The following configuration features are accessed via the XRAS Admin settings menu—the gear icon on the top navigation bar. The gear icon menu is also where you’ll find Client Settings; those settings are generally required to begin using XRAS and are discussed as part of the Initial Setup and Customization.

Default Reviewers

If you wish to have “Default Reviewers” for any of your panels, you can select the Default Reviewers option under the settings menu to get a system-wide summary of all such reviewers across all of your panels and allocation types. You can configure XRAS to assign the same default reviewer to every submission to an opportunity, or you can have XRAS assign a default reviewer based on the resource(s) requested in each submission. With a resource-based assignment, a submission that asks for multiple resources will have the default reviewer for each resource assigned to review the request. You can also specify default reviewers for specific action types (new, renewal, supplement, etc.)

Under the “By Panel” tab, you will see your default reviewers sorted according to your various Panels. Here, if you click on the panel name, you will be taken to the Current Members tab for that Panel. And if you click on Edit Default Reviewers (at right), you will be taken to the Default Reviewers tab for that panel.

Under the “By Allocation Type” tab, you will see your default reviewers sorted according to Allocation Type. Note that the By Panel and By Allocation Type lists will be very similar if you have only a single, unique panel associated with each allocation type.

Notifications: Managing Email Templates

Notifications are messages that are sent via email to users or groups of users when specific events occur in XRAS. Such notifications help both administrators and users to track whether users’ submissions of allocations requests are being processed and monitor the current state of requests within the allocations lifecycle. The Notifications interface allows you to tailor the email messages that XRAS sends. XRAS provides a great deal of flexibility in the email messages that the system sends, but it also requires some time and attention to properly configure XRAS to your site’s needs.

You must configure XRAS to send Notifications when specific scenarios occur. These scenarios are combinations of the available Allocation Types, Action Types, Event Types, and Recipient Types. 

Notification Templates. The initial screen includes a summary list of all Notification templates that already exist. You can filter the list (blue button) to zero in on a specific template or determine if a template already exists for a given scenario.

• Clicking anywhere in a row of the table will take you to the editing screen for that template.

• The Copy button in a row will create a copy of the email template and take you to the editing screen. The copy will be associated with no scenarios; you will have to assign scenarios on the editing screen (see below). 

• The Delete button (trash can icon) will delete the template, removing it and its associated scenarios.

Create/Edit Templates. To customize the email messages sent to users or other recipients, you can create a new template (green button above the list of Notification Templates) or edit an existing template (clicking the row for a current template or making a copy of a current template). All of these actions will take you to the create or edit template screen; both screens are organized identically.

Template. The Template section allows you to enter the various components of the email message to be sent, including the sender, fixed recipients, subject line and the body of the message. The fields of the template can include static text, and most fields can include Tags. When sending notifications, XRAS replaces each tag with the appropriate values from the submission that triggered the message to be sent. 

Available Tags. To the right of the Template section, XRAS displays the available tags. Notification tags are used in templates to tell XRAS to substitute submission-specific values into the final email messages, much like the mail merge function found in word processing programs. Tags can be added to the Subject and Body fields of the message. The simplest way to insert a tag is to place the cursor at the appropriate location in the Subject or Body field and click on the desired Tag from the Available Tags list. You can also type the pipe character— “|” — and a dropdown list of available tags will appear.

Rules. The Rules section (below the Template section) is where you define the scenarios in which the template will be used to send notifications. Click the Add Rules button to add a new rule. In the pop-up window, select one or more allocation type, action type, event type, and recipient type, then the Add Rule(s) button. You can also delete a newly created or previously existing rule within the pop-up using the appropriate delete (trash can) button. In the Rules section, you can also delete an existing rule or rules directly. A note of caution: If you delete all the Rules for a template and Save, the template is effectively deleted.

When defining Rules, the Allocation Types are the types you have defined for your allocation process, and the Action Types are the actions you have configured XRAS to support for your process (supplement, extension, and so on). The Event Types and Recipient Types are specific to the XRAS Notifications feature.

The “Notification Event Type” specifies different points in the submission, review, and processing workflow that can be used to trigger a message to be sentXRAS currently supports sending notifications when the following events occur:

• Action Approved—when the status of the action is set to Approved by an admin

• Action Finalized/Submitted—when the status of the action is submitted

• Action Rejected—when the status of the action is set to Rejected by an admin

• COI Reported—when a reviewer uses the Report COI feature within a request

• Reviewer Assignments—when a reviewer is assigned to a request; the Opportunity must be set to have reviewer assignments visible.

• Reviews Completed—when all review assignments for a request have been completed

The “Recipient Type” allows you to tailor messages about events to different stakeholders in the allocations workflow. XRAS distinguishes the following recipients for the purposes of Notifications and templates. Not all recipients may be available for every submission.

• Allocation Manager—the person with this role on the request

• Allocation Process Manager—you, another XRAS admin, or other email address; you work with the XRAS team to set this email address 

• Co-PI—the person(s) with this role on the request

• NSF Program Officer—the program officer(s) associated with supporting grants on this request

• PI—the person with this role on the request

• Reviewer—a member of a Panel assigned to review this request

• Service Provider—the person/group associated with a resource connected to this request

Be sure to click the Save button to save your changes to the Template or the Rules. The Cancel button will exit the editing screen without making any changes. You must define at least one rule in order to retain and save a template.

