Things to Know
- Information on this page is subject to change. This page was last updated December 10, 2024.
- Features below are not functional in the application until UAT release date.
- You may need to clear your cache in order to enable changes in this release.
Release Summary
Here's a quick overview of the updates in this release:
- Customizable Roles: Admins can rename, reorder, and manage research team roles.
- External Researcher Addition: Add external researchers directly within the team object.
- SP Routing Update: Skips invalid routing rules.
- Permission Fixes: Updated note/attachment permissions and deletions. See role definitions.
- Task Tab Enhancements: Filter by status and sort columns. Sort order saved for 24 hours.
- Resolved: General bug fixes
Release Dates and Downtime
Release dates are subject to change. Release date changes will be noted in the Change Log below.
Downtime required: 1 hour
| Environment |
Release Date and Time (times shown in Pacific Standard Time) |
| UAT-SG | |
| UAT-AU | |
| UAT-UK | |
| UAT-CA | |
| UAT-US | |
| Prod-SG | |
| Prod-AU | |
| Prod-UK | |
| Prod-CA | |
| Prod-US |
Change Log:
September 18: New 'Resolved' item added below to be included with this release.
October 11: Added release dates/times and downtime.
October 28: New API item added to release.
December 10: New item added to release regarding unique Task IDs.
Detailed Release Notes
New and Enhanced
- ADDED Dec 10, 2024: All tasks now have a unique ID. Refer to the recent Platform and Admin release notes for additional info.
- ADDED Oct 28, 2024: The SP API has been updated to enable qualified users to edit awards and proposals even when they are in normally read-only statuses. This functionality now mirrors the edit mode capability available in the UI for these users. Learn more about these updates and editing awards and proposals.
- SP System Administrators can now customize research team roles by renaming, reordering, and activating/inactivating them. See Configurable Team Roles for more details.
- The research team object was recently updated to allow external researchers to be added, provided they had a Person profile in the Admin module (April 9, 2024 SP 4.0 Release Notes). A new update now enables the creation of external researchers directly within the research team object, even if they don't exist in the Admin module. This change allows researchers to add team members without needing Admin access. Please note that this workflow does not create a Person profile in the Admin module; it only adds the researcher’s name to the research team object. For more details, see below.
- The SP routing process has been updated to skip any rules in the routing chain that do not have any valid members that can complete them. See below for additional details.
- We made system updates that address permission issues related to adding notes and attachments to records. These updates also clarify which roles have the ability to delete notes and attachments.
- For detailed information on the roles and their permissions, please refer to the article on SP 4.0 User Roles and Definitions.
- See below for more information
- Sponsored Projects Adhoc tasks can now be filtered and viewed by In Progress and On Hold statuses within the Sponsored Projects Task tab. These new status options are available in the Status column and can be used in filters to refine search results. The Sponsored Projects Task tab has also been updated to include sorting options for each column (except for Status) which has a filter. Clicking a column header will sort it A-Z or by date in ascending order; clicking again will sort it Z-A or by date in descending order. The selected sort order will be preserved for 24 hours.
Resolved
Issue: When members of the research team listed on an SP record were marked Inactive in the Admin module, the SP-OI object search excluded their research disclosure information.
Resolution: The search has been updated to retrieve disclosure information for all research team members, regardless of their Active or Inactive status.
Issue: The recently enhanced Task attachment list was always displayed as collapsed, even when attachments were present, causing confusion for users who had to manually expand the list to check for attachments.
Resolution: By default, the Task attachment list will now automatically be displayed as:
- Expanded if attachments are linked
- Collapsed if no attachments are linked to the record
Issue: When the SP-S2S object had a linked S2S record and the SP record was switched to edit mode, the SP-S2S object remained non-editable, preventing the unlinking of the S2S record.
Resolution: Now, when a record is in edit mode, users with the appropriate permissions to unlink the S2S Proposal on the SP-S2S object will see the "X" on the integration card, as expected.
Issue: There was a discrepancy between the permissions for creating an award modification and editing the draft modification.
Resolution: Permissions have been aligned so that any user who can create a modification can also edit the form fields for the draft modification.
Issue: The in-app reports and dashboards were displaying duplicate values in the Research Team columns. This was due to blank external associations being saved, resulting in each column (such as Research Team Name and Research Team Role) showing two entries: one for the actual association and another for the blank external association.
Resolution: We updated the system to prevent blank external association values from being saved, which eliminates the duplication in the report and dashboard columns.
Issue: When a form object had a short label containing square brackets " [] ", it caused a problem in the in-app reports, resulting in all rows displaying the values from a single record.
