eRA Enhancements: Improvements to xTRACT To Be Implemented August 18, 2016

Dear Colleagues,

Please see the notice below from NIH regarding improvements to the xTRACT system starting August 18. If you need a Commons account set up, please contact era@research.uci.edu.

~Jonathan

Jonathan K. Lew, MPA
eRA Officer

eRA Enhancements: Improvements to xTRACT To Be Implemented August 18, 2016

In a software release scheduled for Thursday, August 18, 2016, several new features will be added to xTRACT. xTRACT is the Extramural Trainee Reporting And Career Tracking system and is accessed via eRA Commons. It allows applicants, grantees and assistants to create research training tables for progress reports and institutional training grant applications.

Features

Publication citations may now be searched and imported from Pubmed.

When entering publications for a participating trainee, xTRACT now provides users with the ability to search Pubmed using either the Pubmed identifier, the author name, or publication title.  The ability to enter a full citation manually (instead of searching Pubmed) is still available as well, for any occasion where the user may require it.

Access for delegated assistants (users with ASST role) is expanded.

Assistants may now perform the following on behalf of their PIs:

  • Initiate the Research Training Dataset (RTD) for New Applications
  • Finalize an RTD
  • Unfinalize an RTD

Sections labeled “NIH Support” are now labeled “NIH and Other Agency Sources of Support on Record.”

This labelling more accurately reflects xTRACT’s ability to present grants from some other (non-NIH) agencies for selection, when citing support information for faculty and trainees.

Table 4’s column labeled “Funding Source” now interprets the funding agency.

When previewing and finalizing the PDF of the RTD, any sources selected from the xTRACT database will display the funding source accordingly:

  • If the funding is affiliated with the NIH, displays “NIH”
  • If the funding is affiliated with the AHRQ, displays “AHRQ”
  • If the funding is affiliated with any other agency or HHS Operating Division, displays “Other Fed”

Computed means across all years are now displayed to one decimal point.

In Table 6B the calculated mean value for Counts were previously rounded to the nearest whole number. These values are now computed to one decimal point precision and rounded to that decimal place.

Bookmarks now included in PDFs.

When previewing and finalizing the output PDF, bookmarks are now included to provide navigation to the beginning of each training table.

Fixes

Corrects an earlier defect in Table 8 generation, where the same source of support might occasionally be cited twice for the same training year.

Improved performance/response time when navigating to the list of Participating Faculty for an RTD.

Following the release, please look for details and screenshots in the Online Help for xTRACT (and accessible through the question marks on xTRACT screens).

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