Changelog

Thank you for telling us that getting back out of a project's transaction details was hard to find. This round changes how those details open.

From your feedback

Transaction details

• Transaction details now open on their own page. Clicking an amount in Expense Categories, in Expenses by Month, or in a non-sponsored project's Financial Overview takes you to a page for just those transactions. Before, the details replaced the table in place. Breadcrumbs at the top lead back to the project, and a Back link sits beside them. Your browser's back button, refreshing the page, and sharing the link all work too.
• Switch categories without going back. The Switch Category, Switch Account, and Switch Month menus are still there, and now each choice is a link, so you can open one in a new tab to compare.
• The account code is in the page title, for example "Academic Personnel (1000) — Actual".
• "ITD" is spelled out as Inception-to-Date, on the transaction pages and on the Expense Categories table.
• Projections you haven't saved yet stay put when you open a category's transactions and come back.

Getting around

• Investigator links are at the top of the page. Return to Investigators, Projects, In Progress, and People now sit above the breadcrumbs and page title on every investigator page.
• Long project names are shortened in the breadcrumbs, so the trail fits on one line. The full name is still the title on the project page.

Fixes

• Table totals are easier to read. The figures in a table's totals row were too faint, and are now darker.

Thank you to everyone for further feedback on the new Research Portal!

From Your Feedback

Fixes

• Fixed spelling of "GCFA" to remove the slash between the C and F in the Sponsored Project Header
• Added missing department ID in the "Department" column's cells within the people salary page

Thank you to everyone who has been testing the new portal. This round of changes comes straight from what you told us. The sideways-scrolling improvements for wide tables shipped separately, and are described in Easier Scrolling in Wide Tables.

From your feedback

Project pages

• Every project detail is visible at once. The project header is now a single card with every field showing. Fields are grouped under Sponsorship, People & Administration, and Financials, so you no longer have to click each section open to find a value. The fields you look at most often sit at the top: Project ID, chart string, project period, principal investigator, and sponsor. If you'd rather have more room for the tables below, you can still collapse the card, and it stays collapsed next time. Non-sponsored projects work the same way.
• The full chart string is back on sponsored projects, next to the project ID, and you can copy it with one click.
• The account codes (100, 200, 300) are gone from the Financial Overview. That column caused more confusion than it answered.

Getting around

• People is one click away from any project. Project, protocol, and person pages now carry the same Projects and People links as the investigator's landing pages (plus Return to Investigators for staff), along with breadcrumbs back to the list you came from.
• Pages use more of a wide screen. The page now stretches to 1536 pixels instead of 1280, close to the current portal's width. On a laptop screen you won't see a difference.
• Fewer "Error while loading page" messages. The error notification that kept appearing in the top-right corner was caused by a problem in one of the tools the portal is built on. That's been updated, so you should see it far less often. If it still shows up, please let us know.

Project lists

• More room for project names. On the sponsored projects and industry clinical trials tables, the Project Name column is wider and the Sponsor column narrower.
• Plainer Role and Sponsor columns. The coloured highlights on those columns have been removed.

Downloads and saving

• Download buttons are easier to find. On People Summary, Expenses by Month, Project Team, and Subcontracts, the download button has moved to a more prominent spot.
• "Save" instead of "Submit." The button that saves a projection now says what it does.

On your phone

• Project tabs fit on the screen. Tabs that don't fit now fold into a dropdown, instead of hiding off the edge behind a thin scrollbar.
• Download buttons no longer crowd the section headings. On small screens they show just their icon.

From your feedback

• Wide tables are easier to scroll sideways. Long tables now have a fixed height and scroll inside themselves, with the column headings staying at the top. The sideways scrollbar and the page controls stay close to the rows you're reading, so you no longer have to scroll to the bottom of the page and then find your row again.
• A scrollbar at the bottom of your screen. If a table's own scrollbar is below the bottom of your screen, a thin scrollbar appears there instead. It disappears once the table's own scrollbar is in view.
• You can see when a table has more columns. A soft shadow along the edge of a table shows there are more columns in that direction, on phones as well as on desktop.

This is a ground-up rebuild of the Research Portal, and it's now open for you to try. Nothing about the portal you use today has changed — this runs alongside it. For why we rebuilt it and what's different, see the FAQ.

Everything below is available right now.

Sponsored projects

Open any sponsored project and you get its header details, a financial overview, and the supporting tables: payments and outstanding invoices, expenses by month, expense categories, cost share, subcontracts, and the project team. Inception-to-date and monthly figures drill down into the individual transactions behind them, so you can go from a total to its source without leaving the page.

Each project page also shows when the data warehouse behind it was last refreshed, and whether that refresh succeeded — so you can tell how current the numbers are.

Non-sponsored projects

Non-sponsored projects have their own list, header, financial overview, and project team view.

People and salary

See who has been paid from your projects, filtered to the last six months or the last three years, with payroll broken out month by month for any individual. Salary detail is available where your access allows it.

Pending proposals

Pending proposals are listed with tabs for all, still-active, and not-funded, so you can keep the list current as decisions come in.

Protocols

IRB and IACUC protocols are listed per investigator, each opening to its own detail page, with associated funding shown for IRB records.

Favorites and quick access

Star investigators, projects, and people to pin them for next time. People favorites include a Northwestern directory search, so you can add someone who has never been paid from one of your projects. Staff also get a Quick Access page: jump straight to a project by its number, or pick back up from the projects you looked at most recently.

Getting data out

Most tables have their own export button for just that table. For a whole project, one download produces a single Excel workbook with a tab each for the header, team, payments, expenses by month, inception-to-date, cost share, subcontracts, and outstanding invoices. It's built in the background and notifies you when it's ready.

Smaller things you may notice

• Most tables paginate rather than scrolling forever, so you can see how much is there.
• Tables start with the columns the current portal shows, and you can switch on additional columns that the underlying report returns.
• Non-obvious field names carry a definition pulled from Northwestern's official business glossary.
• Signing in uses Northwestern Online Passport and Duo, the same as other University systems.

Telling us what's wrong

The most useful thing you can do is compare a project you know well against the current portal or Cognos and report anything that doesn't match. Missing columns, missing reports, and slow pages are all worth reporting too. The FAQ explains what kind of detail makes a report easy to act on, and who to contact.