| What's new in Coeus Proposal Development? Every now and then, your Grants.gov proposal may require an attachment at #11 on the R&ROther Project Information form. Item #11 is called "Other Attachments". For this attachment, use the Narrative Type called "Other". You may select "Other" as a Narrative Type multiple times if multiple attachments are required for #11. At every NIH deadline, it seems, we find some new detail that must be exactly right, or the proposal validation fails. First, be aware: When you go to Action -> Grants.gov and click on Validate, this validation will catch many errors but not all of them. For example, this validation will not tell you that your biosketch is five pages long, even though it will generate an error in NIH Commons. Back to the details. Last week we discovered the following:
(1) Rolodex entries that will be used for Grants.gov submissions (e.g., consultants or subrecipient PI who are Key Persons) must include an email address.
(2) In the Rolodex, do not type anything in the "State" dropdown menu, even though Coeus will let you do so. Include the province or region of a foreign country in the "City" field. PIs need to ensure that the email address in NIH Commons is the same as their email address in Coeus (which pulls the address from HR). This email address should normally be a umaryland or school server address, since that is how the University and Dean's Offices send email communications to faculty. Check or update your email address via the myUMB Portal. In the Enterprise menu, click on "Update myCampus Contact Info". The updated email address should be in the Coeus Person record the next day. While working in Coeus, if you receive a message that "Your connection has been dropped by System dba", that means that Coeus has lost its connection to the campus server. You will probably still be connected to the Portal. Here's what to do: Close down Coeus (click the X in the upper right corner or, if necessary, end the task using Task Manager). Then go back into Coeus via the Portal. Before you open the proposal that you were working on, highlight the proposal in the Search Results screen (Proposal Development List) and delete the lock on the proposal. Wondering when your unit will begin using Coeus Proposal Development? Download the schedule (pdf). Following iterative reviews by the Coeus Users Group, final suggestions were incorporated and two important forms are now available in their final versions.
Cost Sharing Approval form - This form is to be signed in hard copy, scanned and uploaded as a Narrative attachment at Narrative Type "Cost Share Form".
Participating Department Commitment and DRIF Allocation form - Approvals are required if a department (unit) other than the Lead Unit will participate in a proposal by committing project personnel and/or resources. Approvals for participating unit commitments may be obtained via Coeus routing (without the form). For approvals via Coeus, the lead department must add the participating department's Chair as an approver and send the Chair a Coeus Proposal Notification or an email asking them to approve the proposal within a specified time frame. Alternatively, some or all of the required signatures may be obtained using one form per participating unit. The form(s) must then be scanned as a single document and uploaded in Coeus as a Narrative Attachments at the Narrative Type "Participating Dept Approvals".
Designating the DRIF allocation via this form is at the discretion of the departments. The form with signatures is required to document DRIF allocation, using one form per participating unit. Again, the completed, signed form is to be uploaded in Coeus as a Narrative Attachment at the Narrative Type "Participating Dept Approvals". The lead department is responsible for sharing sufficient proposal information with the participating unit to facilitate review and approval. - The NIH Salary Cap is tied to the federal Executive Level I salary level. Effective January 1, the federal Executive Level I salary level was increased to $191,300.
- Remember that the NIH Salary Cap applies only to proposals being submitted to NIH, AHRQ or SAMHSA.
- The PHS SF424 R&R application instructions state the following for detailed budgets: for Base Salary, "Enter the annual compensation paid by the employer for each Senior/Key person. This includes all activities such as research, teaching, patient care, or other.” For UMB, this translates to Institutional Base Salary. There is further clarification under the instructions for field name "Requested Salary”: “Any adjustment for salary limits will be made at the time of award.”
- Similarly, the PHS398 instructions require the Institutional Base Salary, and state that any adjustment for salary limits will be made at the time of award.
- The annual inflation increase should be applied.
- In the Yes/No questions, check YES for the question about the sponsor’s salary cap.
The Institutional Base Salary (IBS) should be entered in Coeus for all proposal budgets, with minimal exceptions. - For Modular budgets, there is NO exception. If your School requires that a detailed budget be entered in Coeus as backup to modular budgets, please use the actual IBS in the absence of other instructions from your School. Remember that the annual direct costs requested for the proposal can be manually entered for the modular budget submitted to NIH. If a detailed budget is provided, it is only used internally to understand how the estimated annual direct costs were determined and to understand how the F&A rate was calculated.
- The ONLY exception is for funding opportunity announcements that include a cap on total direct costs: If you are preparing a detailed budget for submission under an FOA that limits the total direct costs that may be requested, then it may be a good strategy to use the salary cap amount rather than the actual IBS to calculate the salary amount requested for investigators affected by the cap. In this case, (1) state in the budget justification that the investigator’s salary exceeds the cap, and (2) apply the annual inflation increase if at all possible, since the salary cap has been increased annually ever since the cap was tied to the Federal Executive level salary charts.
An investigator can "archive" his/her biosketch in Coeus so that it does not need to be uploaded for each application. Similarly, the investigator may enter their degree information once and proposals initiated after that will be populated with the saved degree information. Here's how: DEGREE INFORMATION
From the main menu, under “Departmental”, choose “Personnel”.
Search for a person and highlight the name on the resulting list.
From the menu, under “Edit”, choose “Degree Info”
Click “Add” and complete the pop-up screen. Then click OK to save. Coeus will tell you if any required information is missing. Note: month/day/year are required for the Graduation Date.
You may then add further degree information or click OK to save. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
From the main menu, under “Departmental”, choose “Personnel”.
Search for a person and highlight the name on the resulting list.
From the menu, under “Edit”, choose “Biographical Info”
From the menu, under “Edit”, choose “Add Module” (or use the Add Module icon)
Enter a description, then use the Edit menu or the icon to upload a Word or PDF file
You may then close the window When you add this person to a proposal, Coeus asks, “Bio Information exists for Smith, Joe. Do you want to synchronize the info?”
Click “Yes” to have the archived biosketch added to the proposal, and choose the document type from the menu.
Click “No” to upload a biosketch by the standard method.
UMB has been using Coeus to submit NIH proposals to Grants.gov. However, not all Grants.gov forms are supported in Coeus. We have done some testing with NSF forms and with one of the DOD forms, but not forms for other agencies. If you are working on a Grants.gov proposal, be sure to link to Grants.gov in Coeus early in the process of creating the proposal. If the forms for that agency or for that Funding Opportunity Announcement are not supported in Coeus, you will get a warning message to the effect that some required forms are not available and that you will need to use the PureEdge forms provided by Grants.gov. In that case, the proposal can be routed for internal approvals via Coeus, but the PureEdge file will need to be completed and sent to ORD separately for review and submission. For agencies other than NIH, even if you successfully link your Grants.gov Funding Opportunity Announcement in Coeus, please notify your ORD contact person and arrange for an early opportunity for pre-review of this proposal prior to submitting for approval. ORD will ensure that all the required forms are available, that they match up with the program announcement, and that the data and narratives correctly populate the forms. | |
