Contents
Subawards
Award Lookup Now Used for Subaward Setup
Subaward requests can now be submitted using SAGE. With the transition to Workday, subawards are now associated with Awards, rather than Funding Actions (FAs). To set up a new subaward, users will search and select their award, and the eGC1 data will default based on the award selected.
Funding Action (FA) Validation and Lookup Removed
Since subawards are now associated with awards, the subaward FA lookup is no longer active or needed, and the validation has been removed. For legacy subawards, the FA fields will continue to display for reference.
Holds on Award Setup (ASR) and Modification (MOD) Requests
OSP and GCA Can Apply Holds to ASRs and MODs
OSP and GCA can now set and remove holds on ASR and MOD Requests. A new Holds section is available in the left navigation. After saving holds, an entry will display in the Comments & History section of the ASR/MOD.
History of Holds Added to Comments & History Section
Campus, OSP, and GCA can view the history of holds activity on the Comments and History section of the ASR or MOD request.
Holds Banner Displays on ASR and MOD Requests
When holds are applied to an ASR or MOD request, users will now see a banner at the top of the request, alerting them to the hold. The campus banner will be informational only, and highlighted in blue. The OSP and GCA banner will be red, and indicate any action that may be needed before moving the item forward in the workflow.
Campus banner
OSP & GCA banner
Required Fields on Award and Budget Setup
Required Fields on SAGE Budget Worksheets
The SAGE Budget worksheet settings have been updated to show an asterisk next to fields that are required for ASR and MOD requests. These fields support the Workday award data needs.
In the SAGE Budget Salary and Benefit Costs section, additional help text has been added to remind campus that a person must be entered with the Principal Investigator role to provide the necessary grant PI data to Workday for award setup.
Required Fields on Award Setup Requests
Required fields on the Award Setup Request now display an asterisk next to the field label. When the user clicks in a required field and navigates away, additional red highlighting will draw their attention back to the fields required.
Miscellaneous Maintenance
eGC1 Status Updated to “Awarded” When Awards Are Processed
When awards are set up in Workday and the award setup request is marked as “Processed” in SAGE, the associated eGC1 status will now change from “Approved” to “Awarded.”
OSP Ability to Change the Linked eGC1 on Award Setup Requests
When OSP initiates an ASR and while it is in “OSP Setup” status, OSP can now change the linked eGC1 if an error has been made, prior to sending the ASR to campus. OSP will need to refresh the “Access & Roles” section after changing the eGC1 to see updated eGC1 data.
Modification Start and End Dates Display for Schedule Changes
On Modification Requests, when users select the Schedule Changes category, the “Current Authorized Spending Start Date” and “Current Authorized Spending End Date” fields will be visible and enabled for users to enter the dates. Existing MOD requests already processed with the Schedule Changes category will display the date fields without any dates populated.
Removal of Deny Reason for Requests
An issue was preventing the deny reason on requests from saving properly. Until a full fix can be completed, in the interim, the deny reason field has been removed and OSP or GCA will now enter the reason as a comment instead. The denial reason field will be added back into a future release.
Advance Extension Requests No Longer Show Former Budget Numbers
The former budget numbers no longer display for users on new Advance Extension Requests.
Award Request List Default Set to 25 Rows for OSP and GCA
In order to improve performance and reduce load on systems, the defulat setting of the Award Request List for OSP and GCA will initially show 25 rows instead of 50 rows. Users can still set it to up to 50 rows if needed, for now, but with dome deteriorated performance expected.
Fix: Truncated Comments on Requests with URLs
ASR and MOD request comments with URLs in them now show proper alignment without truncation.
Fix: SAGE Budget Personnel Side Panel Freezes
The SAGE Budget TBD personnel entry has been updated to prevent side panel freezing when users clicked out of fields quickly, prior to SAGE saving the data.
Update: Missing PI Validation Message on Award Setup Requests
The language used on the Award Setup Request Review and Submit page when the SAGE Budget worksheet PI is missing has been updated to direct users back to SAGE Budget to add a worksheet PI.
