Previous Releases

Je-S System Release – June 2023

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release on 24th of June (version v 07.14.0) The following are the main changes:

Student Details record – starting academic year

You will now be able to update the header information on a Student Details record to show a starting academic year up to 15 years in the past. Previously you could only add a starting academic year 10 years in the past.

Create Account/Check Existing Account page

When creating a new account in Je-S, the wording seen on the ‘Create Account / Check Existing Account page’, has been amended to include an additional reminder not to use a generic / shared email address when creating an account.

Je-S System Release – February 2022

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 19/20 February (version 7.10.0). The following are the main changes:

Additional Disclaimer on Automated emails

The following disclaimer has been added to automated emails to make users aware that UKRI do not expect a response outside of standard business hours:

"UKRI have a number of automated processes, including actions that result from processing Grant Applications, which may result in you receiving emails outside of standard business hours. If this email requires a response we do not expect any responses outside of your normal working hours."

Je-S System Release – November 2021

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 20/21 November (version 7.9.2). The following are the main changes:

Update to Peer Review Invitation Emails

Following the update to the Je-S Terms and Conditions and Reviewer Protocols in August 2021, the Peer Review invite emails have been updated to include the following paragraph:

In line with the UKRI Trusted Research and Innovation Principles (https://www.ukri.org/about-us/policies-standards-and-data/good-research-resource-hub/trusted-research-and-innovation/), information, knowledge and data derived from any Peer Review documentation that you will receive based upon this reviewer request, must not be shared with any other individual or third party.

Customer Account Reports

An issue was identified whereby Grants which had not been funded were being included in the Customer Account reports which include Research Organisations Grant payment details issued in Je-S. This has now been corrected and only Grants funded by UKRI will be included in the Customer Account reports.

Returned Peer Review Documents

An issue was identified where Peer Reviews returned to the Reviewer for amendment were not including any non-lead Component attachments. This has now been fixed so any attachments on the Component will be returned to the Reviewer to view in Je-S.

Je-S users that have an ORCID ID linked to their Je-S account but have not made a consent choice on the ORCID Consent Control page will not be presented with the message.

For further information regarding ORCID Reviewer Recognition please see the following: https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-make-decisions/get-recognition-as-a-ukri- reviewer/

Signature Change On Offer Documents and Additional Funding Notifications

To align with UKRI branding the signature on Offer Documents and Additional Funding Notifications has been updated from ‘RCUK Grants’ to ‘UKRI Funding Services’.

All Offer Documents and Additional Funding Notifications issued via Je-S will now display the following signature on the cover letter:

Yours faithfully Operations

UKRI Funding Services

Je-S System Release – May 2021

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 15/16 May (version 7.8.4). The following are the main changes:

Update to Peer Review Invitation Emails

In November 2020 the new ORCID Reviewer Recognition functionality went live. This enables users with ORCID accounts to allow UKRI to push notifications of participation in peer review to their public ORCID profiles.

In this release the Peer Review invitation emails have been updated to include an additional link with further information regarding this functionality.

The following line has been added to the reviewer invitation emails:

'Further information can be found at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-make-decisions/guidance-for-orcid-reviewer-recognition/ '
 

Update to Je-S Terms and Conditions

The Terms and Conditions for the Je-S web site have been amended. The changes are as follows:

Privacy Section (3.2 Use of Your Personal Information). This change will allow third parties to undertake policy and strategy studies on behalf of UKRI using Personal Data collected via the Je-S system.

Security Section (4.2 Your obligations). Applicants must ensure that they have obtained the permission of any other person named on the proposal form (for example any Co-Investigators or Project Partners) for the provision of their personal information to UKRI and the processing of their data by UKRI for the purpose of assessing the application and management of any funding awarded.

A prompt will be displayed to existing Je-S users when they next log in to notify them of the change to T&Cs and to ask them to confirm that they have noted the change. 

The full Terms and Conditions can be viewed at any time by selecting the ‘Terms and Conditions’ link on the Je-S homepage.

Je-S System Release - December 2020

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 5/6 December 2020 (version 7.6.1). The following are the main changes:

Temporary Je-S Accounts

From 5th December it will no longer be possible to create new Temporary Je-S Accounts.

Previously it was possible to create a Temporary Je-S account to allow a user to view or edit a document in Je-S. This could be done by selecting the “Add Temporary User as Editor” option when administering user access for a particular document. From 5th December this link will no longer be available. Only the “Add editor” option will be available to grant access to users with a Je-S account.

If a user needs access to view or edit a document in Je-S then they will need create a Je-S account and accept the Je-S Terms and Conditions. The “Create an Account” option can be found on the Je-S Homepage.

This change is being made to align with the current UK data protection legislation and the EU General Data Protection Regulations 2016/679 (GDPR). Information on how UKRI use personal data can be found in the UK Research and Innovation Privacy Notice ( https://www.ukri.org/privacy-notice/ ).

Users with existing temporary Je-S accounts will be unaffected by this change.

Update UKRI Councils Logos on Je-S Screens and documents

In the November 2020 Je-S System Release the council logos displayed in the Je-S header and on Je-S created PDFs (documents submitted in Je-S) were updated to reflect the new UKRI council logos.

The following logos are also due to be updated shortly:

Logos on Offer Documents and Additional Funding Notifications

The logos displayed on Offer Documents and Additional Funding Notifications will be updated to the new UKRI council logos.

Example Offer Document:

Note, Offer documents and Additional Funding Notifications already issued will continue to display the old logos.

Logos displayed in the Je-S Header when viewing Pre 2005 Documents 

The logos displayed in the Je-S Header for Pre 2005 STFC documents and Pre 2005 NERC documents have been updated. The text part of the new UKRI logos was not clear in the Je-S Header for these documents because the text colour was too similar to the background. The logos have been updated in these particular headers on the Je-S website so that the text is clearly visible.

Je-S System Release - November 2020

Changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 21/22 November (version 7.5.5). The following are the main changes:

ORCID Reviewer Recognition

Je-S users that hold an ORCID account and have added this information to their Je-S account will have the option to allow UKRI to push notifications of their participation in peer review to their public ORCID profile.

The information that will be displayed against the user’s ORCID account will include the source (UKRI) and the year the review was completed but there will be no information pushed to ORCID by UKRI that will allow for the UKRI Proposal(s) reviewed to be identified.

UKRI will only send information to ORCID when a usable review is submitted via Je-S and a funding decision has been made on the Proposal. This information will be sent to ORCID every 2 months. Once review notifications have been pushed to ORCID the user will receive a notification in their ORCID inbox and their primary email address in ORCID.

Example of the Review notification displayed on the ORCID website:

Je-S users can manage whether these notifications are enabled via their Je-S account. If their Je-S account is linked to their ORCID account then an “Orcid Consent Control” page will be displayed in their Je-S account (see screenshot below).

Clicking on this link will show the following page:

By default this page will have the “No” option selected. The Je-S user will need to update this consent to “Yes” and save in order for the notifications to be sent to their ORCID account. This page will show the last time the consent was saved, if the user has ever saved the page. A history of the users consent choice will be saved in the Je-S database.

The consent status when the Je-S Peer Review document is submitted will be used to determine whether the recognition will be sent to their ORCID account.

The Peer Review invitation email will be updated to inform reviewers of this new functionality.

Further guidance on ORCID Reviewer Recognition (including guidance on how to delete this data) can be found in the Je-S Helptext.

For further information on how URKI are using ORCID please see the following: https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-make-decisions/

All personal data provided to UK Research and Innovation in connection to peer review will be processed in accordance with current UK data protection legislation and the EU General Data Protection Regulations 2016/679 (GDPR) where appropriate. Further information on how we use personal data, and how you can exercise your rights as a data subject, can be found in the UK Research and Innovation Privacy Notice (https://www.ukri.org/privacy-notice/).

Updated UKRI Councils Logos on Je-S Screens and documents

The council logos which appear on the Je-S website and documents have been updated to reflect the new UKRI logos.

This is where will you see the new updated logos:

Je-S headers on the Je-S website

The new logos will be displayed in the Je-S header when accessing/updating council documents on the Je-S website. For example, this will be displayed when viewing Proposal documents, Peer Reviews, Offer Acceptances, Grant Maintenance Requests in Je-S.

Example Je-S Header:

Je-S created PDFs submitted in Je-S

All documents submitted in Je-S after the Release weekend will display the revised logo on the completed PDF. This includes completed Proposal Forms, Peer Review Forms and Expenditure Statements submitted via Je-S.   

Example PDF:

Je-S System Release - August 2020

A number of changes to the Je-S System have been implemented as part of the Je-S System release of 15/16 August (version 7.4.1). The following are the main changes:

Data Protection Statement on Je-S PDFs

The data protection statement that appears at the top of PDF documents created in Je-S has been updated in line with the UK data protection legislation and the EU General Data Protection Regulations 2016/679 (GDPR). This statement appears on several documents including completed Proposal Forms, Peer Reviews, Introducer Forms and Expenditure Statements. The relevant Research Council website address displayed in the document header has also been updated to the new UKRI web address.

Note, only documents submitted in Je-S after the release weekend will display the revised data protection statement. Documents that have already been created in Je-S but not yet submitted may still show the old data protection statement if previewed in Je-S, but this will be updated to the new data protection statement on submission.

Below is an example of the new PDF header:

Travel and Subsistence costs

When creating a Proposal in Je-S it will now be possible to enter pence when inputting Travel and Subsistence (T&S) costs. Previously it was only possible to enter whole numbers for this section.

Je-S System Release – August 2019

Je-S Discussion Forum removal

The discussion forum has been removed.

Correct Je-S Helpdesk opening hours

A number of Je-S e-mail templates had the incorrect office hours on them and these have been updated.

Change to Sender of Peer Review e-mails

The e-mail address for the following three automatically generated e-mails has been changed from JeSHelp@je-s.ukri.org to grants@je-s.ukri.org

Reminder to Reviewer to review 

Notification of late reviews to view 

Notification to Reviewer to advise review is no longer required. 

