Assign Reviewers page for the action, and the appropriate Process Action screen. In addition a small “comments” icon is shown for each request that has Admin Notes.

The Dashboard is the default home screen for XRAS Admins. You can return to the Dashboard by clicking on “XRAS Admin <client>” in the top menu or by clicking on the small Dashboard icon (left of the gear icon).

The Request Page

After a user submits a new or renewal request to begin or continue a project, respectively, the request must be reviewed (per your site’s practice) and then an Admin must “process” the action to approve the allocations or reject the request. Processing an action is central to the XRAS workflow, and we will walk you carefully through the page and tabs for the various administrative functions.

To process a request or an action, you must first get to the appropriate request page. You can do this by

• selecting a request or action from the dashboard,

• selecting from the list of submissions to an opportunity, or

• using the search options from the top XRAS Admin menu.

The request page includes a box with basic information that remains visible while you complete various tasks within the tabs below. The basic information box includes links back to the opportunity to which the request was submitted, and the title is linked back to the summary tab on the request page.

Summary and Edit

The “Summary” tab for a request displays most of the data fields from the submission form in collapsible sections. In each section, click the button with the “+” or “-” symbol to expand or collapse the section, respectively. Besides viewing these data, you can also edit many of the data fields directly. Fields that can be edited are underlined and blue. You may want to do this, for example, to correct data entry errors. (You can also correct a request by impersonating the user in the XRAS Submit UI, but you will often find it more convenient to edit directly via XRAS Admin.)

Other fields that require more than simple text editing can often be changed by selecting the appropriate button or “Edit” link. The following fields of the submission have forms in which you  make the necessary changes. 

Personnel

• Change PI. The Change PI button (right of the PI section) allows you to change the PI for the request. If you have renamed the PI role, the name of this button will also change. On the Change PI form, you can change the PI to be any other existing user.

• Add Request Personnel. This button (right of the Personnel section) allows you to add additional non-PI persons to the request. In the pop-up window, type the username in the search box and select the user from the results. Then select the Role for this user. The user must already have an existing account.

• Add Users: This button allows you to add users who should be given access to any allocations awarded. These users are passed along to your accounting system, but otherwise they have no ability to manage the Project. (By contrast, Co-PIs and Allocation Managers will see the Request when they log into the Submit UI.)

Project Information

• Request Type. You can change the request type from new to renewal, or vice versa. When changing to a renewal type, you need to provide the request number that the renewal is associated with.

• Status. You can force a change to the status of the request here. Be careful, though: A status change will cause effects that propagate through the XRAS system.

• Request Number. When editing the request number, you will be presented with two related options: Move and Edit. If you move the request to a different number, the request will become associated with the other project as an additional request. You cannot move a request to a non-existent project number. Editing the request number will only change the number for this request; XRAS will not allow you to change a request number to one that is already in use.

• Opportunity. Changing the opportunity in effect moves the request from the current opportunity to another. Keep in mind that some data may be lost in the move.

• Fields of Science. You can edit the primary and secondary fields of science, by adding new fields or deleting the existing fields. Only one primary field of science is permitted, so you must delete the current primary field before adding a new one.

Resources

• Edit Requested Resources. This button allows you to edit the requested resource amounts. This may prove useful to correct data entry errors, for example, if the user used the wrong units for the number entered leading to values that are orders of magnitude wrong.

• Edit resource information. If the submission includes resource-specific questions, you can view and edit the answers by clicking on the resource name.

Supporting Grants

• Add Supporting Grant. This button allows you to add a supporting grant to the submission. The individual fields of an existing supporting grant can be edited inline.

• Delete. To remove a supporting grant from a submission entirely, use the red delete button at the right of each grant.

• Edit field values. The individual field values for a supporting grant can be edited inline by clicking on the value, editing the information, and clicking the blue check button.

Additional Info

This section includes information from other parts of the submission, if it was provided. The additional information may include user comments, or responses to any opportunity-wide custom questions.

