Xitracs Planning™ > Control Panel

The Grants feature that lets you manage the review and approval of grant applications.

Grants in the Xitracs Portal are managed via Workflows. Using this function, one or more portal users can be assigned to activities such as form completion or approval.

Grant workflows are defined in Templates. Click the Create template link to add a new workflow template.

A workflow template consists of a sequence of Steps, each of which can be assigned to one of:

•The workflow initiator - the person who starts the workflow

•A team - either a specific team or to allow the initiator to select a team

•A role - to allow the initiator to select a role (this option is available only if the Credentials module is installed)

•A person with a role - to allow the initiator to select a person with a specific role (this option is available only if the Credentials module is installed)

•A specific person - to allow the initiator to select a person (from faculty & staff, or portal users if the Credentials module is not installed)

A Step can be one of five types:

•Form - The assignee completes the form associated with the step - see below

•Approval - The assignee(s) marks the step approved

•Signature - The assignee(s) marks the step as signed

•Notification - The assignee is notified of a completed workflow - this can only be the last step

A step may also be associated with an application status, e.g Pre-Approval. This is used to track the overall status of a application.

If the step is a type Approval, there is a parameter to set a Discussion option if the assignee is not a single person. When this option is set, assignees will be able to post discussion comments which will be visible to the assignees only.

If the step is a type Notification, there is a parameter to set an Email Report option. When this option is set, a PDF copy of the credentialing report will be attached to the notification email.

If the step is a type Form, a Fields link will appear in the function column. Click this link to add fields to the form or edit/remove existing fields.

Each field can be of a Type, depending on the input required at the associated step. If the type is Person the field will include a search look-up from faculty and staff in the system; check the Person Details parameter if you want a link to the selected person's details to appear in the form. If the type is Courses the field will include a search look-up from courses in the system.

You can specify the layout of fields in a form by specifying a Field Width and whether the next field should be Inline. (Note that there are a maximum of 12 columns available for each line of a form. For example, a width of 6 will occupy 50% of the row.) Check the No Label parameter to suppress the field name; this is useful if you have multiple rows of the same fields and do not need the column header repeated.

Check the Allow Attachments parameter to add a file upload capability for a field. You can also specify if at least one file must be uploaded in order to complete the form.

You can change the position sequence of a field in a form by clicking the Edit link for a field and then entering a new position number. You will get a warning message if you have duplicate position numbers in the form.

If a step is assigned to a person with a role or a specific person, you can specify whether the assignee is able to send the workflow task back to a earlier step, for example if not approved.

The Report template function controls the MSWord® .dotx template that is used when generating workflow reports in Word or PDF format.