30th August 2012 : Review of PDF
Attendees: Susan Hamilton, Craig Smith, Adam Wadee, Michael Sun, Jill Nicoll
Meeting Note:
A. Development resourcing
Michael has been resourced for the next 3 weeks to handle the Infinite PDF and Jira change requests. Following this period, Michael is resourced at 50% to handle UAT testing feedback on the changes.
It is critical that all change requests be agreed promptly, to allow Michael to progress with the development work during this period.
No PDF feedback has been received from SCE or MVM. All changes requested by Susan, below, must be confirmed with Finance, SCE and MVM before budget is spent to action them. It was therefore agreed that Michael will progress with the non-PDF Jira changes during the week starting Monday 3rd September. Craig will confirm the requirements below with Finance and the other Colleges before the end of this week.
B. PDF - HSS Change Requests
B.1. Change to Declarations Section:
Remove the table block from below point 6:
Headings = “Grant/Holders, Date, Head of Institute/Centre/School, Date
Rows = 3 rows for data
Do not remove the row for the Head of College’s signature.
Note: item B.1 removed, as these rows are required by SCE.
B.2. Cost Centre on top row of page 1:
This field is not currently populated, because a single Proposal may have multiple Cost Centres. Susan suggested that this field be populated with the first Cost Centre that appears for the Proposal.
Craig to confirm with each College how this field should be populated for its Proposals.
Raised as Jira RES032-161
B.3. Destination Cost Centre – column 4 of all tables on pages 1 to 3:
Susan requested that this column be removed from all tables.
Craig to confirm with Janet:
why she included this column on the PDF template.
whether the column can be removed.
Raised as Jira RES032-162
B.4. Ref Data:
Remove the School and College columns.
Increase the table to allow for 10 rows of data.
Add a total, to sum all values in the “%” column. (The sum must add up to 100%.)
Raised as Jira RES032-163
B.5. Indirect Cost Split:
The source for this section is the Budget Breakdown form in the application.
5.1 Application change:
The 14% message, where applicable, should be permanently displayed. The message must include the sterling value calculated from the 14%.
Susan also requested that a “Comments” row be added to the application, the database, and the PDF. Adam confirmed that no further database changes can be made. This row therefore cannot be added.
Raised as Jira RES032-164
5.2.1 PDF:
The 14% message, where applicable, should be displayed.
Raised as Jira RES032-165
5.2.2 PDF:
Instead of the table currently showing on the PDF template, the following should display:
The account total (= the 14% message)
For each of the Indirect Breakdowns (must allow for up to four of these):
Cost Centre
Account Code
Job Code
Percentage
Raised as Jira RES032-166
Michael noted that this requirement would be extremely complex to code. When the estimate for completing the PDF changes was given, this complexity was not expected. These changes cannot be accomplished within that estimate.
Michael to:
assess and re-estimate the coding of this requirement.
leave this requirement till last, and review the budget with Adam before starting work on it.
Craig to confirm:
how to display the Account Total where the 14% rule does not apply.
that the PDF will only ever require a single table, with no more than four rows.
that the table will show Indirect Costs only (i.e. no Management Costs are required).
B.6. Staff Details table:
6.1 Susan requires two columns: Months FTE and % Effort.
These should operate as follows:
a) If a person works full-time for 6.5 months of a 13-month project, then
Months FTE = 6.5
% Effort = 100
b) If a person works half-time for the entire 13 months of the same project, then
Months FTE = 13
% Effort = 50
Note: item B.6.1 requires further investigation by ERI, to specify a calculation to derive the required information indirectly from a suite of other data fields.
6.2 Craig may require a new column: Hours FTE. Craig to confirm the source for this data, and how the column should operate.
6.3 Susan requested that the Funds Required column either be removed, or display as blank values only.
Craig to confirm with Janet:
why she included this column on the PDF template.
whether the column can be removed.
if the column must not be removed, then how it should be populated.
Note: item 6.3 removed, as these rows are required by MVM and SCE.
B.7. Payment Schedule section:
Take all items for this section directly from the application’s Payment Schedule form.
Raised as Jira RES032-167
C. AOCB
The current version of the PDF template (not including the above content changes) should be deployed to Dev, Test and Live as soon as possible.
D. Actions:
Meeting Note Reference | Action | Actioned On | Target Completion Date | Status |
All | Confirm with Finance and with each College that the above specification changes are also applicable to their requirements. Where any other stakeholder disagrees with the above specification, confirm the requirement details for that stakeholder. | Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Craig: Colleges have confirmed their agreement, still await feedback from finance. Gary to provide early next week |
| 1 | 07/09/12 - Craig: SCE require that the table block in the Declarations Section be retained: "While it is not the norm, we would plan to ask a PI who has not yet started here to sign off the PDF budget to allow us to process the proposal prior to their arrival. This could be a Fellow transferring to the School or a new academic who wishes to process a grant through Edinburgh before physically taking up office." | |||
2 | Craig to confirm with each College how the Cost Centre field should be populated at the top of page 1. | Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Craig: Happy to populate as proposed, take from first Cost Centre on Proposal. |
3 | For column 4 of all tables on pages 1 to 3, confirm with Janet:
| Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Craig: Janet included for school benefit, has no opinion either way on removing. Other colleges happy to remove. |
5.2 | For the Indirect Cost Split, confirm:
| Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Craig:
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6.1 |
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| 06/09/12 - Craig: re. Susan’s request for Months FTE and % Effort: … the only way to obtain this data is to do a calculation on the start and end date fields (AWD_BUDGET_SUMMARY.ITEMSTARTDATE & AWD_BUDGET_SUMMARY.ITEMENDDATE). Both these pieces of information can be obtained from the start/end dates and the number of hours. (The percentage figure that is supplied on the paper finance packs is a manual calculation based on these pieces of information.) Note that even if this is possible, it would only supply the percentage based on a full time member of staff, as we do not have information on staff contract hours etc. ------------------------------------------------------------- 07/09/12 - Craig: Further investigations required, no static data exists showing ‘no. of months’ or ‘percentage FTE’. This is calculable using hours and start/end dates though. Both CSE and HSS say this data is mandatory. MVM also agree it would be very useful ------------------------------------------------------------- ERI to supply a formula for the calculation. |
| 6.2 | For the Staff Details table:
| Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Jill: My mistake - this column is already in place. Craig was to check if it should remain. ------------------------------------------------------------- See note in row (6.1) above. ------------------------------------------------------------- 07/09/12 - Craig: Janet advised that this column was added as this provides the means of calculating the percentage FTE (when combined with no. of months). There are limitations to this, though, as any calculations would only inform of the total effort of the member of staff over the entire project (ie. it doesn’t provide detailed information of being, for example, 100% for 2 years, then 50% for the third year, as Susan hoped for). |
6.3 | For the Staff Details table, confirm with Janet:
| Craig | 07/09/12 | 07/09/12 - Craig: MVM and SCE require that the Funds Required column in the Staff Details table be retained: “We like the funds required column as it provides a direct assessment of what post is ok, or not, and allows to easily assess the options available to bring the funds required into line with the funds awarded.” Looks to be populated correctly. |
5.2 | For the Indirect Cost Split:
| Michael | Estimate: 14/09/12 |
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AOCB | Arrange for the current version of the PDF template (not including the above content changes) to be deployed to Dev, Test and Live as soon as possible | Adam, then Michael | 07/09/12 |
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