egrants functionality changes introduced 24 september 2010

Registration

New users will be required to enter their email address at the start of the registration process, to help identify duplicate addresses and hence help stop users from registering more than once;
Information will be entered on a page-by-page basis;
A status bar will be available to show the steps in and progress through the registration process;
Nationality will be selected from a drop-down rather than entered as free text. A minority of current users may have to re-enter this information when they edit their homepage for the first time.
Date validation will be introduced to the ‘Previous Posts held’ table. Some existing users may therefore have to re-enter this information when they edit their homepage after these changes have been introduced;
A different set of ‘ethnic origin’ categories in the Equal Opportunities section will be available;
It will no longer be mandatory for new users to complete the ‘summary of scientific / academic career to date’ field;
An additional message area will be added to the homepage, so that important messages are displayed to users after they have logged in.

The Principal Investigator (PI) will be able to modify the form title at any stage before the application is submitted to the Trust;
The Institutional Administration Department (IAD) will be able to modify the form title once it has been sent to them for review, prior to submission to the Trust;
Forms that are re-submitted by the applicant to IAD will not trigger an email to the HoD;
The PI will be able to resubmit the form directly to the IAD. It will no longer necessary for the PI to submit the form via the Head of Department (HoD). However, if the HoD has changed since the form was originally submitted, then the new HoD must approve the resubmitted form;
The PI will be able to change the administering institution if they have selected the incorrect institution, before the form is submitted to the HoD / IAD.

eGrants will be able to handle ‘multi-part forms’, where parts of the application form are submitted separately to the Trust.Applicants can be stopped from progressing to the next part of the form until the current part has been submitted and approval is given by the Trust for the next part to be completed;
Questions in subsequent parts of the form will be visible but not editable;
Data entered in the form can be carried over into subsequent parts of the form to ensure there is no needs for data to be re-entered.
The PI will be able submit certain types of ‘application form’ (e.g. CV details forms) on eGrants directly to the Trust without going via HoD / IAD. Up to now these forms have been submitted as Word documents via email;
Guidelines (i-buttons) will be provided for form sections as well as for individual questions.

There will be an improved search facility for secondary applicants.
There will be an new on-screen warning when an eGrants session is going to time out.