Tips: April 20, 2018

SPARCS Tips

The following are this week's tips on using SPARCS - 

• Subaward OCOI Letters: The Prepare Letter activity now has available an option for you to prepare an OCOI Statement for subawards. *NOTE* The OCOI letters are common for DARPA and IARPA submissions or needed due to specific request within the opportunity announcement.
• Relate Proposals: You may find that you need to have several proposals that need to be linked or "related" to one another within the SPARCS system. This could be for a number of reasons:
  • Matching Funds: If matching funds (funds that are being provided by an external sponsor in the form of a grant award) are part of the submission, another SPARCS funding proposal should exist or be created identifying the details of the matching funds.
  • Related through a parent proposal in SPEX: The original proposal was submitted and awarded via a SPEX proposal and now a request has been made/issued for additional funds/options periods or similar situations.
  • Related via Master Agreement: All funding proposals that are governed by the terms set out in a master agreement (an overarching agreement of standard terms) should be identified on each proposal; which can include multiple tasks or work orders.
  • Under Same Submission: Proposals that have overlapping tasks with different periods of performance. SPARCS cannot facilitate budgets with multiple overlapping periods under the same funding proposal; thus multiple funding proposals will need to be created. The multiple records will be submitted as one submission.

If you find that you need to relate or link proposals, be sure to use the Email Specialist activity to send a message to your OSP Specialist with the information. Remember to provide the reason and the FP#(s) that needs to be linked together.

Recent Improvements to SPARCS:

• You may have noticed that many of the Help Text (found in the grey bar on the right-hand side of most Smartforms) has been updated and some questions have been simplified within the funding proposal demographic section. Many definitions that you once found within the Help Text will now be found by clicking on the  that appear after some of the questions. These updates provide more uniformity in navigating help within the system.
  • The Help Text found within the budget detail sections will be updated shortly to reflect similar changes. STAY TUNED!