Diet Soda or Regular? Orange Juice or Apple? Webforms or PDFs?

Posted on by Grants.gov

You are at a crossroads. Your workspace has been created. You have logged in and clicked over to the Forms tab. And now you face a decision point: Do you use webforms or PDF forms (or both)?

This decision – admittedly – is a bit more complicated than choosing between, say, two types of soda pop or fruit juice.

When applicants are set to begin work on application forms, they have to decide whether to fill out any given form in a web browser or in Adobe Reader/Acrobat. This training video – recently updated – explains the how-to of each approach to forms.

In this post, we lay out the reasoning and upsides for each option. If, by the end of this post, you still don’t know what to do, we have some good news for you, too.
Continue reading Diet Soda or Regular? Orange Juice or Apple? Webforms or PDFs?

Go Deep: Adding Subforms to a Grants.gov Workspace

Posted on by Grants.gov

If you’re lucky, your next federal grant application will be pretty straightforward. You will need to complete the SF-424, of course, and then a few additional forms. But – fingers crossed – hopefully you won’t be thrown any curve balls.

One such challenging pitch to hit might be the need to add subforms to a parent form within your workspace.

Adding and completing subforms in Grants.gov Workspace is different than it was in the Legacy PDF Application Package. No longer are subforms extracted from the parent form. In Workspace, subforms are added below the parent form within the Forms tab.

The following instructions walk you step-by-step through the process, in hopes that if you are thrown the ole’ subform curveball on your next application you will recognize it right away and be able to hit it out of the park:

Continue reading Go Deep: Adding Subforms to a Grants.gov Workspace

Become a Workspace Wizard – Lesson 1: Collaborate Using Webforms

Posted on by Grants.gov

Since the release of Workspace in 2015, Grants.gov has been hard at work integrating new features for applicants submitting federal grant applications.

To help you master the most important of these enhancements, we have developed a series of lessons that will turn you into a Workspace Wizard faster than you can say, “hocus-pocus, grant me focus.”

So, are you ready to learn the ways of the Workspace Wizard? Lesson 1 is especially aimed at teams of applicants who collaborate on a single federal grant application.

Become a Workspace Wizard - Lesson 1

In Workspace, applicants have a choice as to which type of form they want to complete – either PDF forms or online webforms.

Continue reading Become a Workspace Wizard – Lesson 1: Collaborate Using Webforms

New Applicant Feature: How to Limit Access to Budget Forms

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Grants.gov listens to user feedback and tries – whenever possible – to add requested features.

One of Grants.gov’s newest features gives the Workspace Owner, AORs with MPIN access, and the E-Business Point of Contact the ability to limit access to budget forms. These forms often contain confidential information, such as salary data.

With Release 16.0, controls have been added to permit specific users to view and edit the budget form data.

Continue reading New Applicant Feature: How to Limit Access to Budget Forms

How Do I Download, Complete & Upload a Workspace Form? #ReplyAll

Posted on by Grants.gov

The Grants.gov Support Center helps a lot of you resolve problems and complete your federal grant applications before the deadline. One of the most common questions the Support Center gets is how to use Workspace forms.

Below are general steps to answer that question. “General” because the steps below depend on whether you are filling out a webform or a PDF version of the form—you get to choose. Since this is the most common Workspace-related question to the Support Center, we know many of you have no problem creating a workspace since the forms are only accessible through that.

Continue reading How Do I Download, Complete & Upload a Workspace Form? #ReplyAll

How the Government Prepares Grant Application Forms – Part 3

Posted on by Grants.gov

In Parts 1 and Part 2 of this series, we discussed the two phases of developing grant application forms: content approvals by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and technical development by Grants.gov.

The time required to deploy new or updated forms largely depends on the amount of technical development that is needed.

The graphic below estimates the different deployment timelines for cosmetic, minor, moderate, and major form changes. Click on the graphic to view its full-size version.

Continue reading How the Government Prepares Grant Application Forms – Part 3

How the Government Prepares Grant Application Forms – Part 2

Posted on by Grants.gov

In Part 1 of this series, we explained the content development process for new and updated Grants.gov forms. In Part 2, we focus on Grants.gov’s role in the technical development of forms.

Forms Development Process

The development time of each form can range from one month for a cosmetic change to up to six months for a new, multi-page form. The following provides a high-level overview of the forms development cycle:

Continue reading How the Government Prepares Grant Application Forms – Part 2

What Is an Online Form?

Posted on by Grants.gov

In the context of applying for federal grants, “forms” are those seemingly endless documents you must fill out to complete the application process. An “online” form or webform, then, is a digital version of these documents that is accessible and editable in a web browser.

There is nothing revolutionary about this concept, but we at Grants.gov have now made online forms available in Grants.gov Workspace to make the application process a bit easier for you and your team. Continue reading What Is an Online Form?

Infographic: Illustrating the Standard Grants.gov Workspace Workflow

Posted on by Grants.gov

With Release 15.4, Workspace users now have the option of filling out online forms, rather than PDF forms. This new functionality works with the existing Workspace workflow.

The following infographic illustrates how a team of applicants can take advantage of Grants.gov Workspace when applying for their next federal grant. A clickable version of this infographic is available on Grants.gov.

Continue reading Infographic: Illustrating the Standard Grants.gov Workspace Workflow