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| Grants
Online Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) |
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| Visit
this site often to review our Frequently
Asked Questions List. The last update was November 28, 2007.
Simply click on the question which most closely matches your concern. It will take
you to the desired answer. To view additional questions, click the link below the answer
to navigate back to the top. To ask a question not found
on this page, email: GrantsOnline.QandA@noaa.gov |
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| Grants Online
Access |
How
can I access Grants Online?
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| General Implementation
and Security |
Do we have to login and logout of Grants
Online to do work?
I’m concerned that the proposals received
by my office or awards to my organization will be able to be seen by too many people.
Who can access what kind of information in the system?
How do we handle Pre-Applications?
Since we are not currently using the Proposal Review module
in Grants Online, how should reviews be done?
What do I do if Grants Online fails to provide a critical
business function that is done in my Program Office?
What happens when there is a policy or business
process change in the PO office? To whom do we submit change
requests?
Who is on the Change Control Board (CCB) and
what is its role?
What type of IT support does this system
have?
Is there a file size storage limit within
Grants.gov and/or Grants Online?
At what juncture is the scanner used? What is it used for?
What type of output is required?
How do you set up the routing for an interagency
Request For Applications (RFA)? |
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| For Federal Program Officers - Grants.gov and Receiving
Proposals |
What
are the ways to receive proposals through the system into my NOAA Program Office?
Who inputs the data?
What do I do if I can’t read the documents submitted
in the Grants.gov applications?
Is
each program office responsible for informing grantees/applicants
(groups, organizations and individuals) about the Grants.gov
registration process?
What kind of support does Grants.gov offer?
Is there Grants.gov outreach?
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| For Grantees - Grants.gov, Grants Online and ASAP
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As a NOAA grant recipient what actions do I peform through
Grants.gov and which do I perform in Grants Online?
As a NOAA grant recipient do I also use Grants Online for payments, or
do I still use ASAP?
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| Training Information
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Will
there be "refresher" training conducted?
Are there training manuals?
Is there Instructor-led training for Grantees?
What type of continual training will be
offered to Regional Offices? |
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| Grants Online
Access |
How
do I access Grants Online?
Using Internet Explorer, enter the following URL in your
address bar: https://grantsonline.rdc.noaa.gov.
You must have a valid userid and password in order to access
the system. NOAA employees, please contact your GMAC representative if you do not
currently have a Grants Online userid. Contact the Grants Online HelpDesk if your
account is locked. Grantee access is granted only after an award has been made. The Authorized Representative who signed the SF-242 cover page of the applicaton package will be notified via email when their award is ready for review and acceptance via the Grants Online system. Access instructions are given in the email notification. For locked accounts, grantee users should contact their organization's Grants Online Recipient Administrator for assistance. They may also contact the Grants Online Help Desk.
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| General Implementation
and Security |
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Do we have to login and logout of Grants Online
to do work?
Yes. Grants Online has a sophisticated security scheme,
which provides permissions and access based on the login
ID of the user. The amount of time that a user remains
logged in without taking any action will be limited
to 60 minutes.
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I’m concerned that
the proposals received by my office or awards to my
organization will be able to
be seen by too many people. Who can access what kind
of information in the system?
In addition to requiring user authentication through
usernames and passwords, Grants Online uses a combination
of role-based and office-based access.
A Program Officer will be able to view any applications
that are submitted to their designated Program Office,
but will not have default access to view applications
from other Program Offices. There are some Program Officers
who have a need to view applications in other Program
Offices. Grants Online allows flexibility for internal
access, e.g. the Program Office Administrator for Coastal
Ocean Programs (COP) can allow a Sea Grant Program Officer
to view the applications submitted to the COP office.
Grantees can only access their own organizations' awards. Authorized
Representatives and Business/Financial Representatives can view all of the
awards for their organization. Additionally, Grantees can set up their PIs and General Users to be able to
view only the specific awards to which they will need access.
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to Top]
How do we handle Pre-Applications?
OMB directives prohibit
agency back-end systems such as Grants Online from communicating
directly with applicants. That is the sole responsibility
of Grants.gov. In order to get pre-applications into
the system, the Program Office must either have the applicants use
the SF-424 and an authorized official submit the pre-applications
through Grants.gov, or must accept the pre-applications outside of Grants.gov
(paper, email, etc.),
and scan them into the system (if paper) to associate them with
the full applications received through Grants.gov.
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to Top]
Since we are not currently using the Proposal Review module
in Grants Online, how should reviews be done?
