I don't like to talk about anything before it's ready, but because of all
the conversation of late, I thought I'd mention a project that I've been
working on as part of a NCURA Templates Working Group.

The NCURA Templates Working Group was formed with a goal to
improve the availability and quality of electronic form templates, and
reduce redundancy of effort in creating them. What the group  envisions
is a Research Administration Tool Kit -- a place, on the web, where people
can share ideas that have worked/are working at their institutions.
For example, I have developed Grants Partner, a database that simplifies
the grant proposal effort. Version 1 of Grants Partner is expected to be
available the first part of August. It will be able to print the PHS 398 and
the
basic DOE and NSF forms. It will not include a budget section for any of
these applications. Instead, Grants Partner will be "partnered" with the
excellent multi-agency budget template (MS Excel) created by Jean
Humphries at TEES. Jean is also at work creating a "front end" to this
template to ease the data entry.

Grants Partner is being developed in FileMaker Pro (version 2.1). There
will be a version for both the Mac and the PC. In addition, UCLA has
agreed to pay the licensing fee to distribute Grants Partner free of charge.

Anyone who uses Grants Partner WILL NOT have to purchase FileMaker
Pro since Grants Partner will have its own runtime engine. (Meaning that
unlike all other templates available in Word, Excel, OmniForm, etc., you
don't need to buy software to use it. You will, of course, need Excel for
the multi-agency budget template.)

Anyone who owns a version of FileMaker Pro 2.1 and wants to contribute
layouts for other applications can contact me and we'll fold it into Grants
Partner (my contact information is below). I will be leaving in a few hours
for Chicago (VACATION!!!), but will return to work on Tuesday. (short
vacation...)

Erin B. Lindsay
UCLA Sponsored Research
xxxxxx@ocga.ucla.edu
(310) 825-2205