For your presentation of the myths, I think you should also include the superstitious behaviors we have all engaged in to try to "solve" the problems. It could be a show and tell - Tibetan bells, submitting while standing on one's head, etc. It could be quite humorous while still making the point. Mary-Ellen Fortini, PhD Development Specialist III Public Health Institute 555 12th Street, 10th Floor Oakland, CA 94607-4046 direct tel: 510.285.5693 main tel: 510.285.5500 fax: 510.285.5501 xxxxxx@phi.org "We're changing the way people think about health..." P Please consider the environment before printing this email -----Original Message----- From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On Behalf Of Robert R Beattie 1 Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 7:01 PM To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Grants.gov problems, was Adobe Acrobat 9 Runtime error Solved (at least for now) Steve discovered the "secret" of Grants.gov submission problems. Most errors are just random. Try one time, and fail. Try another time and succeed. Call the help desk and get told a myth. Monday we got the Myth that you had to use just one version of Adobe for downloading, filling in and submitting. Today one of our staff got the Myth that you can use only Internet Explorer. Earlier on the listserv I read the Myth that you cannot use Adobe 9 for some applications. I am afraid that OMB and agencies think the problems with Grants.gov are just server related -- add more servers -- The Big Burst and problems will be solved. Instead, the biggest problem is in the programming. There are too many false errors. Too many cryptic error messages that lead us to call and jam up the help desk, while they take our names and phone numbers and DUNS numbers and then give us a myth. We often think the help we get works because we close all of our programs and restart our browsers and download a new version of Adobe, or re-do the application and resubmit and it goes in. It would have probably gone in anyway, even with out all that extra work. It's mostly just random. We are submitting the same application multiple times thus clogging the band width and making it _seem_ as though there needs to be more, new servers. We did not have this problem with PureEdge (but lots of others with the forms themselves). Thus the new problems came with Adobe, and it must be, sad to say, with the company that installed the Adobe based system. This concept is reinforced in our minds when we consider that the Adobe system was supposed to be live in April of 2006, but did not come up until November, 2008. Almost none of the 20 some forms management issues that have been brought up are yet addressed. For example, we still cannot print the whole application, and worse, now, only one budget year gets printed. Anyway, being in "Help Desk Hold Land" so long this week has given me too much time to think about all of this. I keep thinking that if OMB wants to fix things, instead of going back in time to the bad old days of "every agency goes it own way" why don't they ever ask us users what we want. I have heard that the current Administration considers Grants.gov to be a Bush initiative, and thus needs to be changed. They are so shortsighted that they do not realize it is an initiative of the Grants Submitting Community. We have been seeking this since the Clinton administration, if not earlier -- remember the Federal Commons that we all wanted? Anyway, please do not get down on the idea of One Form, One Portal, and One System. Do we want to go back to paper submissions, or even emailing them to agencies. Do we want Education's eGrants, the NIJ system, INSPIRES, FedConnet or its evil twin IIPS, or even FastLane unless it lets us keep our data. It is true that we are going through a bad time with the current version of programming with Grants.gov. I hope we can just throw out the bath water, and get a fresh tub. Bob Robert Beattie University of Michigan 734 936-1283 By the way, if any of you have heard any Myths from the help desk, please pass them along to me, directly, xxxxxx@umich.edu I was thinking of doing a poster session at the FDP of these. On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 15:14:42 -0700, "Hunter, Steve :LPH SUP-LRS" <xxxxxx@LHS.ORG> wrote: > Thank you to everyone who responded to my plea for help. Acrobat Pro 9 > still has some compatibility issues apparently. However, I took the same > completed formset to my laptop, and using Reader 9.0 -- that's the Reader > 9.0 not Acrobat Pro 9.0 -- had NO problem submitting and getting > confirmed. > > This listserv is great! It's wonderful to be able to tap such a source of > expertise! I had lots of prompt responses to my post -- even after 5pm > Eastern. > > Regards, > Steve > > > ====================================================================== > Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including > subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available > via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") > ====================================================================== > ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ====================================================================== ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ======================================================================