Reviewers

The Reviewers tab is where you can manage the reviewers assigned to the request. If you are using a multi-phase review, there will be separate sub-tabs to assign reviewers for each phase.

The list of reviewers has information designed to help you efficiently assign reviews, even with a large number of requests. The listing can be sorted by clicking on the column headings; hold down the shift key to sort by more than one column.

• Score. The higher this value, the better fit this reviewer is for the request. The score incorporates the panel member’s preference rating, if used; whether the requests' primary and secondary fields of science match the reviewer’s primary and secondary fields of expertise; whether the reviewer has previously reviewed earlier submissions with this request number; and how many assignments this reviewer already has for this opportunity.

• Reviewer Name. The panel member’s name and institution.

• Panel Membership. Displays the panel of which the person is a member. This is most relevant when you have more than one panel associated with the opportunity.

• Assignments. This column displays the number of review assignments for this panel member across all requests in the opportunity. This value helps you balance the workload for the opportunity across the entire panel.

• Reviewer Rating. If the panel member has used the “Rate Requests” tool to express a preference for this request, that value is displayed here.

• Previously Reviewed. For renewal requests, XRAS will display whether this panel member was assigned to review an earlier request for the same project.

• Field of Science Matches. For the sub-columns, “p” means “primary,” and “s” means secondary. The first letter is for the request, and the second is for the panel member. Thus, “p-p” is checked when the request’s primary field of science matches the panel member’s primary field of science; “p-s” is checked when the request’s primary field of science matches the panel member’s secondary field of science; and so on.

• Status. The rightmost column lets you assign reviewers or manage conflicts of interest. By default, all reviewers start as “Unassigned.” Selecting “Assigned” from the drop-down option assigns the reviewer to the proposal. You can also declare a conflict of interest between the panel member and the request by selecting the appropriate conflict type in the drop-down.

IMPORTANT: You must click the “Update Assignments and Conflicts” button to save changes to assignments; selecting a new status is not sufficient. The update assignment button will trigger email notifications if you have configured them.

One you update assignments and conflicts, assigned reviewers will float to the top of the list, color-coded in green, and reviewers with conflicts, color-coded in red, will sink lower in the list.

You can configure XRAS to send notifications to reviewers when they are assigned to review a request, which may prove useful for continuous opportunities, when assignments happen outside of a scheduled review cycle.

You can also configure XRAS to send you (the allocations administrators) a notification when reviews have been completed. You can continue with the workflow after all, some, or no reviews have been completed, as appropriate for your site’s practices for different allocation types.

Reviews

As the name implies, the Reviews tab displays the reviews from all assigned reviewers, if submitted. A numeric indicator in the tab shows the number of reviews submitted, if any. The display will change slightly if a multi-phase review process has been configured.

Uploaded Documents. If reviewers have uploaded any files as part of their review, they will be displayed in the first section under this tab.

Enter Final Review. If your process includes a collective, final review synthesizing all the reviewers comments and any panel discussion, for example, that final review can be entered or uploaded as a PDF document by selecting the “Enter final review” button. The Final Review will be displayed as part of the Review Comments via the Submit UI and it can be incorporated into notification templates as well. If you are using a multi-phase review, you can enter or upload a Final Review for each phase.

Review Status. The second section provides a summary table of the status of all assigned reviews, including the assigned reviewer, phase, rating and date the review was submitted.

Full Reviews. Below the summary table, the full reviews from each reviewer are displayed. Reviews from different phases are shown under different tabs.

Process

After your review phase(s) are completed, the Process tab is where you finalize the outcomes of the review. You will spend a lot of time on this screen, so we cover the options in some detail.

