25th March 2024
Awards functionality
The development of awards functionality is being prioritised this Spring. NERC, ESPRC and STFC will be piloting awards for three funding opportunities which will include these features:
- Enhanced functionality for change requests including: creation and submission of change requests, view and track open requests, view previous requests
- Suspend and resume awards, addressing scenarios such as parental leave, equipment availability and cases where organisations are being investigated for non-compliance of UKRI's terms and conditions
- Allow for individual configuration of award-specific data e.g. custom FEC percentages.
- Introduction of structured questions, which will allow for improvements in data capture, less manual data entry and clearer audit trails.
15th December 2023
Responsive Mode
UKRI are reviewing how Responsive Mode applications are processed. Whilst this review is being conducted, some responsive mode opportunities will have regular closing and opening dates across the year whilst others will be open with regular decision points. For further details for specific Research Councils, a link can be found on the UKRI website.
Awarding
Awards will continue to be issued in Je-S until April 2024. From April 2024, UKRI intend for most opportunities to be awarded in TFS. Pilot awards will be used to test TFS awarding functionality in January and February 2024.
Groups
When completing an application, you can now assign a group to the applicant. Please add the applicant’s Faculty in the Groups field and this will allow for the Faculty’s Research Services team to be notified of the application and track the application’s progress.
22nd November 2023
ESRC have confirmed the return of “always open” responsive mode applications, following the same recent announcement from EPSRC.
16th November 2023
EPSRC have provided an update on the submissions of EPSRC Responsive Mode applications. There will be no deadlines for Responsive Mode applications from November 2023 and applicants are encouraged to apply when their application is ready to submit. The Funding Service system will show a closing date as per system requirements but EPSRC will process Responsive Mode applications on an ongoing basis in batches.
6th November 2023
UKRI announced on Thursday 2nd November that co-editing functionality will be released to TFS admin accounts. Initially admin accounts will be able to edit applications once the applicant has submitted for approval. This functionality will be released week c/o Monday 6th November.
In December 2023 (release date TBC), the edit functionality will be expanded so that admins can edit applications at any time. There will be no requirement for applicants to “share” applications with admins; admins will automatically have edit access. An audit trail of changes made to any application will be visible as well.
27th September 2023
TFS experienced another outage on the day of major EPSRC and ESRC deadlines. Thankfully many applications were still submitted in time, though there were those who were unable to submit within the original timeframes. UKRI has stated on their TFS updates webpage that the EPSRC deadline has been extended to 2nd October (and the ESRC deadline has been extended to 29th September). If any application misses a deadline because of a technical issue, please contact support@funding-service.ukri.org with the opportunity title; council name; and ideally evidence of the reason for late submission and the application reference number. They note "Any delay in submission as a result of a technical issue will not impact the processing or assessment of the application."
22nd September 2023
In the build-up to the deadline for several funding calls on 19/09/2023, TFS was unavailable and several applications across the sector could not be submitted. Thankfully Research Services and JRO managed to submit all Imperial applications prior to the deadline despite this incident. Serious concerns were raised with UKRI, who responded positively, publishing information on their TFS updates webpage confirming that the deadlines had been extended for a week and that any delay in submission as a result of a technical issue will not impact the processing or assessment of an application. The Research Office also requested that:
- UKRI investigate what immediate improvements can be made to the system to improve its speed and reliability, e.g. additional processing power; and
- Functionality to allocate applications to groups and to allow administrators to edit applications on behalf of academics is delivered ASAP and at a minimum before any other major deadlines.
This has been acknowledged and we are awaiting a formal response on these points.