The links within the text of the following automatically generated e-mails have been changed from grants@rcuk.ac.uk to grants@je-s.ukri.org

Peer Review invitation

Notification of late reviews to view

Retire the Je-S Word 97/2000 print option

The Je-S Word 97/2000 print option has been retired.  This option is no longer available in the Document Actions > Print Document function.  Printed outputs can still be created in the following formats: Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Word 2003, Web Page (HTML) and Open Document Text (odt).

Changes since Submission Document Name

The changes since submission document (CSSD), which is produced on resubmission, displayed information that was contradictory to the Je-S history. This has been corrected.

Please contact the Je-S Helpdesk if you require any further information about the System release or if you experience any issues with the Je-S System.

Je-S System Release - November 2017

A number of data changes to the Je-S System will be implemented either as part of the Je-S System release of 18/19 November (version 6.7). The following are the main changes:

Je-S archiving

We reported in the August Release note that attachments on documents in Je-S account for ⅔ of the Je-S database so, to reduce costs and improve efficiency, functionality to archive attachments was planned.

The first part of the change made in August was to enable Je-S to work with an additional database and since then work has been ongoing on implementing an archiving process.

The next stage involves the transfer of documents, which are more than two years old, to the Archive. As there is a very large amount of historic data to be transferred the Je-S System has to be taken down from 4.30 pm on Friday 17^th until 8.00am on Monday 20^th November to enable the transfer to take place. 

The impact to the Je-S Users will be:

Where an attachment has been archived, the attachments page in Je-S will display a ‘view’ link in place of an ‘edit’ link. JeS Users will still be able to view archived attachments but these cannot be edited or submitted.

Where a ‘delete’ link was previously displayed for an attachment, for archived attachments it will only remove the link to the attachment: the attachment itself will remain, hidden, within the Je-S system. (If there is currently no ‘delete’ link, e.g. for submitted documents, there will continue to be no ‘delete’ link.)

The Je-S System Helptext will be updated to reflect this change.

Spelling correction

Correcting a spelling error in the Je-S Pre Award Tracker under the Document Status

Je-S System Release - August 2017

A number of data changes to the Je-S System will be implemented either as part of the Je-S System release of 19 August (version 6.6.1) or between the August and November 2017 releases. The following are the main changes:

ORCID API 2 - this will be delivered 19 August.

Changes to the ORCID Application Programming Interface (API) have required the integration between Je-S and ORCID to be upgraded to be able to use the new version of the ORCID API

On the ORCID website, the permissions requested by Je-S have changed to request permission to update all research activities instead of just updating funding information, as ORCID have withdrawn the latter permission.

Je-S archiving - to be delivered incrementally following the August release.

The Je-S database is now over 800MB and growing at a rate of 100MB every year. Attachments account for ⅔ of the database size so to reduce costs and improve efficiency, functionality to archive attachments will be implemented.

There will be two parts to the change:

•       Changing how Je-S works to enable it to work with an extra database.

•       Implementing an archiving process that will move data from the main Je-S database to an archive database.

The impact to the Je-S Users will be:

Where an attachment has been archived, the attachments page in Je-S will display a ‘view’ link in place of an ‘edit’ link.

Where a ‘delete’ link was previously displayed for an attachment, for archived attachments it will only remove the link to the attachment: the attachment itself will remain, hidden, within the Je-S system. (If there is currently no ‘delete’ link, e.g. for submitted documents, there will continue to be no ‘delete’ link.)  Explanatory text will be added to the attachments page in Je-S: “Attachments added more than one year ago are archived and cannot be changed. If the document has been submitted, attachments can also not be deleted.”

Studentship Schemes added to Je-S

The following studentship schemes have been added to Je-S in 2017:

BBSRC Collaborative Training Partnerships (CTP) 

MRC National Productivity Investment Fund

STFC Data Intensive Science

Please review access in the RO Master Id account to ensure that Studentship Administrators have been given access to add/maintain student details against these Schemes.

Je-S System Release - February 2017

UK SBS Grants Service Delivery move to RCUK

The UK SBS Grants Service Delivery Team has moved and is now under the governance of the RCUK Executive Directorate.

A number of system changes have been implemented to reflect the move.

You will notice that a number of documents have been rebranded to replace “UK SBS” branding with “RCUK Grants” branding. The changes include

·         Email templates

·         Documents (e.g. Offer Document and Additional Funding Notifications)

·         Je-S Helptext

The RCUK Grants Team contact details can be found on the RCUK website at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/contacts/ and personal emails have changed to “name.surname @rcuk.ac.uk” but the Team will still receive any emails which are sent to the UK SBS email addresses.

Phone contact numbers have not been changed.

UK SBS continues to provide technical support for the Je-S System

Research Organisation (RO) Master Account - change to the Document Menu for Standard Proposals

The Standard Proposal link within the Document Menu of the RO Master Account accessed all the proposals created within the RO since September 2005. The number of documents has built over time and because of the large volume of documents some ROs were beginning to experience an error message when trying to access the list.

To manage the volumes, and make retrieving the documents faster, the Standard Proposal list has been split down into five year periods. Links will only be displayed if there are proposals within that time period eg documents created between 1 September 2005 - 31 August 2010.

Security Changes

There are also changes being made which will improve auditing and fraud detection within the System

Deleting Contact Information

For Data Protection Act compliance, Contacts (in the People and Organisation database used by the Je-S System) that have not been used by the Research Councils will be removed as will Contacts whose last use exceeds the RCs Data Retention Policy.   Je-S Users may notice that searches in Je-S will be faster as a consequence.

Je-S System Release - May 2016

ORCID identifiers in Je-S

The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) provides a free registry to obtain a unique digital identifier for researchers and scholars and allows them to manage a record of their research activities.

For researchers, an ORCID identifier supports automated linkages between them and their professional activities to ensure their work is properly recognised. ORCID records hold information such as name, email, organisation and research activities. Individuals control how their data is shared through managing data privacy settings within their ORCID account.

The ORCID identifiers will now be collected in the Je-S System to allow the Research Councils to link and share information across systems more easily

Within the Je-S ‘Account Creation’ and ‘Personal Details’ screen, there will now be the option to allow Je-S users to add their ORCID identifier (and create an identifier if they do not already have one).   This will re-direct the user to the ORCID website where they will be required to give consent for Je-S to access their ORCID identifier, before returning them back to Je-S.

Users creating an Account for the first time will see;

Existing Je-S Users can add an ORCID identifier by updating their Personal Information;

The user will be directed to the ORCID website.

Usability Enhancements to Je-S

UK SBS met with a number of Research Organisations in November to discuss their user experience in Je-S. Whilst major development on the existing Grants systems has now stopped, pending the upgrade of the electronic grants submission service in 2017, a number of simple improvements have been included in this release.

Reconciliation Statements

  Peer Reviews

o   The documents in the ‘Proposal Reviews’ section were only available for 30 days but will now remain for 24 months from the date they were first made available to the RO.  

o   This will apply to new reviews only, reviews already expired will not reappear, and those already visible before the release will expire in 30 days.

Customer Accounts

Customer Accounts can now be sorted in descending order by date, and will display the most recent entries first.

Grant start date validation within studentship details

Research Councils may allow Scottish universities to fund students from 1st September on Training Grants which have a start date of 1st October, however validations in Je-S were preventing an earlier funding start date from being added into the Student Details,

For all organisations with postcodes in Scotland, the Je-S system will now allow an earlier funding start date between the 1^st – 30^th September to be added.

Je-S System Release - February / March 2016

RO Reference Number on Customer Accounts

Research Organisations (ROs) can submit an RO Reference number either when submitting the Start Certificate or using the Grant Maintenance functionality to change the Reference number when the Grant is Active. However updates were not being fed into the RO Reference number field on the Customer Accounts which in most cases meant the field was either blank or showing “Not Known”. This has now been corrected.

ROs should note however that the Reference number changes will only be updated in the Finance system on a weekly basis. If an RO Reference number is changed in the period between an update being made to the Finance system, and the Pay Run data being generated (which can be 8-14 days before the Customer Account is issued), then the new RO Reference number may not be populated on the Customer Account record until the following Pay Run.

Grant Maintenance Functionality: Grant Title Change Request

The Je-S Help text has advised for several months that this request Type should not be used because it had been discovered it did not function as expected. Given that the number of instances is very small it has been removed as an option. Requests for Grant Title changes can now only be made using a Grant Generic Change Type. 

Reconciliation Statements in Status Reporting

The ROs requested that the Reconciliation Statements remain available in Status Reporting for six months instead of the current seven days after all the grant actions have been completed (usually after the Pay Run). This change has been implemented.

Between 24 November and the March 2016 Release MRC grants were not being updated in Status Reporting. The above change will mean that the MRC Reconciliation Statements which were issued during this period will now be available to view in Status Reporting.

Note: the six months period will apply retrospectively to the date it was issued therefore   an MRC grant which was reconciled in December 2015 will be removed from Status Reporting in June 2016.

February Release

Incorrect name displayed in Document details

There were two separate issues:

i)              Expenditure Statements when allocated from Pools – in a small number of instances the Principal Investigator’s name was displayed as Not Set or an unrelated name was inserted instead.

ii)             Emails generated when applicants were sharing update emails during preparation of the proposal- in some cases the Principle Investigator’s name was not inserted in the text

These issues have now been corrected.

Future address pushes

When a Je-S user updated their address with a start date that was in the future, this was not being passed to the Grants System (Siebel). This has now been corrected and Je-S will update Siebel on the date of future-dated address changes.

Je-S System Release - November 2015

Updates to the Facilities List within the Proposal forms

There have been a number of changes to the list of Research Council Facilities available to applicants to add to a proposal submission:

-       ‘JASMIN’ added for BBSRC and NERC schemes – technical assessment attachment will not be required.

-       ‘850MHz Solid State NMR Facility at Warwick’ added for BBSRC, MRC and NERC schemes – technical assessment attachment will not be required.

-       ‘National Service for Dark Fibre’ has been renamed ‘EPSRC National Dark Fibre Infrastructure Service’.

-       ‘Ion Beams at Surrey University’ has been renamed ‘Ion Beam Centre at University of Surrey’.

Closed / Completed Transferred Grants to be removed from Status Reporting

The status of a number of Transferred Grants which had failed to close automatically following final payment have now been updated.  In due course these will no longer appear within Status Reporting.

