My conclusion from Rick Smiley's note, the "Good News" is that we
have 13 months to get ready. That's the bad news too! We at
Michigan are not very far along with our system-to-system (S2S)
development so will be relying on PureEdge. To get ready for this
onslaught of proposals (maybe up to 100 at Michigan) we have been
wondering how to help our Mac folks (30% of users). The Grants.gov
staff happily say that the solution for them is easy, use a PC
emulator. Not much of a real world solution due to costs,
inconvenience, and maintenance issues. Also read all the caveats
about the emulator on the G.g site. This is only a proverbial
bandaid for a traumatic wound.
We thought to at least provide a large dressing for the wound by
using a server-based PC emulator.
We have a licensing agreement with Microsoft for a Windows 2003
Server and can activate Terminal Services on it. This means that our
staff could use PureEdge with a method that allows Macintosh to
connect to a remote Windows machine and execute the application from
it, thru a "portal" on their Mac, to easily submit applications to
Grants.gov. Mac users do not have to go to a public or alternative
station or have the emulator on their own computer. So far so good.
The flaw with this plan is that G.g now uses PureEdge Version
6.0.2. Version 6.0.2 doesn't natively (nicely) run under this
Terminal Service environment. We could solve our problem if G.g
would use Version 6.5 which does not have this problem; it runs
happily under Terminal Services.
Our IT manager did try and open a grant application with version 6.5,
and it seem to look and act good. But we cannot in good conscience
use this version without Grants.gov sanction. If a proposal were
rejected because of some nuance that we could not test for under 6.5,
it would the responsibility of the UM Grants Office. Not something
we want to befall us.
When we called G.g customer support and escalated questions to the
developers, they said they have no plans to test version 6.5.
My question to the group. Is anyone, who will not have the S2S
version ready soon, currently trying Terminal Service or other form
of server based (citrix) emulator to allow a simple, mass solution to
Mac users wanting to access Grants.gov? I would very much like to
learn of your experience. Does this not sound like a reasonable and
cheap solution for the Mac dilemma? Why won't Grants.gov validate
this option?
Let me mention another issue with Grants.gov that we discovered in
this processs. There is no demo/test site to try and use the
application before a live submission is required. FASTLANE had a
demo site for many years to aid in the transition of moving from
paper to electronic submissions. Did I miss this, somewhere? If it
is not there, this is a huge problem with the process. If they are
going to be bringing 5,000 plus RO1's into the system in October, we
should be able to train people on how to use the system.
Looking forward to any thoughts on this. Thanks much.
Bob
___________________________________
Robert Beattie
Managing Senior Project Representative
Division of Research Development and Administration
University of Michigan
3003 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1274
office: 734 936-1283 mobile: 734 717-6281
xxxxxx@umich.edu
On Aug 25, 2005, at 5:22 PM, Smiley, Rick wrote:
This note doesn’t really do justice to the announcement. The NIH, it
appears to me, has announced it will simultaneously transition to the
424 and to Grants.gov exclusively in the next 13 months!
“NIH will transition to the SF424 (R&R) form and electronic
submission through Grants.gov by individual research program/funding
mechanism. Funding Opportunity Announcements (also known as Request-
for-Applications and Program Announcements) will be issued in the NIH
Guide and posted in Grants.gov as mechanisms are transitioned. The
transition by mechanism will include all active Funding Opportunity
Announcements for that program/mechanism. Applications in response to
these announcements will require electronic submission through
Grants.gov.”
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