Fix: Cannot download previous version of attachments on Requests
Users can now select the current or prior version of attachments on ASRs, MOD, and Advance requests.
Fix: Animal Use Protocols Not Always Saving Country Data
An issue with the saving of “Country” data when a new institution was added to Animal Use protocols on the eGC1 has been fixed.
Temporary Change: Advance Tasklist “Processed” Filter Deactivated
Due to performance issues, we have temporarily deactivated the “Processed” status filter on the SAGE Advance Tasklist. While we work on improvements, this temporary solution will protect system performance and mitigate risk. In the meantime, if campus users need to locate a processed advance, they should use Advanced Search and search by either the Advance number or the eGC1 number to find an item.
Please note that SAGE Central filters will not change, but we recommend avoiding filtering for all “Processed” advances until we patch the issue next week.
User Interface Design Component Updates
A required Angular Material version upgrade has been completed, which has slight impacts to the SAGE user interface. The design changes of note include the following:
SAGE Budget, Advances, and Awards Sections: Excess table spacing has been reduced, small font sizes have been increased, and all capital letters on buttons and table headers have been removed to improve readability and accessibility.
SAGE Budget Icons: Subaward and Fabrication worksheet icons have been updated in the left navigation and the Budget Summary section within the Other Costs table. The More Actions menu (three dots) has been replaced with a Delete Worksheet button for Internal, Subaward, and Fabrication worksheets in the left navigation.
SPAERC & SERA
Updates to Post-Award Change (PAC)
In order to improve the data quality, reporting, and analytics around award data, the following changes have been made to the Post-Award Change in SPAERC and SERA:
- Addition of Revised Start Date field, displayed for the PAC Requested Change type “Start Date Change”
- Addition of Revised End Date field, displayed for PAC Requested Change types “Extension”, “Early Termination”, or “Relinquishment”
- Addition of Temporary End Date field, displayed for PAC Requested Change type “Temporary Budget Extension” (formerly called “Advanced Extension”)
- Addition of Modification Number field
- Addition of Originating Sponsor Award Number field, which will pre-populate from the parent FA data, when present.
Updates to PAC Notification PDF
The above new PAC fields will also be displayed on the PDF attachment that is sent to campus when a PAC has been processed.
Updates to Pending Actions Report
The above new PAC fields are also included on the GCA Pending Actions Report
PAC Requested Change Type Updates
The following changes have been made to existing PAC types:
- “Advanced Extension” is now relabeled as “Temporary Budget Extension”
- “Significant Financial Interest” has been removed
- “Create Program Income” has been removed
- “Change of Award” has been removed
- “Change in Authorized Action” has been removed
The removed PAC Requested Change types will continue to display on historical PACs.
Update to Cycle View of PAC Data
When in the SPAERC or SERA Cycle view, the PAC row will now display the new Revised Start Date, Revised End Date, and Temporary End Date fields when populated.
Intellectual Property Provisions validation message update
The validation message that appears when the Intellectual Property Provisions question is not answered will now match the current question label, for added clarity.
SERA only: Future budget biennium selection removed
The Budget Biennium field, updated by GCA in many of the items in SERA, will no longer show future biennium dates for selection. This change will help prevent erroneous biennium selections.
FIX: Unprocessing of FAs/PACs/ADVs Can Cause Errors
Periodically GCA staff need to “unprocess” an item previously completed. When new fields are added to SPAERC and SERA, it would at times cause validation messages at time of unprocessing of an item, that were not able to be corrected by GCA. The system has been updated to suppress validations during unprocessing, to alleviate this problem. The validations will again run when the item is re-processed.
Updates
Links to New SERA User Guide
Additional help icons (question marks) have been added to SERA. These link to contextual help in the new SERA User Guide.
Fixes
Error when Inactivating Advances
An issue that was causing users to receive an error when trying to discard advances has been fixed.