Je-S System Release - August 2015

A new version of the Je-S System (6.0.6) will be released over the weekend of 22^nd / 23^rd August. The release will also include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Grant Maintenance Functionality - Number of Attachments

The number of supporting documents which can be added as an Attachment Type to a Grant Maintenance request has been restricted to only one because of issues importing the documents into the Research Councils internal Grants System. Therefore, If there are several documents that need to be submitted then users should insert all the supporting documents into a single attachment. Please note that there is a 5MB limit for the attachment.

Submission Survey Issues

Issues raised by Research Organisations during last year’s survey have been addressed. In particular, PhD student records were excluded  if they had been previously surveyed for Masters submission.   This has been corrected for future Surveys.

Change Peer Review Email Address

Following the transfer of responsibilities for the peer review activities in April 2015, the email address references in the peer review emails issued by the Je-S System have been amended from ‘@ssc.rcuk.ac.uk’ to an RCUK email address. The telephone number that used to appear on the Decline to Review screen is no longer in use and the individual Research Council should be contacted instead.

Je-S System Release - November 2014

A new version of the Je-S System (5.21.6) will be released over the weekend of 22 ^nd / 23^rd November. The release will include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Date of Birth GUI text

For new Je-S Users requesting a verified Je-S account (the account level required to be named as an investigator on a research grant), the Date of Birth details are requested for account validation purposes and also for equal opportunites monitoring.

An additional prompt will now be displayed making it clearer to verified level account holders that this data will also be used for equal opportunites monitoring.

For Users requesting a non verified account, there will be no change and the option to choose not to disclose the Date of Birth will still be available.

Ten-day turn around Pro-rata

In the cases where a Research Council (RC) wishes to  offer a Grant to a Research organisation (RO) but will be funding the research staff FTE (Full Time Equivalent)at a different level from originally requested, UK SBS contacts the RO to request the Indirect, Estates costs and/or Infrastructure Technicians be recalculated.

The internal Grants System functionality will remove this manual step and automatically update/pro rata the full time equivalent (FTE) on a proposal. This completely removes the ROs participation in the Ten day  turn around process.

Note:  ROs may have received requests for amendments prior to the Release and these should still be responded to within the permitted time period.

Internet Explorer 11

We reported in the May Release note that work had been carried out to make the Je-S System compatible with IE11. Although the number of issues being reported were reduced following the Release, we still continued to receive reports of incompatibility. Further work has therefore been undertaken and we are hopeful that we have now resolved most of the issues. However if you do experience problems with IE 11 then please let the Je-S Helpdesk know.

Je-S infrastructure upgrade

Whilst not part of this Release, we would like to give you some advance warning that work is currently being undertaken to carry out a number of upgrades to the underlying technologies within Je-S. These upgrades will be at server level only with no functional changes. When the changes take place there will be an impact on the availability of the System. This is going to be in a few months time and more information will be provided when the details are known

Je-S System Release – August 2014

A new version of the Je-S System (5.20.9) will be released on the 26th August 2014. The release will include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Je-S Batch Update Access Set Up

Following feedback received from Research Organisations (ROs), the Pool Administration page currently used by the RO Master Account User to edit a single users access to Studentship Details, will have the ability to select / deselect categories by Council as well as individually. The list of Research Councils and Categories will display in alphabetical order.  

The data entered prior to the Release will be carried forward to the new functionality.  

Expansion of Classifications

There will be additional level 3 classifications and geographical area qualifiers (oceans) to select from when making an application within Je-S or when classifying studentship within the Student Data Portal.  

Je-S System Release – May 2014

A new version of the Je-S System (5.19.9) will be released over the weekend of 24/25 May. The release will include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Changes to Pre Award Tracker

If a Grant is funded outside of the Grant System (Siebel) a new status of ‘Funded Off System’ will now be displayed within the Pre Award Tracker.

Reviewers Comments 

Previously Reviews were available in some circumstances but now they will be shared with the applicant in all scenarios (eg if a proposal was rejected before the Panel meeting the System did not automatically feedback the Reviews). The Reviews may also be shared with the Research Organisation depending on how the scheme is set up by the Research Council.

Note: The reviews will only be available for a period of four weeks. Access for RO staff to view the reviews is set up via the Je-S RO Master Account.

Compliance with ASPA

Within some of the Research Council research proposal forms the following question has now become mandatory;

‘Would the project involve the use of vertebrate animals or other organisms covered by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act’. System validations have been applied to ensure that the section is now completed.

Amendment to the list of Cross-Council Facilities

 Amendments have been made to the Research Council Facilities list available to select within research proposals.

The facility HECToR has been removed and the following facilities have been added;

ARCHER (available for BBSRC, EPSRC, NERC, STFC)

Research Data Facility (RDF) (available for BBSRC, EPSRC, NERC & STFC)

National Wind Tunnel Facility (available for BBSRC & EPSRC).

MONSooN (available for NERC).

Some of these facilities may require a Technical Assessment to be uploaded as an attachment.

BBSRC Final Reports

BBSRC have now aligned with the other Research Councils and will no longer use the Final Report functionality within the Je-S System.

All reports that have not yet been issued to Je-S will be waived. If the report has been issued but not yet submitted then the RO will still need to submit it. Research Organisations may notice that a number of BBSRC Final Reports which are currently displaying in the Status Reporting will disappear after the next BBSRC grants Pay Run.

NERC Rebranding

NERC has changed the design of their logo; the Je-S System now reflects this.

Internet Explorer 11

We endeavour to support the Je-S System on the most commonly used browser and platform combinations used by the research communities. Following the Release the System will be compatible with IE 11. We will continually review the browser and platform combinations of users of the Je-S System and Research Council web sites to ensure that we are able to support the vast majority of the users.

Je-S System Release - February 2014

A new version of the Je-S System (5.18.8) will be released over the weekend of 22/23 February. The release will include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Studentship Data

In order to improve the quality of data we hold, on submission of a Studentship record should any of the below specified criteria match those of another Studentship held for that Research Organisation (RO), a warning message will be displayed advising of potential duplicates.

The warning will ask for confirmation to submit the document to the Submitter Pool. The Student Document ID, Name and Department will be displayed for both Studentships.

In the majority of cases, existing records should be updated rather than creating a new one. Selecting ‘No’ will allow the User to stop the submission process and investigate the possible duplicate(s).

Note: Access to the duplicate record may be restricted if the User has only been set up with Add/Edit or has restricted Approver/Submitter access in the Pool Administration/ Studentship Detail. Users with Batch Update access will only have access if the Studentship is associated with the grant held at the RO ( For example, some students could be funded on a grant held by one RO but are registered at another degree awarding RO).

Removal of MOD Joint Grant Schemes

The Ministry of Defence (MoD)/ Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) section will be removed from the proposal forms for all schemes. The MoD scheme ceased to operate several years ago.

This will apply to all live schemes but will not affect any data previously submitted.

List of Animal Species

The current list of Animal Species which applicants may select from within the Animal Section on the Je-S Proposal Form will now have the addition of “Other Animals”.

Email for Successful Outline Proposals

In addition to the Applicant, ROs will now receive an email notification informing them of the outcome following the assessment of an Outline Proposal. This may include any feedback provided by the Research Council where applicable. The wording of the emails sent to applicants for Outlines has been changed to make it more appropriate for these schemes.

The email will be sent to the RO functional email address.

A new version of the Je-S System (5.17.8) will be released over the weekend of 16/17 November. The release will include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration. The following are the main changes:

Studentship Data
There have been two changes within the Student Data Portal:

1)  RCUK has implemented changes to Studentship Details Je-S functionality that will only allow the Research Organisation (RO) to associate a Training Grant once to an individual Je-S student record.

In cases where a student has been funded from a Training Grant in years 1, 3 and 4, but funded from a different grant in year 2 of their PhD studies, the RO  will need to enter the earliest start and latest end date that funding is required from each grant.

For example, Student ‘A’ is funded from. Training Grant MR/K000001/1 for the first year and years 3 and 4 but is funded for the second year from Training Grant MR/K000002/1. The start date and end date associated with TG MR/K000001/1 will have to include the earliest start date (i.e. year 1 start) and the latest end date (year 4 finish) of the funding.

Student Details which currently include funding from a grant over two non consecutive periods will now fail validation in Je-S if any details are updated and the RO will therefore have to amend the grant periods before resubmission. Additional information will be provided in the Je-S System helptext.

2)  To manage their Student Details records ROs are able to delete the record if required. However this facility to delete will no longer be available once the Student record has reached a year beyond the Expected Submission Date.

Change to Peer Reviewer Protocols
The Peer Review Protocols outline the general requirements on confidentiality, research misconduct, etc., expected from Reviewers by the Councils. Reviewers must agree to abide by these protocols before being presented with any review material. Additional text has been added to the Confidentiality section to make it clear to the Reviewers that ROs may also be given access to the anonymised review to support transparency of decision making.

Peer Reviewers are presented with the Protocols the first time they access the Peer Review functionality and have to accept the Protocols before proceeding to the Review document. Reviewers that have previously accepted will be required to accept the new Protocols the next time they access the Peer Review functionality.

NC3Rs
The NC3Rs have changed the design and colour of their logo, the Je-S System now reflects this.

Je-S System Release - August 2013

A new version of the Je-S System (5.16.9) will be released on the morning of Tuesday 27 August 2013. The release will also include minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration:

Cross Research Council Facilities Updates & Validation

The Research Councils (RC) have reviewed and updated the list of Research Council Facilities which can be applied for and have also included an “Other” option for all RCs except NERC. Some of the Facility requests will require a Technical Assessment form  to be attached (available from the Facility provider). Additional validations have been introduced to ensure that the information required by the RCs is provided. A list of the Facilities for which Technical Assessment forms are mandatory will be provided in the Helptext.

The new Facilities section will be introduced across most schemes for proposals created after the Release. However if an applicant has already begun work on a proposal before the Release then they will still be able to submit it for a period of time (this differs across schemes and RCs).

Automated Customer Accounts & Additional Funding Notifications

There has been new functionality introduced for Customer Accounts & Additional Funding Notifications.