Resolution: We updated the in-app reports to correctly handle short labels with square brackets. Now, the data is displayed accurately for each record as expected.
Issue: In the modals for creating a proposal or award from an existing one, searches by project number or proposal/award number did not handle the "-" character correctly. Additionally, in the award modal, search results were not sorted in a useful manner.
Resolution: We fixed the search functionality to properly handle the "-" character. In the award modal, we also improved the sorting of results by using a relevance score instead of just the creation date, ensuring that the most relevant results appear at the top.
Added September 18
Issue: Sometimes when making changes to a draft modification and changing the version quickly, the draft modification's values would be cleared or overwritten with the previous version's data.
Resolution: Updated the system to keep track of each version's data in a more robust way to avoid these quick timing issues.
Additional Details: Permissions for Notes and Attachments
In addition to the role based permissions, there are also other cases where a user might be given the permission to add/edit/delete notes and add/delete attachments on a record, including the following:
For Proposals
- Being listed as a research team member
- Being the user that created the proposal
- Being given Edit access to the proposal via the Access tab
- Being a member of team review/notification rule triggered on the proposal
For Awards
- Being listed as a research team member
- Being a member of team review/notification rule triggered on the award
For example, if a user only has the SP User role in the Admin module, they will not be able to add notes or attachments to a record. However, if that same user is listed as a research team member on a record, they will have the ability to add notes or attachments to a record.
Users who are granted the ability to add, edit, or delete notes and attachments outside of standard role-based permissions will only have the ability to edit or delete their own items.
General Guidance
Users with the SP System Administrator or SP Award/Proposal Administrator role on a record can edit or delete any note in the Notes tab, regardless of who added it. They can also delete any attachment in the Attachments tab, regardless of the original uploader. Other users, without these Administrator roles, can only edit or delete the notes they added and can only delete attachments they personally uploaded.
Additional Details: Updated SP Routing Process
The SP routing process has been updated to skip any rules in the routing chain that do not have any valid members that can complete them. No valid members can be defined as one of the following:
- Zero members
- Only inactive members
- Only external members with no user account (no ability to log in and complete a review) Please note: This includes both external researchers who are listed in the Admin module and those who are not.
When a rule is in this situation, the Status column will update to display "Skipped”, and the routing process will move on to the next rule. This behavior applies to all rule types that require a review action (Certification, Team Review Rule, Unit Review Rule, Research Team Review Rule). However, there is one exception to this with the Certification rule. If the Certification rule is triggered by an external research team member or an inactive person before the record is routed, that rule is simply not added to the Routing tab. However, if an active internal person triggers a Certification rule and is later made inactive before the Certification rule becomes active in the routing chain, then when that rule becomes active, the Certification row in the Routing chain will change its status to "Skipped."
As part of these changes, the routing process now re-evaluates the applicable members when a rule becomes active and updates the display in the Routing tab's Members column accordingly. This means that if users were added or removed from a team, or if their reviewer roles changed after the record was routed, the Routing tab will only show the members who can complete the rule when it becomes active.
If changes are made after the rule becomes active, the system won't adjust because the review tasks will have already been created.
One additional note: similar to "Not Completed" rules, any rows with a status of "Skipped" will be removed from the Routing tab if the record is returned to an editable status and a new routing round is initiated.
Additional Details: Research Team Object Updates
New External Researchers form object configuration:
A new setting in the research team object form builder now allows you to enable or disable the creation of new external researchers. If "Allow External Researchers" is selected, the "Allow creation of new external researchers" option will appear. For more details, see Building Proposals, Awards, and Subawards in Simplified Form Builder.
New External Researchers workflow:
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When "Allow creation of new external researchers" is enabled and the External Association option is selected, the Name field will search for people with external associations in the Admin module.
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To add a new external researcher without an Admin module profile, select "Add a new external team member."
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This will open fields for entering the first, middle, and last name of the new researcher. Only the first and last names are required if the research team object is set as mandatory.
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The name fields accept any text without validation or checks against the Admin module.
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After entering the name, the role dropdown functions as it does for other team members.
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Since the new researcher isn’t in the Admin module, the External Association dropdown becomes a standard external organization finder, allowing selection from existing organizations in the Admin module.
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Selecting "Back to person search" clears all fields and returns to the initial search state.
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Re-selecting "Add a new external team member" will require re-entering all previously entered information.
Impacts to Reporting and Dashboards:
- New external researchers will appear in Research Team columns across in-app reports, downloadable CSVs, and Dashboards, just like those in the Admin module.
- The only difference is that external researchers not in the Admin module will have an asterisk ( * ) after their name in the Research Team Name column for easy identification.
(Ref ID: 25.01.45 )