Features
Expose Cycle Details tab in SERA
GCA can now view cycle details from SERA. This provides GCA staff with greater visibility to the relationship between items, and makes it easier to quickly research the chronology of an award.
Subcontracts open in a new browser window in SERA
Subcontracts in SERA will now always open in a new browser window and will include navigation to related cycle items.
Features
Allow GCA to delete their own attachments
GCA is now able to delete erroneously uploaded attachments to the funding action and post-award change in SERA. When an attachment is deleted, a note is added to the item recording who deleted the attachment and at what time.
Bug Fixes
Sponsored Program Activity Type and Clinical Trial Phase validations will no longer be applied in SERA
Sponsored Program Activity Type and Clinical Trial Phase, which are read-only fields on the FA in SERA, were at times generating validation errors in SERA when the fields contained missing or invalid entries. The system has been updated to no longer trigger these validations in SERA. The validation rules will be applied only in SPAERC, and FAs already in GCA or completed prior to these fields being added to the system will not be subject to the validation rules.
FA or PAC returned by GCA getting bad dates when flipped and re-sent
When an item is converted from PAC to FA or FA to PAC the “Received in GCA” date is no longer defaulted to 01/01/0001. Instead, it now shows the actual “Received in GCA” date for the item.
Bug Fix
Older FAs in SERA have problems opening
An issue that had prevented Funding Actions that predated the creation of the Authorized Action field from being opened in SERA has been fixed.
Features
View FA Sponsored Program Activity Type from SERA
The new Sponsored Program Activity Type field will be viewable on the Funding Actions in SERA.
Update SERA Pending Activities Report with Sponsored Program Activity Type and Institutional Activity Category fields
The “Export Pending Actions” report in SERA will be updated to include the new Institutional Activity Category, and the Type of Award field will be replaced with the new Sponsored Program Activity Type field.
Features
Make Short Title field uppercase
The Short Title field for FA or PAC inherits the original value from its parent eGC1 which typically is a mixed case entry. A change has been made to always store and display this field in uppercase in SERA independent of the eGC1. This will help speed up data entry as GCA staff can directly copy and paste the data in FIN, and the budget name will already be in uppercase as required by FIN.
Include new FA and PAC data elements in extract
About 30 additional FA/PAC fields have been identified by GCA and added to the data extract (through “Export Pending Actions” from the “Search” tab in SERA). The new fields are added to the end of the file, and the GCA flag is listed as 9 separate yes/no columns on the report. The addition of these fields will help speed up the budget setup process as GCA staff won’t need to look for the information elsewhere.
Make FA “Total Cost Share Amount” Field format Numeric
The “Total Cost Share Amount” field on an FA (previously alphanumerical format) has been cleaned up and all historic non-numeric data has been purged (approved by OSP). The field has been reformatted to accept numeric values only. It is allowed to be empty when the Cost Share flag is “no”, and a numeric value or zero is required when Cost Share is “yes” per business rules. This change will help with cost share amount calculation and match that to Cost Share Summary in eFECS. As a result of this change, the reporting field “totalCostShareAmount” in the Award table in the EDW 1.0 database RAD has also been updated to numeric.
Update auto-generated ADV emails and add to Admin tools
The auto-generated campus notification emails (for FA, PAC and ADV) have been edited by GCA and updated in SERA. The content of these emails is now stored in the admin database and can now be managed through the SAGE admin tool. A new admin UI “SAGE/SERA” (similar to SAGE/SPAERC) is yet to be developed so GCA staff can access this admin tool and manage the content of these emails. This task will be included in a future release (to be prioritized and scheduled).
Features
Subcontract UI changes
The SERA system has been updated to show the full PO number for all types of PO’s that could be used for subcontracts (T requisition numbers, Ariba EI and BPO numbers). SERA subcontract search has been updated to allow for searching on PAS and ARIBA type of PO numbers.
Bug Fix
99 Error triggered in SERA by angle brackets in FA and PAC comments and history
99 errors should no longer appear in SERA when angle brackets are used in comments on FAs and PACs.