Customer Account
The Customer Accounts, which have been generated as paper documents following the Research Council Payment runs, were then posted to the Research Organisation (RO). When the new functionality is introduced into the Je-S System the paper Customer Accounts will be withdrawn and instead will only be available to view in the Je-S System.

Research Organisations (RO) will have to set up access for the RO Users via the RO Master account. (Guidance note issued with the Release Note). The RO Users will receive an email alert when a Customer Account has been issued and will be able to view the document after logging into their Je-S account. The Customer Account will be presented as a PDF document and there will be no further action required in Je-S For the first Pay Run following the Release, paper copies will also be provided for information.

Additional Funding Notifications
Additional funds which have been added to an active grant are currently emailed to the RO administrator who made the original request or the RO general contact if the additional funding request originated from another source. The Additional Funding Notifications will now be available in Je-S following the release.

Access to these documents will also have to be set up via the RO Master account. Users will receive an email when a new Notification document is populated into Je-S. It will be presented in Je-S as a PDF document. Although there will be no further action required in Je-S, the RO is requested to circulate copies to the Grant Holders.

Rebranding

As part of the rebranding of SSC to UK SBS, some email templates and documents now reference UK SBS in the email block and email body where necessary. The Je-S front page will show the UK SBS logo.

The Je-S Helptext pages have also been updated and reference to SSC replaced where appropriate. This change is ongoing and further changes will be made in due course.

Je-S System Release - May 2013

A new version of the Je-S System (5.15.8) will be released on the morning of Tuesday 21 May 2013. The release will also include  minor changes,  fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration:

Classifications - Qualifiers

The ability to collect and report on Project Engagement by Sector data, on proposals submitted through JeS has now been added to specific schemes for AHRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC and STFC.

A News Item will be added to the Je-S Login page to alert applicants that if they started their proposal and completed the Qualifier section prior to the Release, then they may wish to revisit the section and update it prior to submission.

Je-S System Release - February 2013

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.14.5) will be released on the morning of Tuesday 19 February 2013. The release will include (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

General

Je-S Personal Data

Date of Birth and Country of Nationality were not previously mandatory fields for Je-S Users setting up their accounts details. However RCUK requires this data to enable reporting on equality data and trends for Grant Applicants, Reviewers and Panel Members so these data items will now be collected for new and existing accounts. 

Therefore in this release validation has been introduced to ensure that the Date of Birth and Country of Nationality fields are completed for all users creating a Je-S account. The validation will ensure either a data item or “not disclosed” option is selected- not only for these two items but all other data items that have not been completed.

For existing Je-S accounts, where no selection has been made or where data items have blank fields, account holders will have to select an option and validate their details when they next log in to their account.

Je-S Account Requirements

This requirement, which originated from the Research Organisations, was to have greater control over Je-S accounts .

ROs will now be able to ‘Opt In’ to use the functionality to verify accounts for their organisation. In addition they will be able to view all the people who hold verified level accounts associated with the RO and will be able to mark them as Gone Away or Deceased if necessary. 

For any ROs that do not ‘Opt In’ the account requests will continue to be manually administered by the SSC.

For all non-verified account types the process has been automated, removing the need for up-front checking by SSC and ensuring the account acceptance is immediate.

A further requirement for the verified level account validation to be removed for Co- Investigators for Schemes/Calls for Research Councils that do not require organisations to satisfy RCUK eligibility requirements and for the Principal Investigator to be able to add co-applicants, without co-applicants setting up an account, will be delivered in a future release.

NC3Rs – Status reporting 

NC3Rs information for Grants will now be visible to the RO in Status Reporting. This will allow the RO to be able to view Deliverables and Reconciliation letters through the Je-S System.

Owing to the scheduling of Status Reporting, this will only become available a week after the Release.

ROs may wish to consider whether changes will be required to allow additional Users access to the  Status Reporting functionality. Please refer to the Helptext at https://jes.rcuk.ac.uk/Handbook/pages/InformationforROJeSAdministrat/StatusReporting/AllocatingAccess.htm if you require assistance with adding User access.

Je-S System Release – November 2012

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.13.6) will be released on the morning of Tuesday 20 November 2012. The release will include (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

General

Changes to Terms & Conditions

The Je-S System Terms and Conditions include a new Privacy section (3.4) on the use of Cookies on the Je-S website.  Users will be asked to confirm that they accept the updated Ts & Cs before they can continue using Je-S.

Peer Review Protocols / CDA

The change is to remove the requirement for some MRC reviewers to return a paper Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement prior to reviewing proposals. Instead the Peer Review Protocols have been amended and reviewers will be asked to agree to the revised protocols when they are next sent a peer review document.

Final Reports

For Councils other than BBSRC and ESRC, most grants with an end date on or after 1 January 2013 will no longer require a final report to be submitted. Although Final reports will not be required for submission through the Je-S System there will still be a requirement for grant holders to provide outputs and outcomes through the Research Councils outcomes Systems. Research Organisations will still be required to submit Final Expenditure Statements.

Je-S System Release – 19 June 2012

NERC -New Attachment type –Logistics Form. This attachment will be required for the Antarctic Funding Initiative scheme.

New Schemes

AHRC Studentship Proposal Schemes:

Doctoral Competition

Research Preparation Masters

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.11.10) was released on the morning of Tuesday 19 June 2012. The release included (apart from minor changes, fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

Feedback of Peer Review Comments to unsuccessful applicants – the Principal Investigator  has the opportunity to comment on the peer reviewers comments prior to a meeting (PI Response) but if a Research Council rejected a proposal prior to this stage in the process then the peer review comments had not been available to view in the Je-S System.  Following the release the comments will now be viewable in the PI Response section but the Principal Investigator will be unable to respond to the comments.

Offer Letter

There have been some changes to improve the look of the document and to make the information clearer.

Returning a Research Proposal for Amendment

If a Proposal has been returned to the Research Organisation for amendment then an email reminder will be issued to whoever the document is allocated to at the time eg a person or if unallocated in a Pool, the Pool members, within 2 days of the due date.

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.02.6) was released on Tuesday 19th October 2010. The release included (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

Studentship Data Portal (SDP)

Not Disclosed Option for Country of Nationality – For all SDP schemes an option of ‘Not Disclosed’ has been introduced in Person Details.

Project Partner Details – Start and End Dates at Project Partner have been removed.

Researcher Training Dates – Details of the funding start date now must be entered here.

AHRC

Follow on Funding - New scheme added.

EPSRC

Overseas Travel Grants – Scheme changed to include ‘Other Directly Incurred Costs’

ESRC

Scheme Business Placement Fellowships – Attachment type ‘Proposal Cover Letter’ added to scheme, this is an optional attachment.

NERC

Standard Scheme – Validation added in joint proposal section, number of joint components set to 4 (1 lead and 3 non leads).

New Investigator and Small Grant Schemes – Joint proposal section removed from these schemes.

All schemes CV’s Required – The inclusion of a CV to be uploaded as an attachment has now been set to mandatory for all NERC schemes when PI, Co-I and Named Researchers are added to proposals.

STFC

AURORA Studentships – New scheme added.

TSB

Project Details – Your reference in project details section has been changed to TSB Application Number.

Je-S System Release 59, 17 August 2010

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.02.5) was released on Tuesday 17 August 2010. The release included (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

General

Status Reporting: There is now the option within the ROMasterID account to give a person access to more than Department (available under the Advanced Options within Status Reporting).

Ordering of Documents in the Document lists: the initial view has been amended to present the most recent document at the top of the list (previously at the bottom). This change was made following feedback received from users

Studentship Data Portal (SDP)

UK is now set as default field: for the country of nationality when adding a student’s details (added following feedback from a user that had to scroll to the bottom of a long list).

Validation added to SDP that if an Industrial CASE studentship form is selected that the project partner information is mandatory.

Ability to select the submitting RO: an indicator has now been added to determine which RO’s submission Pools a studentship document should be routed through (has recently been a problem where the RO is not the degree awarding RO).

Student alternative contact details: this has now been removed

Partner Supervisor details:- Start and End dates

AHRC

Block Grant Partnerships: Capacity Building Route: new scheme added.

Je-S System Release 58, 15 June 2010

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.01.5) was released on Tuesday 20 April 2010. The release included (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

General

Create Account: - Changes to the Create Account functionality which will streamline the process and will reduce the number of incidences when a user whose details are currently held in the people/organisation database has to wait for the Helpdesk to send a credential or activation link.

Student Details in Batch Update: - ability to clear any student termination details entered in error.

Adding a new Document:- When setting up a new proposal document the applicant can select the Call detail at the same time as selecting the RC and scheme. This will reduce the number of instances of documents being created under the wrong scheme.

Locked Documents: - Padlock icon now displayed within the locked document header and footer (previously had to exit document and get details from the Document List), when the mouse is hovered over the icon then details of who locked by are displayed.

Eligible Organisations: - Being registered to use the Je-S System does not imply that an organisation is automatically eligible to apply to the RCs. Eligibility checks were performed once a proposal had been received by a RC but Schemes and Calls will now be set up within Je-S to only allow the organisations which are eligible to prepare and submit proposals.

Classifications: - a new cross council classification structure has been introduced to identify appropriate peer reviewers. The new classification information is now available to select through the Personal Details section of a Users account and will appear as part of the proposal forms in due course. Research Organisations will be informed when this will happen

TSB

CVs are now required for named Researcher Co Investigators, Researchers or visiting Researchers on Proposal forms.

Je-S System Release 57, 20 April 2010

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (5.00.6) was released on

Tuesday 20 April 2010. This release will have a significant positive impact on the external user community.

The user interface has been completely replaced so that the way users navigate through the system is significantly improved. The reason for this change was an accessibility review conducted in which a number of problems for users who for example, are unable to use a mouse or who need screen reading software were identified.

This is the biggest release of the Je-S System  for 5 years- in excess of 250 web pages have been converted to the new style.

In addition to this the release included (apart from minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration):

General

The annual email to users to remind them to affirm their details has been withdrawn- there are sufficient other methods in place to remind users to update their details.

Impact Plans: - The impact Plan attachment is renamed 'Pathways to Impact' on all schemes.

