Hi, Bob --
My fault for being a little loose with the language: The PI is not
actually interfacing with Grants.gov to obtain the application in the
same sense that an AOR submits to Grants.gov, but of course he is
interfacing with the Grants.gov website. Mac users have always been able
to download the PureEdge application from the Grants.gov website -- the
early problem was in being able to open it and use it!!!
Since I've worked in both the School of Medicine's central office and now
in a Center, I can answer your question about downloading the forms from
two perspectives: As a rule the central office doesn't download the
application for PIs, but what each department/center does varies greatly.
Since I was working on all these e-submission issues at the School level,
I did experiment with downloading the docs from PureEdge via Macs and
didn't have any problems with the download and, once the initial Mac
issues were overcome, and I didn't have to use a Citrix server to
complete the application.
Now, in my Center, we download the application and complete it by working
with the PI, but I have dedicated pre-award staff do this. Since so much
is changing on this front -- PureEdge and now moving toward all Acrobat
forms and (at Penn) using InfoEd for S2S prep and submission, we opted to
keep from confusing our PIs (and probably saving ourselves a ton of time)
by doing all of this in our pre-award office. The PIs continue to prepare
their usual documents in Word and we upload.
I think that the Grants.gov or the Commons people advise against
downloading the generic (parent) docs, filling in the institutional data
and then distributing to PIs, although it's a lovely idea, n'est-ce pas?
When they're responding to the same FOA for the same deadline, I wonder
why we shouldn't do that. Hopefully someone who has tried this and
successfully submitted through Grants.gov to the Commons will step
forward!
Does that answer your questions?
-- Evelyn
At 09:42 PM 5/23/2007, Bob Beattie wrote:
Evelyn,
How does the PI obtain the application at your place if she/he does not
get it from Grants.gov. You say only the AOR will interface with
Grants.gov.
Does your office download all the WorkForms application forms and then
make them available to the PI? I have thought of doing this, and
also fill out the standard institutional data prior to giving to
PIs. I was worried about people getting the correct version,
however. Does anyone do this?
Bob
xxxxxx@umich.edu
On May 23, 2007, at 9:19 PM, Evelyn Ford wrote:
Unless your PI is set up as an
AOR, he isn't going to be interfacing with Grants.gov at all: He only
works in the PureEdge application. When he interfaces with the Commons to
review his application on-line, it will be in PDF format, so he won't
have any problem with that. I've used Safari, IE, and Firefox and been
OK.
I have worked in PureEdge on my Mac with the latest fixes, and all has
been well. I have a Mac G4 running OS X Panther. I'm going to test on a
new Mac Intel tonight and will let you know how that goes.
I have not tried to use Preview's capabilities of saving as a PDF in lieu
of using the full Acrobat application. I would be very leery of that, if
I were you. Unfortunately, the only way to test would be to submit an
application through Grants.gov and see what happens. Remember that this
issue really isn't a G.g issue -- it's a Commons issue. Grants.gov will
probably take non-PDFs for uploads... it's the Commons that won't.
However, I will try to upload a Preview-created PDF to a PureEdge
document and see what happens. If this is really a big problem for your
PI, I suppose he could create a PDF in Preview and send it to you to view
on your PC, but I really think that's not going to tell you anything
useful: It will undoubtedly be readable but that doesn't mean that the
Commons will like it.
Hope this helps.
-- Evelyn
At 03:33 PM 5/23/2007, Carole Knight wrote:
Hi colleagues,
Since I'm "Mac-ignorant" or at least
"Mac-inexperienced," I need help from you so that I can answer
some questions from one of our faculty. He is a first-time
grants.gov applicant, and is applying to NIH for a June deadline.
His questions, which I couldn't answer, are the following. I'd
appreciate any help you can give! Thanks in advance.
Carole
1. All Macs have "Preview" which will save documents as
PDF's. Will this work, or does he have to use Adobe?
Has anyone had success in submitting to NIH using "Preview" for
Macs? Advice?
2. Does he have to use Internet Explorer for Mac to interface with
grants.gov, or can he use FireFox or Safari? (He really hates
Internet Explorer!)
Thanks again.
---------------------------------------------------
Evelyn J. Ford
Director, Sponsored Research
Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
103C Blockley Hall
423 Guardian Drive
Philadelphia PA 19104-6021
voice
215.573.1360
fax
215.573.5518
xxxxxx@mail.med.upenn.edu
http://www.cceb.upenn.edu/