Preview Notification. XRAS will let you preview the message a recipient will see, i.e., the message with the tags replaced by actual values. Click the “Preview Notification” button and a Notification Preview dialog box appears with a search box. You need to pick a sample request or action to use for the preview. Entering partial request numbers will work, and this search returns only projects that have applicable actions for the current notification. Select the action for which you want the preview, and XRAS will display a preview in a new browser tab. Close the dialog box to return to the template editing screen.

Reconcile Users: Managing Guest Users

If you have opted to allow Guest Users to submit requests, you may need to later “reconcile” these guest users, once you have created their permanent user account. Reconciling users allows the users to see their requests and reviews, and over time, ensures that a user’s entire history of requests is connected.

Select “Reconcile Users” from the gear menu to see your list of “Unreconciled Users.” For each user, click anywhere in the row to reconcile that user. The left side shows the information about the user from their XRAS submission. The right side has a search box for your Identity Service. Begin typing the user’s first or last name to bring up possible matches and select the correct match from the list.

XRAS will display the corresponding information from your Identity Service on the right. Select “Cancel” to choose a different user or select the “Reconcile User” button to update the XRAS submission with the official user information. That user can now log in with their permanent user account and see the submissions previously associated with the guest account.

Resources: Customized Questions

By default, XRAS allows users to submit only limited details about their resource requests, specifically, a requested amount and general Comments. However, you can customize XRAS to display, in effect, a “mini-survey” about each requested resource. This feature can be useful to quantify their interest in the resource, structure their responses, and better understand their expectations.

From the XRAS gear menu, select “Resources” and select a resource from the list. On the next page, choose the link to add a question. On the following page, enter the question details: The question itself, the answer type, the form element, the relative order, and whether the question is required and optional. Repeat for each of the questions you want to ask.

Note that the resource questions will be displayed for every Allocation Type and Opportunity.

Rules: Tailoring XRAS to Match Your Policies

As an Admin, you can describe the allocation operations, definitions, and constraints or policies that apply to your organization by configuring a range of Rules that tailors how XRAS behaves in different situations. To ensure XRAS behaves as you expect, you are strongly encouraged to review all the Rules settings before you start accepting submissions via XRAS. Many of the Rules rely on or refer to values or controlled vocabularies you should have configured as part of your initial setup.

If the following Rules options are not sufficient to match your organization’s allocation policies, requests to enhance the interface can be sent to allocations@access-ci.org and we will add them to the XRAS feature roadmap.

Rule: Request Number Format. You can define, modify, or view the template XRAS uses to generate request numbers for successful submissions. 

Rule: Ineligible PI/Project Leads. You can specify the types of persons who are ineligible to be PI/Project Lead on allocation requests. For example, you can declare Graduate Students to be ineligible to be PI/Project Lead on certain Allocation Types.

Rule: Maximum Requests per Allocation Type. You can restrict a user to a maximum number of requests of different Allocation Types. By default, XRAS will allow a user to submit an unlimited number of requests for each type.  The maximum requests is the combined total number of active requests and submitted requests.  For example, setting 2 maximum requests and 1 maximum active request allows a user to have 1 current award and 1 renewal request, but does not allow the user to submit a renewal for an opportunity that starts before their "active" award ends. 

Rule: Restrict Cross Type Submissions. You can prevent a user from submitting a request of one Allocation Type if they already have an awarded project of another Allocation Type. For example, a user who has an awarded project of Type A should not be allowed to submit a request for a project of Type B.

Rule: Request Action Time Periods. You can control when XRAS allows users to submit actions related to different Allocation Types. You can add, edit, delete, and view the time periods for actions. For example, you can only allow a Renewal allocation request to be available within 30 days of the current request ending.

Rule: Required Submission Fields. You can define which fields are required for different actions for each of your Allocation Types, as well as customize the error message displayed if a required field is missing when a user tries to complete a submission.

Rule: Required/Optional Documents. You can define the types of documents required or allowed for the actions associated with different Allocation Types. You can also choose whether one or more than one of each document type should be allowed, and set page limits allowed for each document type. If no rule is defined for a particular document type and action, then that document type will not be available for that action in the default Submit UI.

Rule: Manage Invitations to Opportunities. XRAS allows you to declare some Opportunities to be “invitation-only.” This rules interface allows you to manage the lists of invited users. In the “Invitations” section, enter either the first or last name of the user to be invited. From the search results, choose the desired name. Then, select the relevant Opportunity from the drop-down list of all invitation-only opportunities, and click the “Add invitation” button. To un-invite the user, simply click on the “Delete” button for that entry.

Rule: Enable Public Request Pages. XRAS can provide a public information page for each of your awarded projects. These pages are created to show users’ awarded allocation resources. Here you can specify which Allocation Types have or may have public pages associated with them. An Admin can choose (a) no public pages are created (Never), (b) public pages are automatically created for all approved requests (Always), or (c) public pages are only created for approved requests that are explicitly posted to ORCID (Only if posted).

User Permissions

The User Permissions option provides you with a list of all persons who have been given permissions to use XRAS Admin for your allocation process. To revoke permissions for any person, use the “Revoke” butt at the right of the appropriate row.

While it’s often faster to use the search bar at the top of the XRAS Admin pages to find and grant permissions to individuals, you can also grant permissions from this page.