PI contract eligibility change:-  there is no longer a requirement, in the case of Research Grants, for a Principal Investigator to have a contract in place at time of application. There is, however a requirement for Research Councils to receive assurance that the individual will be issued with a contract should the proposal be successful, and that to ensure completion of the final report, that the contract would be extended beyond the end of the grant.

AHRC

Project Student section proposal form:   to start capturing costs for project students, harmonising with other RCs

EPSRC

Fellowship Outline Form- to include an attachment type of Host Organisation statement.

DHPA Scheme- additions to the DHPA Core Sponsor List

ESRC

Exceptional Item Indicator: - to allow the inclusion of non-FEC other 'costs DI' (paid at 100%) costs as part of a grant proposal. This is to primarily allow the capture of overseas COI 'other' costs (salary not paid) which are eligible to be claimed against all grant schemes.

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.55.6) was released on Tuesday 18 August 2009.

This release included: minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration.

The System Help also contains navigation Guidance through the new functionality.

AHRC

AHRC Student Nominations – additional question on Extended Doctoral Funding added to the form.

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards scheme – it is now mandatory to attach a project partner letter of support for each collaborating organisation on the proposal.

ESRC

ESRC New studentship proposal scheme - 'Postgraduate Training Framework' ESRC has recently announced a new framework for postgraduate training. This is a major change in postgraduate policy and is the outcome of several years of reviews and consultation.

Je-S System release 51, 16 June 2009

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.54.2) was released on Tuesday 16 June 2009.

This release included: minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration.

SSC Ltd Logo now displayed on Login Page

e-mails on issue of FES Documents (Expenditure Statements) - in light of feedback received the emails are now issued to the pool, the notification goes to the pool members, or the pool e-mail depending on how the pool is configured (previously went to the email associated with the Grants Payments Office).

AHRC

AHRC scheme Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts - addition of DI costs: it has been decided that AHRC will allow Fellows to apply for project costs in addition to their salary costs.

AHRC Removal of Future Qualifications that have been entered in error: now possible to remove a future qualification entered in error.

AHRC New Scheme Science and Heritage Large Grants: aims to enable arts and humanities, and engineering and physical sciences researchers to pursue collaborative research projects that demand the resources of an interdisciplinary team of scholars in order to build capacity within the heritage science field, enabling intellectual development and exchange across and between disciplines, and with non-academic stakeholders. Interdisciplinary Research Grants (for up to £800,000 fEC) will support 5-8 collaborative projects (depending on value) with a duration of up to 3 years.

AHRC New Scheme Request - Research Fellowships: Early Career and Standard.

BBSRC

BBSRC New scheme - BBRF outlines

EPSRC

EPSRC First Grant Scheme to be closed- applicants will now only have the option of choosing First Grants.

ESRC

Studentship Proposals and Nominations - ESRC have removed the Final Qualification to be attained question from the Edit Project Details section.

NERC

NERC Project technology-led - Mandatory tick box, New section on form.

STFC

STFC new non-FEC Standard Proposal scheme Research in Industry

STFC new non-FEC Knowledge Transfer to Industry scheme

STFC letter of Support Attachments for Fellowships , “letter of Support” to become a mandatory attachment on Post doc and Advanced fellowships. The attachment type will be available at the applicant stage but mandatory at the submitter stage.

System Release 50, 21 April 2009

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.53.0) was released on Tuesday 21 April 2009.

This release included: minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration.

Research and Fellowship Proposal Forms Attachment Types:

Impact Summary: As notified in the December release the Impact Summary is now required for EPSRC, NERC and STFC.

Following a review of the Attachment types in use in the Je-S System a number of redundant attachment types have been removed.

Doctoral Training Account records and Batch Update

A fees only tick box has been included for students only eligible for, and receiving, a fees only award.

Assigned Document Summary

A document type will not be displayed in the Assigned Document Summary unless there is an existing document of that type within a User’s account or, if a pool member, then a document with the Pool. (The only exception will be the Student/Researcher option because it is necessary to open this option to be able to create new student/researcher records).

New Schemes

The AHRC and EPSRC are taking forward a joint Science and Heritage Programme. These Post-doctoral Fellowships will enable outstanding new researchers to carry out research and so establish an independent research career in heritage science.

The AHRC/BT Research Networking funding call is intended to support interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers to explore the theme of digital heritage.

BBSRC currently operate Outline applications outside of Je-S but will start to invite them through Je-S beginning with the Outline scheme for Longer Larger (LoLa) Grant Applications.

Peer Review Forms

Some EPSRC Peer Review forms revised to take account of the Impact Summary changes. The rest of the PR forms will be made available through subsequent Je-S Releases.

Some ESRC Peer Review forms revised to take account of the Impact Summary changes. The rest of the PR forms will be made available through subsequent Je-S Releases.

Other

Proposal Project Student stipends and fees - updated for ESRC and STFC

NERC Facilities - the list of research council facilities available within the NERC proposals has been updated.

NERC Proposals now require funding that is going to the NERC Collaborative Centres to be identified.

STFC joint standard proposals may now include Project partner details in the non lead part (previously failed validation).


Release 49, 17 March 2009

This Release involved Changes to Validation: Project Partner and Equipment Quote Attachments

There were changes to the Attachment validations for many of the Standard Research Proposal and Fellowship forms.* The changes were originally made in October 2008 but were withdrawn to allow further testing. After extensive retesting we are now confident that the original problems have been resolved, the changes were therefore implemented with on Tuesday 17 March 2009. The validation changes mean that document editors and submitters now see council/scheme rules prior to submission to council, which reduces the number of applications subsequently returned to the research organisations for amendment.

The attachment changes are:

            a. Equipment Quotes

For all items of equipment requested with a value of £100k, or greater, three equipment quotations must be uploaded. For items of equipment which cost between £25k and £100k there is an option to provide three quotations but they are not mandatory.

Equipment quotations are added within the equipment item screen, not within the attachments section (having added the details, pressing “Save” will provide a link to add the attachments).

This change in requirements will affect proposals which have been started prior to, but will be submitted after, 17 March. Attachments which have already been uploaded prior to 17 March will need to be removed and re-attached within the relevant section**.

            b. Project Partners

For each project partner added to the proposal a Project Partner Letter of Support must be uploaded. The change here is that these should be added within the Project Partner details screen and not in the attachments section (having added the Project Partner details, pressing “Save” will provide a link to add the attachment). Attachments which have already been uploaded prior to 17 March will need to be removed and re-attached within the relevant section**.

            c. Returned Documents

If a document, submitted prior to 17 March, is returned by a Council then the validation rules which were in place at the point of submission will still apply when the document is resubmitted. It will not be necessary to remove and reattach the attachments.

* The rules will automatically be applied to Council scheme/calls so will be visible to relevant users.

** There are some Council scheme/calls exceptions in which case the rules will not be applied and it will not be necessary to remove and reattach attachments uploaded prior to 17 March. The exceptions are:

Release 48, 17 February 2009

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.52.1) was released on Tuesday 17 February 2009. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

This release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration.

Project deliverables from Je-S Programme and RCUK

A) Remaining Grants Functionality Project – Grant maintenance

1. The following functionality related to the maintenance of a grant (standard research, fellowships, and training grants, but not individual studentships) went into the live release of Je-S on 17 February 2009. This new functionality will allow PI’s/Pool Administrators within a Research Organisation to create and submit these grant maintenance requests to council via the Je-S system.

Contact email address

2. To ensure that the RO is informed of the outcome of requests as well as ensuring the appropriate RO member of staff can be contacted when further information/clarification is required.

·         The RO will be required to provide a contact e-mail address and name.

·         The email address is the contact point for the RO and therefore is only required at submission of a Grant Maintenance Request or Grant Transfer Response to a RC and not before.

Search filter for Grant Maintenance Documents

3. ROs will be able to filter the grants that are displayed in Grant Maintenance Request.

Notes:

i)   EPSRC will be the only Research Council that will use this functionality prior to the implementation of the NGBO. Therefore, the options (see table above) will only be available initially against relevant EPSRC grants. EPSRC will be accepting grant maintenance requests from 24^th February onwards.

 ii)  For information:

The remaining maintenance functionality related to requests for change to Co-Investigators, Researcher Co-investigators, Supervisors, Summary, DSA, Fieldwork, studentship departmental changes & status changes will not be implemented until councils are operating one back-office system (NGBO).

Further information on this new functionality is available via the Je-S System Helptext.

B) PhD/Masters Submissions

The existing PhD Submission Survey (previously used by EPSRC), has been extended to allow for the capture of Masters Training Grant submission data, and to provide functionality for submitting survey data for BBSRC and NERC for both their PhD and Master students captured on the Student/Researcher Batch Update tool on the Je-S System.

The survey will open on Monday 23 February 2009, and will close on Friday 30 March 2009, and will survey students with an expected submission date that falls between 1 October 2006 and 31 October 2008. BBSRC, EPSRC and NERC will have contacted the relevant departments at Research Organisations, and Je-S administrators can therefore expect to be contacted to set up access to the functionality before this date.

C) Impact considerations within Peer Review

A reminder that the Research Councils are phasing in changes to their application forms for research and fellowship proposals to include an Impact Summary which addresses the following questions:

Peer reviewers for these proposals will be asked to consider

The changes will be applied to the Je-S application forms using the following timetable for each Research Council:-

15 January 2009- BBSRC

17 February 2009- AHRC and ESRC

21 April 2009- EPSRC,NERC and STFC

Changes to the Peer Review forms will be phased in by Councils in line with the above timetable.

D) Advanced notice of likely March change in proposal validation criteria

Project Partner and Equipment Quote Attachments

We are planning to implement the following changes on 17 March. This change is subject to completion of UAT within the Research Councils, but we wish to inform ROs of the likely change in advance. A formal update will be issued w/b 9 March, to confirm that this change is going live.

Documents returned from RCs to ROs for amendment, after the 17 March, will retain the 'rules' that were applied at the point of original submission.

Research Council Specific Changes

ESRC- Student Nominations (Masters): ^'Advanced Quantitative Training', within Edit Summary section. ESRC policy has been changed, stipend is not payable (and therefore not claimable) for masters only studentship awards.

