Submitting a Proposal
In July 2023, Iowa State launched 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 had become antiquated and inadequate in helping Principal Investigators meet the requirements of an ever evolving and increasingly complex research proposal environment. In addition, the legacy systems presented ongoing agility and maintenance challenges.
Streamlyne Research is an electronic Research Administration (eRA) software with interconnected modules, cloud-based security, and industry-leading uptime. It is a multi-faceted proposal and development and routing system that will grow and evolve with the changing needs of the Iowa State research community.
The proposal development module, launched in July 2023, enables 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.
Moving to Streamlyne replaces GoldSheets, Cardinal Sheets, and Cayuse System-to-System (S2S) proposals for Grants.gov 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.
A change in routing deadlines has been implemented to help PIs meet sponsor requirements by ensuring their 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 the Office of Sponsored Programs Administration (OSPA) for review; the other for routing the proposal documents for approval.
The transition to Streamlyne and the changes in process were made to ensure Iowa State has the systems in place to help PIs deliver successful proposals that review well and stand up to increasing sponsor scrutiny. Additional Information on the new Streamlyne system can be found at https://www.ospa.iastate.edu/streamlyne.