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Transition to New Proposal System Begins July 2023

Posted Mar 24, 2023

In July 2023, Iowa State will roll out the Streamlyne Proposal Development and Routing System to replace the GoldSheet, Cardinal Sheet, Liquid Office and Cayuse Systems.

After more than 20 years of service, the current proposal and development system is antiquated and inadequate in helping Principal Investigators meet the requirements of an ever evolving and increasingly complex research proposal environment. In addition, the current system presents ongoing agility and maintenance challenges.

As a result, the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and the Office of Sponsored Programs and Administration (OSPA) – in collaboration with the colleges and user groups – began defining the expectations for an enhanced proposal development and routing system in 2019.

“Our goal was to identify an improved, multi-faceted system that would grow and evolve with the changing needs of our research community and be viable for years to come,” said OSPA director, Becky Musselman.

After reviewing several industry-leading options, the project team selected Streamlyne Research, an electronic Research Administration (eRA) software with interconnected modules, cloud-based security, and industry-leading uptime.

The first phase of implementation, beginning this July, will enable pre-award proposal development and pre-award institutional proposals for both sponsored funding and gifts to co-exist in one cohesive system. The Proposal Development module provides for collaborative development of a proposal, including the collection of data and attachments required for approvals, reporting, and tracking. The Institutional Proposals module provides for institutional recordkeeping of proposals submitted and agreements requested (e.g. MTAs, MOUs and NDAs). In addition, Streamlyne is a certified Workday integration partner.

The move to Streamlyne means GoldSheets, Cardinal Sheets, and Cayuse System-to-System (S2S) proposals for Grants.gov will be replaced with a single system that will: reduce the number of systems PIs need to learn and use; decrease duplicate entries; and enable PIs to view, save and retain proposal attachments in a single location. Additional Streamlyne benefits for PIs include:

• Viewing proposals at any time once they have been initiated;
• The ability for both PIs and Co-PIs to approve proposals at the same time without having to wait for the prior approver to authorize;
• Eliminating the need to maintain files of submitted proposals as these files will be saved and accessible in Streamlyne to help create accurate lists of current and pending support;
• Tracking where their proposals-in-routing are in the workflow and approval process;
• The ability to sort proposal listings by various criteria including sponsor, title, project, status, lead unit, deadline date, grants.gov opportunity number or initiator;
• The ability to copy proposal records – including budgets and attachments – in order to initiate new proposals;
• Improved and more convenient budget development made possible by the system’s ability to automatically load a research team member’s salary and benefits when the individual’s name is entered; and the ability to store multiple budget drafts for a single project; and
• Co-PIs, in addition to PIs, will be able to document proposal financial responsibility by responsible person.

In order to help PIs meet sponsor requirements, a change in routing deadlines is being implemented to ensure proposals conform with the ever-changing requirements of funding opportunities. With Streamlyne, a new Initial Review process will be used for all sponsored project budgets. All sponsored project budgets will be reviewed and approved before final proposals are routed internally for ISU approvals. This means two firm proposal deadlines will be put in place: one for submission of the budget to OSPA for review; the other for routing the proposal documents for approval.

“Our transition to Streamlyne and our changes in process are being made to ensure that we have the systems in place to help our PIs deliver successful proposals that review well and stand up to evolving and increasing sponsor scrutiny,” said Vice President for Research Peter Dorhout. “With change comes challenges. But through every step of the process, our service-minded team has kept PIs’ perspectives top-of-mind while making the necessary and purposeful changes needed to continue to advance the Iowa State research enterprise.”

The Streamlyne system is currently being tested by the ISU Streamlyne Project Team and the Campus Super-User Group comprised of ISU proposal development staff from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences/Ag Experiment Station (CALS/AES), College of Engineering (ENG), College of Human Sciences (CHS), College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS), College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), Extension and Outreach (VPEO) and the Grants Hub. A system pilot will be initiated in May with CALS/AES and CHS. Training opportunities for all PIs will be offered prior to the July 5, 2023, go-live date. Additional Information on the new Streamlyne system can be found at https://www.ospa.iastate.edu/streamlyne.