New Schemes

New STFC Standard Proposal scheme : PATT Travel Grants. For PATT Travel Grants the amount funded by STFC will be at a rate of 100% FEC and this will be reflected in the resource summary.

Other

Pool Admin: change to prevent rescind action being applied when there is no document owner

Create Document for Printing: now have the ability to print the form and all the attachments from within the Create Document for Printing function following submission to the RC (previously the attachments had to be printed individually from within the Attachments heading).

Return Reason: Removal of scrolling box for Return Reason in returned documents, to ensure that users see full reasons supplied by the Councils.

Release 47, 16 December 2008

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.51.5) was released on Tuesday 16 December 2008.

This release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes.

Joint Proposals has changed and the creation of the non-lead parts is now controlled by the Lead (For Standard Proposal forms for BBSRC, EPSRC, ETI, NERC, STFC and TSB).

1) After the Project Details section has been completed, applicants should have the option to create a joint proposal.

2) The lead document owner defines the number of documents that are required to make up the joint set. The lead document owner can add additional documents later if necessary.

3) The system sets up the number of non-lead documents requested, with the owner of the lead document as the owner of all the non-leads. Each document contains a read-only joint reference. The title of the lead is copied to the non-lead parts.

4) The owner of the lead document assigns ownership of the non-lead parts to the Je-S users who need to complete them. The system notifies the users by email that ownership of part of a joint proposal has been assigned to them.

5) The number/type of attachments which the non lead have to submit will be reduced as common components will be submitted by the lead only.

Attachments

Impact Summary

Impact considerations within Peer Review

The excellent research funded by the UK Research Councils has a huge impact on the wellbeing and economy of the UK. Working together with our wider communities and other partners, we want to ensure that these impacts are effectively demonstrated and supported, throughout the research lifecycle, in order to add value, stimulate interest from wider stakeholders, including the general public, and, where needed, actively highlight the need for continued investment in the research base.

From 2009, applicants for research and fellowship grant proposals will be required to produce an Impact Summary which addresses the following questions:

Who will benefit from this research?

How will they benefit?

What will be done to ensure they have the opportunity to benefit from this research?

Peer reviewers for these proposals will be asked to consider:

Whether the plans to increase impact are appropriate and justified, given the nature of the proposed research

The Case for Support (and/or attached Impact Plan where required- the RC specific Helptext will provide details of the format the info should be provided in) should expand on the information contained in the Impact Summary and describe what will be done to increase the scale or likelihood of impact.   

The changes will be applied to the Je-S forms using the following timetable for each Research Council:-

January 15th 2009 – BBSRC

February 17th 2009 – AHRC and ESRC

April 21st 2009 – EPSRC, NERC and STFC

Professional Preparation Masters

AHRC- New Scheme- Research Networking Scheme

AHRC- New Scheme- Small Grants- Beyond Text

ESRC- New Schemes - Public Sector Placement Fellowships and Academic Placement Fellowships 

Other Changes:

Studentship Nominations- Change to Submission Declaration

AHRC -Change to earliest start date for Religion and Society and  Small Grants- Reduced from 6 months to 5 months after the Call end date.

AHRC -Standard Proposals Change in Scheme Limit-

Standard Proposals Research Grants Practice Led and Applied

-maximum grant total increased from £20,000 to £40,000

ESRC- Instruments removed from Facilities- Cost and numbers of units currently associated with instruments will in future be associated with the facility.

MRC Student/Researcher Details- the MRC research boards have changed so the classification details have been updated ro reflect the current position.

STFC Rolling Grants- Additional data collection for investigator costs to be split between years.

Peer Review:

There have been some enhancements to the Email generated to the Reviewer to alert them to the PR request:

1.  direct link to allow the reviewer to decline the review

2.  includes the Summary of the proposal, as a PDF attachment.

ESRC- Peer Review-Small Grants Scheme -the “self assessment “section has been removed in the light of user feedback.

NERC-Peer Review- new section on Knowledge Exchange added.

Project Deliverables (from the Je-S Programme)

Award Deliverables

Post-Award functionality has been extended to allow for the following:

1. Offer Acceptance Document to be issued via Je-S.  This will include an Offer Document (often known as Offer Letter).  

2.  Grant Holders to receive an e-mail informing them when an Offer Acceptance Document has been issued.  

3.  Research Organisations to confirm/decline the offer via Je-S and to indicate an estimated start date.   This date will have to fall within the permissible start date range.  The Offer Acceptance document will need to be returned within 10 working days.  Once this expiry date has been reached then it will only be possible to view the document.  

4. Payment Data (currently issued in paper form in a Payment Schedule) to be included with the Offer Acceptance document. The ability to view and export the data into a spreadsheet.

5.  Ability to view and export Payment Data into a spreadsheet for grants via Status Reporting. Where there is more than one funding stream for a grant then a “combined” funding stream will be shown as well as the individual funding streams.

6.  A Start Confirmation document (currently known as Starting Certificate) to be returned by Research Organisations via Je-S.  The Start Confirmation document will be issued by a Research Council once a grant has been accepted. Submission of the Start Confirmation will be required not more than 42 days after the start actual start date.  

7.  The fund headings for the scheme will be shown and at least 1 fund heading will need to be selected.  If a fund heading requires staff details then details for at least one person must be added.

8.  The Research Organisation will be able to provide a RO reference for the grant.  

Notes:

a.   EPSRC will be the only Research Council that will use this functionality   prior to the implementation of the cross-Council Next Generation Back Office system (NGBO).

b.      Payment Data for EPSRC non-FEC grants are currently displaying the Indirect Costs fund heading even if there are no staff costs on the grant that attract Indirect Costs.  The actual value of the grant is not affected as this fund heading is currently being populated with zero values.    

Changes to Validation : Project Partner and Equipment Quote Attachments

There have been changes to the Attachment validations for many of the Standard Research Proposal and Fellowship forms.

a.      Equipment Quotes

For all items of equipment requested with a value of £100k, or greater, three equipment quotations must be uploaded. For items of equipment which cost between £25k and £100k there is an option to provide three quotations but they are not mandatory.

Equipment quotations are added within the equipment item screen, not within the attachments section (having added the details, pressing “Save” will provide a link to add the attachments).

This change in requirements will affect proposals which have been started prior to, but will be submitted after, 21 October. Attachments which have already been uploaded prior to 21 October will need to be removed and re-attached within the relevant section.

b.      Project Partners

For each project partner added to the proposal a Project Partner Letter of Support must be uploaded. The change here is that these should be added within the Project Partner details screen and not in the attachments section (having added the Project Partner details, pressing “Save” will provide a link to add the attachment). Attachments which have already been uploaded prior to 21 October will need to be removed and re-attached within the relevant section.

Changes to Je-S Functionality

Document owner has to progress document
In line with the Je-S Framework ( http://www.so.stfc.ac.uk/jes/Requirements.asp ) , all documents must be “owned” by the applicant prior to submission to council (including Studentship documents).

Change to Create Account and My Details - account categories to be amended

Revised design to allow users, wishing to create Je-S accounts, to indicate what type of Je-S usage they require (and the resulting account is based on that information).

Changes to Pool Admin Function

As a transition to fully configurable pools we are introducing some interim changes to the Pools for financial documents.

We would advise that at the current time you do not make any changes to any of the Finance Pools - except for adding or removing members. However if you do wish to take the opportunity to set up pools by document type then the Helpdesk would be happy to advise on how this could be done.

In the longer term:

      • It will be possible to have the same flexibility to determine by “finance” document type (eg Expenditure Statements) the approver and/or submitter pools that the documents would be routed through. There will be some exceptions to this eg documents that belong at the organisational rather than departmental level (Annual Statements).

      • As functionality grows, new document types will be added to the system and will require pools being set up.

The timescale for implementing the further changes is likely to be late winter 2009/ spring 2010. (More detailed information was included in the advance notice circular sent on 10 October 2008).

Stamping attachments with page numbers

To avoid problems with applicants inserting page numbers into the margins of their document, which then results in the pages being resized on submission, Je-S now stamps the page number onto attachments in the same way as it stamps the grant reference number onto attachments (within the footer).

Research Council specific changes

BBSRC Committee structure changes 2008

BBSRC has changed its responsive mode committee structure, replacing the current seven committees with four new ones that will encompass the remits of the current ones. Further details can be found on the BBSRC web site.

ESRC Request to remove Edit attachment section from Studentship schemes

Removal of Edit attachment section from ESRC Studentship schemes: CASE +3 and
CASE 1+3

NERC New Attachment type: Knowledge Exchange Plans

New attachment type created, called: Knowledge Exchange

This is a mandatory attachment for NERC Standard, Consortium and Partnership Research Grant schemes.

NERC Project Students area in grant application forms

Revised functionality for collection of Project Student data.

STFC student nomination schemes

These will now be subsumed into STFC Doctoral Training Grants. The schemes removed are: CASE, IAC and GEMINI

Name Change for STFC Science and Society Large Awards to Science in Society Large Awards

Due to a terminology change for this area of STFC, the name of the scheme changed to reflect this.

Update of STFC stipends for 2008

Stipend non-London = £12,940
Stipend London weighting = £14,940
Fees (London and non-London) = £3,330
(applied to all proposal schemes which allow project student input).

Release 45, 19 August 2008

Release 44, 17 June 2008

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.0.42) was released on Tuesday 17 June 2008.

This release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes

Changes to general Je-S Functionality

Energy Technologies Institute (new funder using Je-S for application processing)

CreateAccount and MyDetails (account maintenance) design change - General redesign of ‘create account’ and account maintenance pages

Unavailability - new input screen in MyDetails (Account holders can now record unavailability data which will be transferred to the Councils’ back office systems)

Emails - update made to email generated when account details have been changed by the Research Councils

EPSRC Referee Expertise keywords - inclusion of ability to update keywords/expertise via the account maintenance screens

Peer Review functionality

Redesign of 'Documents to Review' screen - breakdown of 'information' and 'inputting' sections 

Printed outputs

Tidy up of some printed output forms to provide clearer labels or clearer output of data

Forms

Updated validation to provide clearer information on input expectations

Revised input screens for RC facilities/equipment to provide breakdown of individual items

Joint proposals - sight of supporting attachments and information for non-lead ROs

Research Council form design or business changes - a large number of changes have been actioned as a result of Councils' business requirements for data collection changing, or to improve design or validation of input.