There are plans for a future revision of the Review Module
within Grants Online. In the meantime, reviews are being
conducted outside of the system. For
competitive review events, there is a workaround document
available for download from the Training Page. As a
reminder, reviews and proposals for each application
must be attached within Grants Online. It is suggested
to attach the reviews and comments to the application
itself during the "Conduct Negotiations" phase
of the application.
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to Top]
What do I do if Grants Online
fails to provide a critical business function that is
done in my Program Office?
The Grants Online Program Management Office expended a great
deal of time
and effort before and during system development to identify
the requirements and business processes that are essential
for all NOAA program offices. In the event you feel
a business process has been overlooked, you will be
able to submit enhancement requests for review by the
Change Control Board. To enter a Change Control Board
request, NOAA users should contact your GMAC representative.
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What happens when there is
a policy or business process change in my Program Office?
To whom do we submit change requests?
See answer above. Grants Online was built to be a flexible system. The
conceivable changes that are sometimes made to the announcement
and review process, including requirements for new kinds
of application documents, etc. can already be handled
by the system. Internal routing flexibility for Request
For Application (RFA) approvals and Procurement Requests has also
been built into the system.
Grants Online was not built to enforce a particular
way of doing business, rather as a way to enhance the
way we do business. If a Program Office has a business
rule requiring a function be done in a particular way,
Grants Online will not enforce that business rule, nor
will Grants Online prohibit that business rule from
being implemented by the Program Office.
Grants Online is a NOAA-wide system. As such, it cannot
be customized to provide for enforcement of specific
processing that may be done differently by different
Program Offices. Any changes affecting all NOAA Program
Offices will be considered as enhancement requests by
the Change Control Board (CCB).
Grants
Online is also built to the standards imposed by both
law and the DOC Interim Grants Manual. Laws change and
so will the DOC manual. Grants Online will endeavor
to keep up with these changes as they occur.
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Who is on the Change Control Board (CCB) and
what is its role?
The Change Control Board (CCB) is comprised of the Grants Online Project
Manager, Grants Online Technical Leads, two representatives from each Line
Office, and two representatives from GMD. The CCB meetings are
facilitated by the Grants Online Program Managment Office (PMO) are also attended
by Grants Online contractors. On an as needed basis,
additional users, including recipients, may be invited to particular CCB meetings to address
specific concerns.
The role of the CCB is to prioritize Help Desk tickets that have been
logged as enhancement System Change Requests. Tickets which have been identified
as defects are not reviewed by the CCB but are prioritized by the Grants Online PMO
to be addressed in the monthly releases. Defects have a higher priority and will be
addressed in the monthly releases ahead of enhancement requests. "Maintenance" enhancements - those
that are necessitated by internal or external policy changes, or which implement common
business best practices - will be prioritized after defects.
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What type of IT support does
this system have?
The Grants Online hardware is physically located at
the NOAA Information Technology Center (ITC) in Largo,
Maryland. The ITC also houses approximately 38 other
NOAA-wide administrative and financial systems including CBS. The
ITC has a generator in addition to battery backup
to provide more robust failover capability in the event
of a power outage. There are 6 complete Unix computer
systems (10 CPUs for production processing) dedicated
to Grants Online, which include redundant storage and
failover capability. NOAA has a hardware/software maintenance
contract with the development contractors covering a period of two
years after final system delivery.
The Grants Online
Help Desk is available to provide support for all Grants
Online users. This dedicated Helpdesk currently operates Monday
through Friday from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm EST, with the exception
of Federal Holidays. To contact the Grants Online Help Desk please call
301.444.2112 or toll free at
1.877.662.2478, Email inquiries can be sent to GrantsOnline.Helpdesk@noaa.gov.
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Is there a file size storage
limit within Grants.gov and/or Grants Online?
Grants.gov: There is no limit on file size for submission
to Grants.gov. However, at times applicants submitting
large file have difficulty maintaining dial-up connections.
For this reason, we recommend using a zip file for applications
submittal.
Grants Online: There is no file size limit for Grants
Online. The Grants Online team has estimated that the
average size of an application, including all attached
files will be 2 MB. This estimate is based on several
previously received applications. Most applications
will be smaller in size, but some will be larger. We
also accounted for the Sea Grant omnibus applications,
which will be approximately 2 GB in size. Grants Online
purchased enough storage to last 5 years based on this
estimate, combined with an expected growth rate in applications
of 10% per year.
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At what juncture is the scanner
used? What is it used for? What type of output is required?
