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GMAS Release 1_43

December 16, 2016

Executive Summary

The December 2016 Grants Management Application Suite (GMAS) release will be available to users on Monday, December 19, 2016. This regularly scheduled release is the fifth official release in support of the GMAS 2.0 project. This release represents significant user-facing enhancements, particularly around the priority of increasing the number of sponsored accounts with corresponding budgets in the General Ledger (GL). 

Highlighted features of this release:

GL Budgets in GMAS:

The GMAS 2.0 Business Steering Committee along with the Project Leadership team prioritized the increase of budgets in the GL for sponsored awards. Having budgets for sponsored awards are important for a variety of reasons, including: 

  • Assists with the increased requirements from sponsors to report budget to expenditure variances
  • Helps to proactively manage/identify the need for re-budget requests to sponsor
  • Reduces compliance requests of object codes that are budgeted
  • Helps to minimize overexpenditures
  • Aligns sponsored records (budget) with data in GMAS and the GL
  • Allows better use of the Oracle Business Intelligence Grants Dashboards and the PI Dashboard

Converted and Retired Screens:

In keeping with the GMAS 2.0 project objectives, this release also delivers a number of screens and systems emails that have been converted to the GMAS look-and-feel and technology. The GMAS homepage and the Confirm Research Team screens have been converted. Numerous screens have been retired in support of the work (described above) relating to the entry of sponsored budgets. Several emails have also been converted to the new look-and-feels; the converted emails have the added functionality of being able to be modified without a systems release. The conversion of the Action Memo email, along with a few others, now means that all faculty-facing GMAS notification emails have been converted to the new GMAS templates. 

GMAS will be unavailable to users from 6:00PM EST on Friday, December 16, 2016 through the start of business at 9:00AM EST on Monday, December 19, 2016. 

The next GMAS release is tentatively scheduled for the spring 2017 timeframe. Proposed features for that release include conversion of the request guided steps for initial proposals. As one of HUIT's goals, GMAS will also be moving to the Cloud. For more information about this goal and others, please visit this website.  Additional enhancements and bug fixes will also be part of the spring release. More information to come!

Additional Release Details

Details regarding this release will be published in eNews; job aids supporting the new screens and features will be posted to the User Resources section of the GMAS website. To receive the latest GMAS news, subscribe to our blog. Visit this page to see more information regarding the GMAS 2.0 project. 

Please contact the GMAS help desk (email: contactgmas@harvard.edu, phone: 6-2001) with any questions or requests for assistance.

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Release Notes

Sending GL budgets through GMAS

Based on user feedback, users now have the ability to submit new and updated GL budgets through GMAS.

As part of this enhancement, the following changes have been made to existing GMAS screens:

  • Created a new "Work in Process" panel on the segment home page which will list any active accounts where the allocations do not match the current GL budget
  • Created a new "Work in Process" panel on the segment home page for GL budgets that were submitted through GMAS and failed validation 
  • Created a new notification email that will be sent to the user who submitted a GL budget through GMAS that failed validation
  • Renamed the "Accounts" label in the left navigation on the segment home screen to display "Accounts" and "Edit GL budgets" for ease of navigation
  • Added buttons on the accounts list page for active accounts which will allow users to access the "Edit GL budget" screen.
  • Added a new security group to allow users to edit the gl budget for the following roles:
    • Central Administrator
    • Central Financial Administrator
    • Principal Investigator
    • Mentor
    • Department Administrator
    • Lab administrator
    • Interfaculty Involvement PI
    • Interfaculty Involvement Department Administrator

Some of the functionality of the new Edit GL budget screen includes:

  • Auto calculation of fringe and overhead with the ability to manually override
  • Ability to choose the FY for fringe calculations or the account dates 
  • Auto-complete object code look-up (can search by category, object code number, or object code description)
  • Automatic addition of fringe object codes based on salary object codes selected
  • Ability to delete line items not yet sent to the GL
  • Standard structure of object code categories after save or after the GL budget reconciles
  • Clear indication of the amount left to be allocated to the GL budget before it can be sent to the GL (difference between total new budget amount and account allocation)

