Pre-award module
The form changes when your process does
Your questions and your routing, defined by your own administrators — so a new requirement in November is an afternoon rather than a statement of work.
The failure this replaces
A new approval step, and a six-week wait to add it.
Sponsored programs offices change forms constantly. A new sponsor requirement, an internal approval that has to happen before submission, a routing step somebody adds after a near-miss. None of it is exotic and all of it is urgent.
In a system where forms are vendor-configured, each of those becomes a request, a quote and a wait. The office learns not to ask, works around the system with a spreadsheet, and the record of truth quietly stops being the record.
What it does
Define it, route it, report on it
Your questions, not a vendor's
Institutions ask their own things at routing: cost-share approvals, space commitments, a dean's sign-off that exists nowhere else. The form builder is where those live, defined by the people who need the answers.
Changed by your administrators
It is designed for administrators rather than developers. That single design decision is what decides whether a form change is an afternoon or a change request with a lead time.
Routing that matches your process
Your workflow, configured by your staff — so an added approval step before a deadline is something the office does, not something the office asks for.
Attached to the proposal, not beside it
Answers collected here sit on the development proposal with everything else, so they route with it, report with it, and are still there when the award links back.
Reportable like any other field
Because the answers are data rather than an attached PDF, Streamlyne Reporting can count them. The question 'how many proposals needed cost-share approval last year' has an answer.
The line item it removes
Configuration work is the recurring cost nobody forecasts. A system your staff can change themselves is one you cannot be billed to reconfigure — which is a deliberate constraint on our side of the relationship.
Why it is not a separate purchase
This is the third cost line, made cheap
Every eRA proposal leads with a licence fee. The number that decides what a system really costs is the third one: the consultants you keep, because every form, workflow and report change goes through somebody who bills for it.
The form builder is the answer to that line, and reporting is the same answer applied to questions instead of forms. Both are designed for administrators rather than developers, and that is a constraint on what we can charge you for as much as a feature.
- Form builderYour questions and routing, changed by your staff
- Proposal developmentWhere the answers live, with everything else
- ReportingThe same principle: built by administrators
- S2S submissionFederal forms, from the same record
- AwardLinks back to the proposal the answers are on
Questions
What to ask every vendor, us included
What is an institutional form builder?
The part of the system where an institution defines its own questions and the workflow around them, rather than accepting whatever fields the vendor shipped. In research administration that matters because internal routing is where institutions differ most — the federal forms are the same everywhere, and the approval that has to happen before them is not.
Who changes a form when a sponsor changes its requirements?
Your administrators. This is the question worth asking every vendor you evaluate, and the answer decides whether configuration is part of implementation or part of every year you own the system. If the answer involves a consultant or a change request with a lead time, that cost never goes away.
Do we need developers?
No. The form builder and the reporting tool are both designed for administrators rather than developers, which is the same principle applied twice. Someone who understands your routing can change your routing.
Where do the answers go?
Onto the development proposal, with the budget, the personnel and the compliance detail. They route with the proposal, they are visible to reviewers, and they are still attached when the institutional proposal is created and an award later links to it.
Can we report on what the forms collect?
Yes — they are fields, not an attached document, so Streamlyne Reporting reads them alongside everything else. That is usually the second thing offices do with the form builder and the reason they stop collecting some of it.
Is there a limit to how much we can change?
There are limits, and they are worth exploring with a real example rather than in the abstract. Bring the most awkward form your institution routes — the one with the conditional section and the three different approvers — and we will build it in front of you rather than tell you it is possible.