Grants Management Division (GMD)no longer
accepts paper documents. Anything that would normally be sent
to GMD will require scanning and insertion into the
appropriate place in Grants Online for processing by
GMD. So, if Program Offices continue to receive paper
applications, they will need to scan the entire paper
application for uploading to Grants Online plus manually
data enter a few key fields. The same is true for progress
reports and award action requests. Grants Online has workflow processes for maintaining
internal documents like Procurement Requests, NEPA documents, PO
Checklists, and other documents that are part of the
grants file. Items which
are not scannable (e.g. a fish carcass in formaldehyde)
will need to be maintained in the Program Office, with
a reference to its location in Grants Online.
In order to get a paper application into Grants Online,
you must scan the application into an appropriate set
of Public Document Format (PDF) files. One file for
each standard form, e.g. the SF424 and SF424A would
be two files, one file for the project description,
one file for the budget detail, and any additional files
as appropriate. The PDF files will be bitmap files in
order to maintain the legal structure of the original
document. Also, in order to get a multi-page project
description into a PDF document, you need scanner software
that allows the scanning of multiple sheets into a single
multi-page PDF file. It would be very helpful to have
a scanner with a document feeder.
Because multi-page scanned PDF bitmap files will be
very large in size and will be extremely difficult for
reviewers with dial-up connections to retrieve, Program
Officers should strongly encourage their applicants
to submit electronic applications through Grants.gov.
Applications submitted electronically will be stored
in Grants Online in a format that can be accessed more
easily than scanned paper documents.
Purchasing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software
with a scanner is not recommended. Grants Online does
not have functionality to extract data from a converted
character document, so there is no advantage to using
OCR features.
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How do you
set up the routing for an interagency Request For Applications
(RFA)?
There are two ways that this can be done. First,
the interagency contacts could be made users of Grants
Online so that they can be included in the workflow for
the routing of documents within the system. Second,
the RFA creator can generate the Federal Funding Opportunity
and/or Federal Register Notice documents, save them
to their local system and route them outside of Grants
Online.
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| For Federal Program Officers - Grants.gov and Receiving
Proposals |
What
are the ways to receive proposals through the system into my NOAA Program Office?
Grants Online is designed to automatically retrieve and
distribute proposals from Grants.gov, the government-wide
portal for the receipt of applications. All Program Offices
within NOAA and NOAA applicants should become familiar with Grants.gov. They
have excellent training on their web site. It
is the responsibility of the Program Offices to strongly
encourage their applicants to begin submitting through
Grants.gov. Paper proposals submitted to Program Offices
will require Program Office personnel to hand-key information
from the proposal into Grants Online. The Program Office
will also be responsible for scanning the proposals and
uploading the scanned documents to Grants Online. The
NOAA Print Shop on the third floor of SSMC3 is equipped
to provide high-volume scanning service. The Grants Management
Division (GMD) uses Grants Online for all grant processing,
therefore, paper applications are no longer accepted
from Program Offices. Although a smaller paper file will also be maintained,
the electronic record in Grants Online,
including the scanned application, will contain most of the official internal NOAA
grant file for all new awards that are processed after January 2005. The ultimate goal is for new Grant files to become totally electronic.
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to Top]
Who inputs the data?
Grants Online is not just a data storage system. It is
an electronic grants processing and administration system.
Thus, the people who interact with the system to do their
jobs will enter data. These people are Request for Application
(RFA) creators, Federal Program Officers, Procurement Request Authorizing
Officials, Line Office Reviewers, Grants Specialists, Grants Officers,
and others. Program Officers can avoid doing additional
data entry by requiring applicants to submit proposals
through Grants.gov. Additionally, Grantees will input data for Financial and Progress reports as well as for Award Action Requests as needed.
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to Top]
What do I do if I can’t
read the documents submitted in the Grants.gov applications?
Grants.gov is only able to accept PDF, Word, Excel, and
text files. If applicants need to submit graphics or other
types of binary files, they should imbed or convert them
to an acceptable format for upload. This limitation on
file types ensures that Program Officers and reviewers
will be able to read any applications that are submitted.
[Back
to Top]
Is each Program Office responsible
for informing grantees/applicants (groups, organizations
and individuals) about the Grants.gov registration process?
Yes. The NOAA Grants Management Division (GMD) sent
letters to each of the active NOAA recipients as of August 23, 2004
informing them of the need to register with Grants.gov and requesting
that they prepare for submission of future NOAA applications
through Grants.gov. The most recent NOAA Omnibus Federal
Register Notice (FRN) states that "...you will be
able to access, download and submit electronic grant applications
for NOAA Programs in this announcement at http://www.grants.gov."
