Attachments are the official repository of record for all sponsored awards since July 2015. Through a collective effort between OCG staff, CCO staff and Department Research Administrators, the attachments conventions and organization were thoroughly reviewed and refined, resulting in a detailed User Guide for Attachments. Excerpts from the User Guide as well as filtered sorts of the conventions list are provided on this page.

There is an Attachments folder, where all documents are stored in infoEd, nested under each proposal as well as a master Attachments folder containing all documents associated with the master and child proposals. Under each attachment folder there are nested folders:
 
  • Proposal
  • Award
  • Reports
  • Property
  • Closeout
  • Sub-Documents
  • Approvals

For Proposals

Proposals created in eRA are named according to Year/Month/Sequence.

Ex: 15-12-0012 This is the 12th proposal record created in the month of December in 2015. The final version of all files should be saved in eRA as the official repository of record.

For Post-Award

Notice of Award and associated documents post-award will reflect Award #:

Award#_Mod#_tag -- see the full list of tags

Property

Property attachments saved in a property record use the naming convention:

Tag#_tag Ex: “0W12345_Equip_Date_OffCampus”

Property attachments saved with an award record use the post-award naming convention.

For Correspondence

Award#_Email_YYYY.MM.DD_ Descriptor Ex: “NRB12345_Email_2014.10.01_NCE” Email received in the same day can be distinguished by adding # (e.g. _Email1, Email2), or by the descriptor.

Ten categories are used to classify documents based on their purpose as follows:
 

Category

Description

Proposal  Document
Award Document
Subaward Document

These categories are used to differentiate between the different types of documents within the award lifecycle.

Budget

Budgets fulfilling different purposes will be defined by the tagging conventions.

Supporting Documentation

Supporting Documentation is a document that provides information about a project that needs to be documented but is not a key document. EXAMPLES:  1) Financial reports that substantiate property reports or closeout releases that are submitted to the sponsor;  2) copies of subaward SPO; 3) emails from sponsors with instructions to complete forms or other documents, 4) emails that don’t fit into any other category, etc.

Report

Reports will be used mostly with Deliverables such as PI Technical, Patent/Invention reports, closeout reports, or other special reports required by the contract.

Internal Approval/Disapproval

To document approval or disapproval at the central office level (OCG, Conflict of Interest, Export Control, HR, RIO, etc). Demonstrates our due diligence in following procedures and sponsor requirements.

Sponsor Approval/Disapproval

To document approval or disapproval we receive from the sponsor. Demonstrates our due diligence in following procedures and sponsor requirements.

Cost Share

This category will be used mostly at proposal stage to easily identify critical information about the award's cost share commitment. The Cost Share category takes precedence over other categories. For example, cost share forms received at the proposal stage are always saved with the Cost Share category rather than Proposal Documentation category.

Property

Items related to property such as fabrication request forms; property reports; information about award property transferred to another institution with PI, etc.

Sorted Attachment Conventions