Finalize and Post

The first section under this tab lets you manage the workflow for this request. The status of a request being processed will normally be “Under Review” or, in a case where you don’t make formal review assignments, “Submitted.” Before you use this section, you need to fill in the award information in the section below. Once you have finalized the allocation award information and added any comments, you have three initial choices: “Save,” “Save & Approve” and “Save & Reject.” Other buttons will appear later as defined by the workflow context.

Save. Clicking on “Save” will save any date, award amounts, and admin comments that you have entered in the next section of the form, but leaves the status of the request unchanged. You can return later to make further changes or approve or reject the request.

Save & Approve. By clicking on “Save & Approve,” the award information will be saved, the Status will change to Approved, and you will be provided a new button(s) for posting the award. The precise buttons and button labels depend on whether (a) you have integrated XRAS with your local accounting system and (b) this request is eligible for posting to the ORCID service or not.

Save & Reject. By clicking on “Save & Reject,” the Status will change to “Rejected,” and the request workflow bypasses the posting options, and you will be presented with the button to send any configured notification about a rejected request.

Post Award. In the most common case, after saving and approving, a “Post Award” button will allow you to post the award to your local accounting system. If you have not connected XRAS with your local accounting system, you will not see the “Post Award” button. After posting the award, you will be presented with a button to send any notifications associated with the award.

Save & Reset Approve/Reject. Before you post the award, you do have a chance to change your mind or edit the allocation outcome. The status button will read “Save & Reset Approve/Reject.” This button will save the allocations award information and reset the Status to “Under Review.” 

Repost to Accounting Service. After posting an award, you will get the option to re-post the award information. If the original post returns errors, you can use this option after you edit the request to fix the errors. If the original post was successful, you can still repost the award. In this case, your local accounting service is responsible for handling the duplicate post.

Award Information

You will normally start processing a request in this section by filling in the outcomes of your review process. You have three pieces of award information to enter and save: award dates, award amounts, and administrator comments. Two buttons offer you shortcuts to speed up the processing of awards. You are also free to manually enter dates and award amounts that differ from both the request and recommended amounts.

Fill Award With Requested. This button is useful when making an award exactly as the user requested and will populate the begin and end dates as well as the resource amounts originally requested.

Fill Award With Recommended. This button lets you make an award that follows exactly the panel recommendations.

Award Dates. For allocation dates, XRAS will fill in default begin and end dates based on the opportunity’s stated award start date and default allocation length, if those values have been set.

Award Amounts. For resource allocations, XRAS displays the amounts requested and allows you to enter both the amounts recommended by the panel and the final approved amounts. Completing the recommended values is optional; you may find this useful to track panel recommendations if you have a post-review process that makes changes to those recommended amounts.

Admin Comments. Here you can record comments, such as a summary of the in-person discussion of the request, other reasons why the request received these outcomes, or any guidance for the PI. These comments will be visible to the PI, along with the reviewers’ comments, when they return to the Submit UI. The Admin Comments can also be included in email notifications.

User Comments

This field contains any user comments provided as part of the submitted action. This field is most useful when processing actions such as extensions or supplements.

Actions

The Actions tab displays a list of all associated actions—that is, all subsequent transfers, extensions, supplements, and so on—along with the original new or renewal request. From this tab, you can review past actions and process any pending actions. The Actions list will have a row for the current action, shaded in blue.

Operations on Actions 

The drop-down menu at the left of each row lets you change elements of the action that you should rarely have to change. In general, these options should always be used with caution. Depending on the status of the request or the type of action, some of these options may not be visible.

Change Request Type. When this option is available you can change a renewal submission to a new submission (generating a new request number), or convert a new submission to a renewal for an existing request number.

Change Action Type. With this option you can convert, for example, a transfer into a supplement or some other action type. The set of possible conversions may be restricted; for example, you cannot change the action type of an extension.

Change Status. To manually control the workflow for an action, XRAS allows you to edit the action status directly. Use this feature with caution! Such changes will affect what the user sees in the Submit UI and the workflow for that request. For example, you can mark an action request incomplete if the request is blocking the user from submitting another action (e.g., due to your rules configuration), or change the status from “Under Review” to “Submitted,” so the user can correct errors in their submission. This option is not available after the action has been awarded or rejected.