The FRN also provides a short overview of Grants.gov and
the registration process. GMD has conducted outreach activities
that discuss Grants.gov and Grants Online with the
recipient community since FY 2005. However, GMD and the Grants
Online team cannot do this alone. There will be many in
the applicant/recipient community who will not be reached
by these efforts. The Program Offices are the front-line
interface to applicants and recipients. It is primarily
the responsibility of Program Office personnel to continue
to expand outreach to this community. The message that
the paper application process will soon be a thing of
the past needs to be delivered.
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to Top]
What kind of support does Grants.gov
offer?
Grants.gov has extensive online tutorials, an excellent
Users Guide, an informative FAQ, and a responsive help
desk. NOAA was the first agency to receive an electronic
proposal from Grants.gov and currently receives over 90% of its applications directly from Grants.gov. The feedback on Grants.gov assistance
has been very positive, so we encourage you to both use
these available resources as well as promote them to your
applicant community.
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to Top]
Is there Grants.gov outreach?
Grants.gov primarily depends on the 26 Federal agencies
that receive electronic applications through Grants.gov
to reach out to the community. A Grants.gov power point
presentation with lots of useful information is available
on the “Presentations” page of this website.
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| For Grantees - Grants.gov, Grants Online and ASAP |
As a NOAA grant recipient what actions do I perfom through
Grants.gov and which do I perfom in Grants Online?
Grants.gov is used to find and apply for funding opportunities. The "Pure-Edge" software
is only required for submitting proprosals to Grants.gov. Proposals submitted for
NOAA by the posted deadline will be automatically moved from Grants.gov into NOAA's Grants Online "back-end" grants system.
NOAA's internal grants processing is done in the Grants Online system. Once an award is made,
recipients are given access to Grants Online to accept and manage their award, including submission
of Progress and Financial reports as well as submission of any post award action requests. Grants
Online is purely web-based and does not require the use of any additional plug-ins. The preferred browser for Grants Online is Internet Explorer.
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to Top]
As a NOAA grant recipient do I also use Grants Online for payments, or do
I still use ASAP?
Grants Online does not replace any of the fuctionality in the Treasury Department's ASAP
system. You will still need to access ASAP to drawdown your grant funds. However, submission of SF-270 forms requesting
non-ASAP payments can and should be made via Grants Online.
Since there is no system-to-system interface between Grants Online and ASAP, if an extension is made
to a NOAA award, the Grants Online workflow will send a task to the appropriate NOAA staff to extend the award in ASAP
also. The award extension in ASAP is an action that happens outside of the Grants Online system.
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| Training Information |
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Will
there be "Refresher" training conducted?
Yes, refresher training sessions for NOAA users are currently being scheduled
approximately once each quarter. NOAA users should contact their GMAC
representative if they wish to attend one of these classes. Additionally, periodic User Group meetings and/or Power Point presentations
will provide guidance on system changes implemented in each release. Check the
Advisory page within Grants Online or the "What's New" page of this website for updates on User Group meeting
dates and topics. Training information will also
be posted on the "Training" pages of this website.
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to Top]
Are there
training manuals?
User manuals and process maps are located on the "Training" pages. The user manuals and process maps
will be updated as needed to stay current with system functionality.
When necessary to address more immediate training needs on specific issues,
Quick Reference Guides will be developed and posted on the "Training" pages with an advisory posted on Grants Online.
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to Top]
Is there Instructor-led training for Grantees?
Grants Online mini trainings sessions for Grantees are held at the NOAA Grants Management conferences usually held on an annual basis. Check the "Training" pages of this website or contact your NOAA Grants Specialist for information on upcoming conferences. Additionally, some Program Offices include Grantee training sessions at their Program-specific conferences and workshops. Occasionally Program Offices will arrange for specific Grants Online training sessions to be held for their grant recipients. Grantees should contact their Federal Program Officers to inquire about any upcoming events of this nature.
The Grants Online Progam Mangement Office conducts a periodic Grantee Conference Call approximately every 5-6 weeks to provide an additional forum for Grantees to ask questions about the Grants Online system. Those conference calls are announced via email to the Authorized Representatives at each Grantee organization.
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What type of continual training
will be offered to Regional Offices?
NOAA users at Regional Offices can participate remotely in the
User Group meetings. Additionally Grants Online workshops will be held
during the annual GMD Grants Management conferences. There are
users in many Regional Offices that have received Instructor-led training and can assist other users in their offices. As such, they
are also a good point of contact for local training and guidance.
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National
Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA)
U.S. Department of Commerce
Last Updated:
http://www.noaa.gov
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