Unique Scenarios: Editing Proposals and Awards

Special Access: Editing Records in Read-Only Mode

The following user roles can edit a record while in a normally read-only status:

• SP System Administrators can edit all proposals and awards in any status.
• SP Proposal Editors can edit the proposals that they have access to through this role when in the relevant statuses.
• SP Award Editors can edit awards that they have access to through this role when in the relevant statuses.

Relevant Statuses

Proposals

• Under Review
• Approved
• Submitted to Sponsor
• Under Consideration
• Funded
• Closed (SP System Administrators only)

Awards

• Active
• In Closeout (SP System Administrators only)
• Closed (SP System Administrators only)

The Workflow for Editing

1. When a record is in a relevant status (shown above), applicable users will see Edit and Save buttons to the far-right of the Form tab.

2. Select Edit and make desired updates in the Form field. Save changes, or Cancel to discard changes, and return to read-only mode.
3. Once changes are saved, the History tab will display a record that indicates:
   • A change was made
   • The status of the Form when the change occurred 
   • The name of the user who made the change

Please note: Specific form objects that were changed and their old/new values will not be specified.

Best Practices and Limitations

• This functionality can be useful when minor form changes are necessary to update after the record has been transitioned to a read-only status.
• If significant updates or re-routing are needed on a record, we recommend returning the record to an editable status and re-routing rather than editing with this functionality.
• Only one user can have the record in edit mode at a time. This only applies to edit mode. Multiple users can still edit records simultaneously while the record is in an editable status. See below for additional information.
• Once a record has been put into edit mode by a user, any other user that loads the record that would otherwise be able to put it in edit mode will see the Edit and Save buttons disabled on the record. There will also be a tooltip when hovering over the disabled Edit button informing the user that this record is already in Edit mode.
• Once the record returns to read-only mode, other users will see the Edit button become enabled upon reloading the record
• At this time, the functionality only allows editing of the latest version of an award. If there is an award with several modifications, only the active version can be edited. When an award is in edit mode, users will no longer have the ability to view previous award versions or create modifications.
• At this time, the functionality does not allow users with only the SP Award Editor role to create award modifications. A user would still need SP Award Administrator or SP System Administrator roles to do that.

Edit Mode Form Warnings

While in edit mode, warning messages will display in the following scenarios:

• User has been inactive for 8 minutes. The message will indicate that edit mode will timeout (discarding unsaved changes) in 2 minutes with continued inactivity.
• User tries to navigate away from the Form tab or close the browser tab. The message will indicate that navigating away from the page will result in discarding changes made.
• A form object is modified that affects the routing rules. Please note: The impact is mainly for proposals in the Under Review status since any rules that haven't been made active yet could potentially be affected.
• A Unit Finder object or the Research Team object Internal Association fields are modified, as those objects can impact which users have access to the record through unit-assignable roles.
• Two users load the same record that is in read-only mode, both users will see the Edit button enabled. If one user enables edit mode, the second user will still see the Edit button enabled (until that user refreshes the page). If the second user tries to select the Edit button, that user will see a warning that another user put the record into edit mode, at which point the Edit button will become disabled.
• If a user has a record in edit mode, but another user manually transitions the record to either an editable status or one where the original user would no longer be able to edit the record, the user that has the record in edit mode will receive a warning that the record's status has been changed and their updates have been discarded upon trying to make an additional change.

Simultaneous Editing by Multiple Users

Use cases and expected behavior when multiple users are editing the same record simultaneously.

Use case #1:

Multiple users are editing different portions of a record at the same time.

Expected behavior: In this case, when an auto-save occurs, it will save the value entered by the current user, and also pull in any changes to different form objects that may have occurred since the last form save.

Use case #2:

Multiple users are editing the same portions of a record at the same time.

Expected behavior: In this case, if different users have entered different values for the same field, the first value will be saved, and a warning will be displayed to the user(s) whose changes were not saved, indicating which form object is impacted.