Edit Requested Resources. To correct data entry errors in a submitted project management action (such as a supplement), you can use this menu option to edit the amounts requested by the user. For example, if the user entered gigabytes instead of terabytes, or entered 10 as shorthand for 10 million, you can correct those values. This option is not available after the action has been awarded or rejected. NOTE: For a new or renewal request, you edit requested resources in the Summary tab.

Enter Final Review. A consensus or final review can be entered for a project management action here. If this action is associated with an opportunity that supports multiple review phases, a final review can be entered in the system for each of the phases. NOTE: For a new or renewal request, you enter a final review under the Reviews tab.

Create Adjustment. While most actions are initiated by researchers, there are times when it is useful for an administrator to modify an allocation. For approved requests, you will see an Adjustments section and Create Adjustment button. An “adjustment” is similar to a supplement, in that it affects the allocation amount (but not the dates), but an adjustment can be used to increase or decrease an allocation amount. A “date adjustment” is similar to an extension, in that it affects the allocation dates, but a date adjustment can be used to move the end date forward or backward.

Deleting Actions

In some situations, you can delete actions from this tab. XRAS will not permit you to delete an action that has been finalized (awarded or rejected), but you may be able to delete actions that are incomplete, submitted or under review. If the Deleted? column shows “False” in blue underlined text, you can click on that field and change it to True to delete the action.

Process Action

The Process link at the right of each row under the Actions tab will take you to the appropriate Process location so that you can finalize and post the action outcomes. The process is analogous to the steps used for processing new and renewal requests. The summary box at the top of the page indicates which kind of action you are processing.

Under the “More…” Menu

A variety of additional, less commonly used features are available under the “More…” menu to support the processing of requests and to troubleshoot problems.

History & Usage

If you have integrated XRAS with your local accounting system, this tab will show any resource usage associated with this request or any prior requests from the same project. The display will also show the transaction history for each prior request. And if the project had any prior requests, you can also navigate to those earlier submissions from this tab. Clicking on the opportunity name will take you to the page for this request number within that prior opportunity.

Documents

This tab shows all documents associated with the request and any subsequent actions, such as supplements, associated with that request. At the upper right, the “Add a document” button allows you to upload a document and associate it with the request or one of its subsequent actions. This feature may prove useful if, for example, you want to attach a document that exceeds the page limits enforced by the Submit UI. Admins can also upload documents while the request is under review and not editable by the submitter.

Admin Notes

Admins can add notes to a request that will only be visible to other admins within XRAS Admin. Under the “More…” menu of a specific request, clicking the “Admin Notes” option will take the admin to a page that displays notes that have been added to that request. Admins will also be able to add their own notes by using the form provided on the page.

Publications

Through the Submit UI, it is possible for you to allow submissions to be linked to pPublications that users have contributed to a separate publications database, perhaps as part of their user profiles at your site. If any publications have been added to the submission, they are displayed here. This advanced feature is not part of the default Submit UI, but it can be incorporated into a client’s custom submission interface.

Notifications

In some cases, you may need to resend one of the notifications already sent by XRAS. This may happen, for example, if the submission had a bad email address. Once you correct the email address in the submission, you can use this screen to resend a notification associated with the request. Here you will see the previously sent notifications, and you can use the simple form to resend the notification for a particular event to specific recipient(s). That is, you won’t have to resend the email to persons who already received it successfully.

Accounting Service Posts

For troubleshooting purposes, you can view the responses from post actions to your local accounting service here. These messages will tell you if the post was successful or show the error message returned.

ORCID Posts

Similarly, if you have configured XRAS to post allocation awards to the ORCID system, logging and troubleshooting information about any ORCID posts for this request will be displayed here.