Converted screens

  • GMAS Homepage
  • Confirm Research Team

Other fixes and improvements

  • Added the "Interest last updated" date to the Effective column on the approval list screen for the COI approval
  • Added search functionality to the global header so that users do not have to navigate back to the GMAS homepage to search for another project
  • Updated the Reporting link in GMAS to route to OBI instead of CREW
  • Added External links to the GMAS header (links to other sponsored related applications)
  • Changed the Division for tub 275 to read "Harvard Chan Sch Public Health" on grants.gov applications
  • Added a space between "Fund" and the fund number in the summary section of a segment home so that double clicking the fund number will only copy the six digits and not the word "Fund"
  • Renamed the "Account settings" option in the person menu in the global header to read "Profile" for clarity. Also replaced the gear icon with a person icon.
  • Converted the following emails to the new template
    • Segment revisions (Action Memos) notifications
    • Confirm research team notifications (4 emails)
    • fCOI approval notifications(2 emails)
    • Signatures required notifications

Bug fixes

  • Corrected the way the "Unallocated Subagreement Amount" section of a segment revision functions for Grants.gov projects so that funds can always be properly held aside
  • Removed the critical dependency GMAS had on the fCOI application to prevent crashes on screens that have person information when the fCOI application is down
  • Fixed an issue where subagreements were reverting to "Pending sponsor approval" from Declined" status after a segment revision
  • Fixed links from PI Dashboard that were not routing properly to the new GMAS screens
  • GMAS now properly routes individuals to the correct security error message when they do not have security to complete a request, which allows navigation back to the GMAS homepage instead of kicking the user out 
  • Fixed an issue where the security error had additional unnecessary information 
  • Removed the "Associated notice information" panel from Carryforward action memos
  • Relocated the pencil icon to edit the project summary to be closer to the label
  • Fixed an issue where users would receive an error when changing the cost sharing approval question from "yes" to "no"
  • Fixed the Show/Hide toggle on the segment documents page to correctly display the state when a user refreshes the screen
  • Fixed person search when "Return only GMAS users" flag is set to exclude individuals whose peoplesoft flag is set to "no"
  • Removed extra scroll bars from the "wait" indicator in Firefox
  • Corrected the sorting on Administrative team screens to sort by last name
  • Corrected the sorting on the approval list to sort by last name
  • Fixed an issue where some users would get "format not recognized" errors when uploading subaward budgets for system to system

Retirement

  • Budget upload screens (17 screens)
  • Request budget upload screens (4 screens)

Interfaces

  • Created new job to pull fringe rates mapping and annual rates for the new Edit GL budget screen
  • Fixed the SAA Interface for the year-end cross-over logic when the rate change is for July 1

Administrative module

  • Added functionality for the GMAS team to change the News content from the admin module

Technical

  • Removed Jackrabbit dependency from GMAS code
  • Upgraded PrimeFaces to version 6.0
  • Improved user activity tracking for new pages

 

January 12, 2017
Stabilization release 1_43_02 addressed the following bugs:

GL Budget fixes:

  • Prevent the back button from possibly creating double submissions
  • Fix an error some users were getting when submitting budgets
  • Fix an issue that could cause “auto/manual” preference to work incorrectly for pre-existing budgets
     

Other fixes and changes:

  • Fix errors on signature todos
  • Add new organizations to the PHS+ list (for COI approvals)
  • Change person search lookup to show all results (instead of just 5)

February 16, 2017
Stabilization release 1_43_03 addressed the following:

Grants.gov

Grants.gov is converting from HTTP to HTTPS for submissions. As per their website, Grants.gov is working to strengthen the security of its website and web services to provide service only through secure connections (http://www.grants.gov/vi/web/grants/outreach/grants-gov-notices.html).

As a result GMAS made a few tweaks to allow for both HTTP and HTTPS system to system submissions during this transition and to prepare for the April 15, 2017 deadline, when all Grants.gov submissions must be thorough HTTPS.

 

 

See also: Release Notes