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pFACT FAQ and Information

Links:

• pFACT Live
• pFACT Test

Documentation:

• Sussex pFACT 3.1 User Guide v8 - June 2021

Daily Processing Checks & Issues

• Submit to Funder:
  • Check title - truncated? Project & Long Title in step?
  • Check PI comes thorugh to Oracle correctly
  • Check Funder come through to Oracle correctly
  • Check Bid Value in Oracle agrees with submission email and amount in pFACT (Note: bid value should be the UoS share, not the full value of the project)
  • Check/Update PI & Co-I Intellectual and Budget share splits

• Forecasted:
  • Note: projects don't need to move to forecasted - they can go straight to awarded in pFACT. Move to Forecasted if contract negotiation is under way.
  • Check Title - this now appears on weekly reports sent to senior management, so the title needs to be valid.
  • Check the project is marked as "forecasted" in Oracle (Warning: if pFACT has diplayed any errors when changing status to forecasted, the project often does not move to forecasted in Oracle).

• Awarded:
  • Check award amount is correct in Oracle (Note: award amount should be the UoS portion of the award, not the full value)
  • Check Title - this now appears on weekly reports sent to Senior Management, so the title needs to be valid
  • Check there is a valid decision date
  • Note 1: Staff changes don't always come through to Oracle correctly at award stage - really need a full list of staff Intellectual and Budget shares in the award email to enable proper checking.
  • Note 2: All additional fields must be filled in before the project is set to awarded in pFACT - changes done after the project has been set to awarded will not necessarily be reflected in Oracle.
  • Note 3: If the PI or any Co-Is are not yet at Sussex, please include a note in the award email on expected arrival dates --- once the new staff have been set up on the HR system, the Oracle record will be updated.

Weekly Report of New Awards and Forecasted:

Weekly report automatically emailed to senior staff first thing on onday morning with detail of all projects marked as "Forecasted" or "Awarded" in the last week. A few things to be aware of:

• Project Title is now "visible" - need to make sure it's as meaningful as possible, and that it's not all in capitals, not truncated and doesn't have any "carriage returns" or "line feeds" embedded (can happen if "cut and pasted" from another document).
• PI/Co-I Intellectual and Budget shares are correct --- in the case of awards, "congrats" emails are sent to all PIs and Co-Is (from the PVC-R) - we have had a number of cases where these have been sent to the wrong academics if the PI/Co-I list isn't correct at award time.
• The "Comments" field is visible --- please be aware that anything entered into this field is appropriate for everyone to see.
• "Beware Fridays" --- if there are PI or Co-I changes (names or share splits), these are manually corrected on Monday morning by the RIQI team after the weekly report has been sent out, so the weekly report will not reflect any required changes.

General "Status Change" Issues

• Status changes where PI/Co-I split is specified, but there are either no Co-Is tagged in pFACT, or there are a different number of Co-Is. If the PI and all Co-Is are specified by name (or initials) in the email this can assist in fixing the issue.
• Staus changes where the PI/Co-I split is specified, but goes to the wrong academics in Oracle --- this can occur if the academics have changed in pFACT but the changes haven't successfully gone through to Oracle. Again, if the PI and all Co-Is are specified by name (or initials) in the email this can assist in identifying the issue.
• All staff marked as PI or Co-I in pFACT must have some time allocated (even if it's 0.001 hours) to be transferred to Oracle.
• For projects with PI and Co-I(s), there's a risk associated with setting the shares as 100% PI when first submitting the project when the share split isn't known. If this isn't picked up at a later stage, the system ends up with a number of projects with Co-Is specified who have no share of any form on the project. It's "safer" to leave the split as "even" until shares allocations are identified. This is a big enough issue to warrant a monthy exception report being sent through to the Senior Research Development Managers for checking.
• Intellectual and Budget shares should be specified by Academic, not by School. Splitting a 31.4% share between 7 staff "equally" can be a challenge.
• At award stage, it's worth checking the PI and Co-Is --- if there are Co-Is with no Budget or Intellectual share split, should they be there?
• "Dummy records" --- some staff have to be manually added to pFACT (for staff not yet at the University, or for staff being costed at a differernt Grade/Spine Point) - these records must not be marked as PI or Co-I in pFACT. If they are, a random current or ex staff or student record is picked in Oracle to allocate the share to.