Student/Researcher Data Portal

FastEdit option now includes Project Title and Project Abstract

Release 43, 15 April 2008

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.0.36) was released on Tuesday 15 April 2008.

This release includes:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes

Changes to general Je-S Functionality

Annual Statements (being used initially by EPSRC only from 16/04/2008)

Proposals:

Edit Resources, Edit Research Council Facilities

All councils/schemes
Edit Resources, Edit Facilities:
Have been renamed to:
Edit Resources, Edit Research Council Facilities

Staff Costing information sequence on screen, popup and printed output

Input (calculator) screens in same 'field' order as on Je-s Screen display, Resource Summary and Printed Output for costing data.

Character Counting

Ability to ‘count’ characters via separate linked page

New ‘item’ of 'Infrastructure Technicians' applies to All councils/relevant document types/schemes

Added to the Other DA input screen, to read options:
Pool staff costs
Infrastructure Technicians
Research Facilities/Existing equipment
Other

Other Directly Allocated Costs - input restricted

System restricts input to only one item, under the Other Directly Allocated resources entries (but allowing expanded 'entries' under Research Facilities/Existing Equipment)

Pool Admin

Pool Admin - 10DT document issue   

Following the initial development of Phase 1 of the Pool Admin an issue with 10Day TurnaroundT docs was identified.

Any 10DT docs generated by Councils are going to the default pool, regardless of which pool they were submitted to council from.  10DT docs should be configurable to allow the most appropriate pool to administer them, in the same way as any other document

Pool Admin - display of RO members    

Following the initial development of Phase 1 of the Pool Admin changes, an issue with visibility of all RO staff members was identified.

RO Admin users should now be able to see full list of RO staff, whether by Pool membership, or a full list of staff.   

DTA areas

SRDP Current Documents – description now shows in screen view

SDRP Batch Update Helptext linkage

General update of guidance

AHRC-specific changes

AHRC Outline proposals - removal of project partners

AHRC Studentship Proposals – Block Grant Partnership

Revised formatting of printed output

New Attachment type for AHRC Standard Research Grant

New attachment type of
Non-UK Components

Add co-investigators to two AHRC schemes

i) Research Networks – Religion & Society;
ii) Research Workshops – Religion & Society.
AHRC have decided to allow co-investigators to these two schemes and have therefore added the relevant section to these two forms.

AHRC New scheme - Large Research Grants – Beyond Text

BBSRC specific changes

(None in this release)

EPSRC-specific changes

EPSRC  Fellowship Outline Form - Career Acceleration Fellowships 2008

New form

Workplans for Senior Media Fellowships

Add attachment Workplan with Maximum input of 1

Increasing EPSRC minimum Proposal duration set to 3 (months)

Applies to most EPSRC proposals

ESRC-specific changes

ESRC Studentship nominations - generic outlet code

Studentship nominations
Change only affects the following two ESRC calls;
Centre linked Studentships)
Project Linked Studentships

New ESRC Scheme Jan 2008: Follow On Fund

NERC Specific changes

(None in this release)

STFC-specific changes

Addition of STFC classifications to non-lead proposals

Addition of “Head of Department Statement” as a mandatory attachment to the STFC Science in Society Fellowships scheme (added at Pool stage)

Changes to STFC Final Report screens to include character count

The wording on the “edit achievements”, “edit expenditure”, “edit Science in Society” and “edit other staff” screens for STFC standard and PIPSS FR schemes has been amended to provide clearer guidance

Removal of Facility: HPC Daresbury from STFC forms

Removal of Facility: HPC Daresbury from STFC forms (retaining HPCx)

Peer Review: configurable PR Panel preferences by scheme

Removal of STFC Final Report Narrative Report

From 15 April 2008 STFC are removing the mandatory requirement for a narrative report (attachment) to be submitted with a Final Report.

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19 February 2008 (Release 42)

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.0.30) was released on Tuesday 19 February 2008.

The release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes

Changes to general Je-S Functionality

Pool Admin

Revision of Pool Admin functionality, including membership and document maintenance, and ability to structure pools by document type, plus ability to 'hide' documents.  The Je-S Helpdesk are running a series of workshops to guide RO admin teams through these changes, please contact jeshelp@rcuk.ac.uk if you want further information.  

(Further details at the bottom of this page)

Peer Review and PI Response functionality – in response to comments and feedback on the initial design of the Research Councils’ Peer Review functionality, the following areas have been addressed:

PR: view proposal details post decline

Change to the wording on 'View proposal details' screen post decline. Changed to say:
You have already submitted a decline response to Council and therefore access to view this document has been removed.

PR Self Assessment – area of expertise.  Reworded.

PR - Self Assessment area of expertise wording Edit Reviewer Self Assessment Your area of expertise GUI text should start 'Please indicate your areas of expertise'; the current wording 'Please indicate the areas of expertise' is ambiguous. 

Peer Review PI Response - reword of View Response screen

PR PI Response - reword of View Response screen to Reviewer's Comments

Peer Review - Decline functionality restriction for editors

PR - Decline functionality restriction for editors - other editors should not be able to Edit the Decline to Review function. This should be View Only even when the editor has edit privilege

Email changes

E-mail Config change - 10 Day Turnaround

Change to the e-mails issued when 10 Day Turnaround docs are issued by councils. Rather than the common one that currently goes to both the Pool and the PI these have been separated out, essentially to clarify what the PI gets

Submission emails - to include Call and Scheme details

Call and Scheme information included in the 'progression' and 'submission' emails.

Proposals

Repositioning of Edit Joint Proposal sections on all forms

Re-position the ‘Edit Joint Proposal’ section of the form, to be the third ‘section’ (after ProjectDetails and PI/CO). To make the question more visible, and allow checking against 'validation' rules at an earlier stage.

Revision of headings and cost groupings on Resource Summary and Printed Output

Printed output and Resource Summary section amended to reflect input fields/structure.

Attachment changes - impact on submitted docs (to allow viewing of earlier attachments, regardless of configuration changes for attachment requirements)

(If the document is attached prior to the change being implemented, it needs to be ‘viewable’ but not editable (replaceable), but you should not be able to add a new document of that type. If the document was unsubmitted, the attachment would therefore show but shouldn’t be included in the submission document set. ) 
 

DTA/Student/Researcher Data Portal and related functionality

Student/Researcher Batch Update override validation changed and relabeling of some items

SRDP - changes part 1 (links on validate page) and 3 (remove the signoff)

Student/Researcher Data Portal - Parts 1 and 3 Batch Update changes
To improve the usability we made the following changes:
1) On the validate page, add links to enable Users to correct errors that are identified. (Previously the only way was to select back to return to earlier screens.)
2) Remove the override options. (actioned under a different RFC)
3) Remove the sign off (so the only requirements on ROs are to Update and Submit, rather than to Update, Submit and Sign off). To make it clearer which records need updating, included a column on the main page indicating when the student/researcher record was last submitted. 
 

PhD Reporting tool functionality – available from 19/02/2008 with a closing date of 27 March 2008.

This year EPSRC will again be collecting PhD Submission data.  When available, the PhD Submission Tool is now available and can be found at the bottom of the ‘Assigned Document Summary’ screen.  The principle changes to the tool since last year are:

·        It is now possible for Research Organisations to amend the ‘Intended Submission Date’ in the survey, when informing us that a student has postponed submission.

·        An additional ‘Surname’ field has been added, to enable alphabetical ordering or sorting to be done.

·        It is now possible to sort on all data fields except Viva Voce Date.

·        The ‘PhD Awarded Date’ has been defined in the Je-s Help Text as ‘the latest date on which the Examination Board recommends that a PhD be awarded’.

General

Expenditure Statement - Doc History re-ordered (to show newest history first, in line with history against other doc types)

Links to popups marked as such (throughout most parts of the system, although work will be ongoing)

GUI wording changed for Studentship Proposals/Nominations progression/submission (to reflect accurate document type)

Helptext

To provide more information to external users, the Helptext has been expanded to include a new page in each section of system functionality, which will explain which councils currently use that functionality, and any differences in use.  Any comments on how useful the external community find this information, or other areas that you would like to see covered, will be gratefully received – please let jesmanager@stfc.ac.uk know of any comments or suggestions.  

AHRC-specific changes

AHRC Nominated Reviewers - removal of options from schemes (Phase 1)

For most research schemes the AHRC allow the PI to nominate one of the 3 peer reviewers for their proposal and the AHRC will select the other 2. After an extensive review of the proposal review process the AHRC has decided that from June 2008 they will no longer allow the PI to nominated a reviewer and will instead select all three. 

AHRC BPG: Supervision section to be mandatory Studentship Proposals – BGP Forms. This section had two subsections, Supervision Details and Supervisor Training and Selection. Both are now mandatory.

Summary gui wording

AHRC proposals/fellowships - change to Edit Summary page to make it clear that information may be published to AHRC web site.

AHRC Final Reports - changes to wording from "Have you informed the Resource Discovery Network (RDN)?" to "Have you informed Intute?"

AHRC PR Expiry Dates set to 2 or 4 months (from DueDate)

(which means that reviewers won’t be able to view the related proposals after this time has passed)

BBSRC-specific changes

(None in this release) 

EPSRC-specific changes

Confidentiality warning on proposal summary

Revised wording to make it clear that the data could be published to EPSRC site

Peer Review documents – more white space

Enhanced screen design to make the presentation a bit more user-friendly

Relabel on EPSRC Peer Review forms to Reviewer Expertise

Rewording (was self-assessment)

EPSRC PR Expiry Dates set to 4 months (from DueDate)

(which means that reviewers won’t be able to view the related proposals after this time has passed)

ESRC-specific changes

Studentship Proposals - end dates

(end dates removed, system now calculates on duration and start date)

ESRC Studentship Proposals - removal of 'add new'

(system no longer allows entry of student/applicant details, you have to select from the returned list)

ESRC switch on of Doc Sync

ESRC will start to use Doc Sync from February 2008, ESRC have published guidance on what ‘rules’ they will adopt, on their website.  Any returned document should include a clear description of why the proposal has been returned, and will generally have a 3-day return duration (although this might be extended under specific circumstances).

Studentships: amendment to list of Govt targetted areas (for 2 collaborative schemes)

Helptext linkage for Studentship proposals

Linkage added, and helptext updated

NERC-specific changes

NERC PR Expiry Dates set to 3 months (from DueDate)

(which means that reviewers won’t be able to view the related proposals after this time has passed, from such point as NERC go live with PR - anticipated in March 2008)

STFC-specific changes

STFC Aurora Fellowships: validation against referees

Validation on Aurora fellowships changed so that one of the referees must be from the host organisation and the other from elsewhere. 

STFC GUI wording change on FR/PR form (to remove 'Objectives' and 'National/International' from beginning of GUI sentence)

STFC Standard proposal - nominated reviewers missing from printed output - resolved

Confidentiality warning on proposal summary

Revised wording to make it clear that the data could be published to STFC site

Studentship proposal - removal of add new (for STFC schemes)

(system no longer allows entry of student/applicant details, you have to select from the returned list)

Peer Review documents – more white space

Enhanced screen design to make the presentation a bit more user-friendly

Amendments to the STFC scientific area section

For STFC proposals: Amendments to the scientific area section to revise categories/descriptions

STFC Peer Review: Key element questions on Research Grant Peer Review 
A new set of questions for Peer review was introduced to this scheme. 
 

Further details on:

Change to Pool Admin and Document/Membership maintenance

The Je-S team have been supporting UAT by six ROs following internal review of the revised Pool Admin and Document/Membership maintenance functionality.  A number of workshops are arranged.  Anyone who is interested should contact the Je-S Helpdesk as soon as possible.  All ROs will be ‘switched’ to this new functionality from 11 March 2009.

Summary of Changes and Improved Functionality

1. Ability to set up Approver and Submitter pools by document type (ie Standard Proposal, Studentship Proposal) (we will need to co-ordinate UAT in this area to ensure that documents generated from the research councils are directed through the appropriate route)

2. List of pools displayed can be filtered on the type of pool – i.e. Submitter Pools, Approver Pools, DTA pools, Finance Pools.

3. Better summary information for pools available to user – including number of documents in the pool and number of members.

4. Pool email addresses can now be specified.

5. Departments and Persons in the pools can be managed more simply with sort-able lists broken down into pages.

6. Person search available for adding new pool members.

7. Pool management page shows if a department or person currently has a document allocated to them.

8. Users can view all documents in the pool they are currently managing. They are also able to un-allocated a document from a user if required.

9. There is a much improved audit trail allowing the user to view when departments and people have been added or removed from the pool.

10. The management of departments being moved to other pools is more tightly controlled ensuring changes cannot be made if a document is already in a pool based on the current structure.

11. The user is able to view a complete list of pool members for all pools – they are able to search for a person and then view the pools and document related to that person. The user then has the facility to un-allocate any document allocated to that person. Very useful if the person is off-sick or gone away.

12. There is a new view of all documents in a pool by document type. The user is able to see the status of these documents and is able to un-allocate them if required.

13. To further aid the management of documents arriving into the pools there is a view on documents per department. Again the user is able to see the document status and un-allocate if required.

14. A report is available showing approver/submitter pool details .

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

18 December 2007 (Release 41)

A new version of the Research Councils’ Je-S System (4.0.24) was released on Tuesday 18 December 2007.

The release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes

Changes to general Je-S functionality

Peer Review – in response to comments and feedback on the initial design of the Research Councils’ Peer Review functionality, the following areas have been addressed:

Redesign of ‘Documents to Review’ functionality

Redesign of ‘Decline to Review’ functionality

Renaming of ‘Reviewer Information’ label (to ‘Instructions to reviewer’)

Re-ordering of information within ‘Instructions to reviewer’ section

Redesign of views for Joint Proposals (to show Lead and non-Lead proposals)

Consistency of naming convensions for attachments sent from the Research Councils to Peer Reviewers

Studentships– in response to comments and feedback on the initial design of the Research Councils’ Studentship functionality, the following areas have been addressed:

Redesign of Project Details section, to provide StartDate/Duration and calculation of project end dates

Other general changes – in response to issues identified by the Je-S Support Team, or requested by Je-S users, the following changes have been applied:

Resource Summary – re-ordering of fields to match GUI design

Granting access to other users – Je-S redeveloped to allow access to be granted after a document has been submitted, and to subsequently remove access permissions

Removal of ‘prompt/response’ challenge functionality in the Create Account area

Update to Helptext page 583 of Je-S Terms and Conditions of use

Re-ordering of Document History entries (to show newest entry at top)

Additional warning to show, if users change from Lead to Non-Lead Joint proposal (to alert users to loss of data in some sections, and loss of attachments)

AHRC-specific changes

You can now add Co-Investigators to the Networks and Workshops schemes.

The AHRC will be introducing the Block Grant Studentship form onto Je-S from 02 January 2008.  Please see AHRC’s website for further information.

EPSRC–specific changes

Removal of the Self-Assessment section from EPSRC Final Report forms (these are generated into Je-S and notified to relevant PIs)

ESRC-specific changes

Removal of ‘Edit Reviewer’ section from the Postdoctoral Fellowship forms

Introduction of Call field within CASE and Collaborative Government Studentships Nomination forms

Increase on the number of Alternative Reviewers that can be input onto the ESRC Peer Review forms (from 1 to 5 alternative reviewers).

Validation added to prevent input of Project Partner or Reviewer from the same Hosting Organisation (for all ESRC standard proposals)

NERC-specific changes

Validation change to prevent multiple Case for Support attachments being added to the proposal

STFC–specific changes

Configuration of Joint Proposal changes (to prevent logging of duplicate information against non-lead proposals)

Revision of ‘Results, Exploitation and Knowledge Transfer’ section to revise data being collected, and guidance on data input

Revision of validation against non-lead Joint Proposals to allow input of Project Partner data

Removal of Nuclear Physics scheme from Je-S, and inclusion of additional Scientific Areas within all standard proposal forms

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20 November 2008 (Release 40)

The release included:  minor changes, bug fixes, system enhancements and scheme configuration changes

Changes to general Je-S functionality

Revision of ‘prompt/response’ functionality within Je-S, including removal within the Account Creation and Account Maintenance areas

Enhancements into Account Maintenance area for personal data

‘Add new document’ option to be available during account authentication

Streamlining of Peer Review account activation (following external comments about system design)

Enhancement of validation for all Studentship Proposal forms (to prevent submission of invalid data)

Update of Je-S system Student Stipends rates on proposals (project students)

AHRC-specific changes

AHRC enhancements to Peer Review functionality, to send ‘Additional Document’ to reviewers for some schemes

EPSRC–specific changes

Enhanced guidance for EPSRC DTA Final Expenditure Statements (for EU students)

Modifications to EPSRC Discipline Hopping awards scheme (changes are available on EPSRC web site)

NERC-specific changes

Changes to collection of project student data on proposals

STFC–specific changes

Changes to questions in STFC Final Reports in ‘Results, Exploitation and Knowledge Transfer’ section for Standard, Visiting Researcher and PIPSS schemes

Changes to STFC Studentship applications to allow access to applicants

Removal from STFC proposals of the ‘Revisable’ type option

STFC PPRP and Facility Development grants – changed validation for “Other DI costs” to make non-mandatory

STFC Facility Development Grants – reword of ‘CCLRC’ to ‘STFC’ in all sections

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16 October 2007 (Release 39)

The following changes for EPSRC forms were included in the release:

18 September 2007 (Release 38)

21 August 2007 (Release 37)

17 July 2007 (Release 36)

19 June 2007 (Release 35)

15 May 2007 (Release 34)

17 April 2007 (Release 33)

2 April 2007 (Release 32b)

20 March 2007 (Release 32)

20 February 2007 (Release 31)

16 January 2007 (Release 30)

5 December 2006 (Release 29)

24 October 2006 (Release 28)

19 September 2006 (Release 27)

15 August 2006 (Release 26)

18 July 2006 (Release 25)

20 June 2006 (Release 24)

16 May 2006 (Release 23)

28 April 2006 (Release 22a)

21 March 2006 (Release 22)

21 February 2006 (Release 21)

24 January 2006 (Release 20)

6 December 2005 (Release 19)

25 October 2005 (Release 18)

6 September 2005 (Release 17)

6 August 2005 (Release 16)

EPSRC and NERC FEC Outline proposal form

EPSRC Partnerships for public engagement proposal form

FEC Fellowship proposal form for the following schemes:

2 August 2005 (Release 15)

12 July 2005 (Release 14)

28 June 2005 (Release 13) This major release fulfills the commitment made by the Research Councils to make available the research grant proposal forms based on full economic costing well ahead of the date (1 September 2005) from which these new forms can be submitted. Those applying on the current forms (which must be submitted through Je-S to the appropriate Council by 31 July 2005) should see little change. Those interested in the FEC proposal forms or new to the Je-S system will be able view the Councils’ data requirements and start preparing proposals for submission on or after 1 September 2005. Unless there are pressing reasons to prepare and complete a FEC proposal form within the next few weeks, applicants are advised to wait until the next Je-S release (scheduled for 12 July) before starting proposal forms intended for submission. This second release will include fixes to known errors (listed in "Known Errors" section).

Council	Scheme	Council	Scheme
AHRC	Research Grants -standard	ESRC	Research Grants
	Research Grants - speculative		Small Grants
	Resource Enhancement		Centres
	Small Grants		Programmes
	Research Leave
BBSRC	Standard		Nodes
	Standard-New Investigator		Groups
	Link		Networks
	Industrial Partnership Awards	NERC	Standard
	LINK-new investigator		Knowledge Transfer
	IPA-new investigator		Directed
EPSRC	Standard Research		New Investigators
	Network		Smalls Grants
	First Grant		AFI
	Mathematical Sciences Small Grants		Consortium
	Science and Innovation Awards	PPARC	Standard
	Faraday		Earmarked Faraday
	Platform		PIPSS
	OTG		PATT

12 April 2005 (Release 12) SRIF forms

15 February 2005 (Release 11)   Reconciliation statements, EPSRC college nomination tool