Getting Started

When you login, you should be taken to your personal folder, which will look something like the above (though there will likely not be any proposals to view yet if this is your first time logging in). Here, you can prepare, view and submit your proposal. There are a number of user controls available that are explained below.

1. Site Logo

The site logo contains a link back to the home page of the site. Clicking anywhere on the site logo will take you back to the home page. The home page of the site contains the Call for Proposals so the information contained there is always accessible.

2. Content Actions

This menu bar is available for those who are more familiar with Plone (or who want to be). For the purposes of creating, editing, and submitting proposals, you will rarely need to use this menu bar. Only a subset of these may be visible (or none at all), depending on the content you are viewing and what permissions you have.The icons from left to right are:

• Contents: Think of this like a folder listing view in Mac/Windows. This will let you see all content in the current folder and allow the usual operations (moving, copying, deleting, etc).
•  Edit: Allows you to edit the content currently being viewed
• View: Allows you to view the content
• Add new content: Use this to add a new proposal.
• Workflow tools:  allows you to submit and retract proposals
• Actions:  copy/paste/delete etc.
• share: allow other site members to view and/or edit your proposals

3. User actions

This menu, accessed by clicking on the blue user-icon at the top right of the page, offers several options related to your account:

• My Folder:  a handy link to get to your personal workspace where you can create/edit proposals.
• Preferences: allows you to modify account settings, including changing your password. You can also change your full name, email address, and location/department.
• Dashboard:  a special page where you can add "portlets", special widgets like the calendar, event listings, etc.
• Log out:  leave the proposals system. Your proposals will be waiting for you when you log back in.

4. Action buttons

Depending on where you are on the site, buttons will show up, allowing you to do the most common actions without having to bother with the content actions menu (2). In the image above, this is illustrated with a "New Proposal" button. Alternately, you could select "Proposal" from the "Add new content" () menu. Below is a picture of the action buttons you will see when viewing your proposal, as well as an example message box indicating what is currently missing in the proposal.

5. proposal Listing

This is where your proposals are listed. The proposal ID is in the first column and clicking this will take you do that proposal. The next column indicates the status, which is either "Incomplete", "Ready for Submission", or "Submitted". The third column gives you actions you can take on the specific proposals:  Edit, share (see below), and delete. If your proposal is ready for submission, you will see a "submit" action. If your proposal has already been submitted, then there will be a "retract" action.

The action of submitting a proposal simply allows the Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) members access to view your proposal. It is not a "dropbox":  you can retract or even edit the proposal once it is submitted. However, any changes made after the proposal deadline are not guaranteed to be seen by TAC members. 

6. Run Calendar

This calendar widget shows the current month and the Dark and Light runs are indicated with different shadings. Clicking on the date will bring up a summary of that day, including which run it belongs to as well as astronomically relevant facts:  moon illumination, sunset/rise times, etc. Clicking the "Runs" link below the calendar will take you to a full 12 month listing.

Adding Proposals

To begin working on your proposal, go to your personal folder using the "my folder" link.

Add a new proposal by clicking on the New Proposal button near the bottom of the proposals listing or select Proposal from the "Add New..." content actions menu at the top of the page.

Note: Each proposer is allowed to create and submit one proposal for a given semester.

To create of a new proposal, you are required to fill out the following entries for the Principal Investigator: "name", "department", and "email address". These will have default values based on our account information. This bare minimum of entries will allow you to "Save" your proposal for the first time. However, you will not be able to submit it until other requirements are met, which are explained below. You will see a helpful red error box listing any requirements that have not yet been met or a blue box indicating your proposal is ready to submit.

Editing Proposals

Basics

Upon adding a proposal, you will automatically be editing the new proposal's content.

If you are re-entering the system and have selected the link for your folder, you may then click on your proposal item, shown in the listing of the contents for your folder. This will show you a "view" of the contents of your proposal.

To resume editing the proposal, click on the edit button found near the top of your proposal.

The proposals are split into three sections, also referred to as "Field sets":

• General
• Justification
• Target list

You begin editing the proposal on the "General" fieldset. You can navigate to the next or previous one using the "Next" and "Previous" buttons next to the Save button at the bottom (see below).

General contains the information that will go on the cover sheet:

• Principle Investigator
• Contact Information
• Projects
• Observing Runs
• Conflicts and Special or Additional Requirements
• Target of Opportunity (ToO) runs

Justification contains various justification files that will be included with the proposal:

• Abstract
• Scientific and technical justification (maximum 5 pages)
• Progress to Date (maximum 1 page)

Target List. Here you have several options for specifying targets:

• No specific targets:  choose this option by clicking the check-box. This is appropriate if your targets are as-yet undiscovered objects (e.g., supernovae or other transients).
• Upload a .CSV file: if your target list is relatively simple, you can upload a .csv (comma-separated-variable) format file. Here is  a sample you can use as a template.
• Upload a PDF file containing the target list. Use this option if your target list is more complicated than a simple table.

Save, Next, Previous

Clicking on the save button will save changes and redirect to the proposal view. Clicking on the next button will take you to the next form and likewise previous will take you to the previous form. It is possible to make some kind of error in one field set (say a PDF failed to upload in the Justification section), but when you save, the form re-loads on the General section with a simple "There was an error" message in red. If you don't immediately see any indication of where the error occurred in the form, use the Next/Previous buttons to go to the other sections in order to find what went wrong.

The Justification Files

The Abstract is required and must be in PDF format.

The Scientific and Technical Description is required and must be in PDF format. Please note that they now all must be included in one file, and you must limit its length to 5 pages maximum. If you upload a file that is longer than 5 pages, you will get an error.

The Progress to Date is required and must be in PDF format. The limit for this is 1 page.

If composing your proposals in TeX/LaTeX, we recommend using pdflatex to construct the PDF files from .tex files. Other word processing programs can export to PDF format directly.

Sometimes a PDF file will have an incompatibility with the PDF concatenation routines and cause an error. If this happens, feel free to email Chris Burns or Dan Kelson for help. More often than not, we will open your problematic PDF file in Apple's Preview application and export it as a new PDF file. Somehow this fixes most issues.

Deleting Proposals

You may delete your proposal by clicking on the delete button or link in the proposal listing. You will then be taken to a confirmation page where you must click delete again (so as to avoid accidental clicks). Generally, this cannot be undone so only do this if you want really want to start over from scratch.

Previewing a Proposal

View

To display a proposal, click on its ID in the proposal listing of your folder. This "view" displays all of the fields on a single page. The PDF files uploaded will not be rendered, but you can view them by clicking on their respective links.

Generate PDF

To generate a copy of the proposal in PDF format, click on the PDF button near the top of your proposal view. You may be prompted with a download dialog (or to open a PDF viewer if your browser is configured to open PDFs). This PDF is precisely what the TAC will ultimately receive and evaluate, so be sure to review the entire PDF to make sure everything was ingested and formatted correctly before the submission deadline.

Submitting a Proposal

The process of submission does not make a copy of the proposal, or its attached files. Proposal submission is the act whereby the proposer has made their proposal readable by members of the TAC.

Once your proposal has all of the necessary fields completed (see above), the "submit" button or link will become active. In order to submit the proposal, click on the button or link. Once a proposal is submitted it will become visible to the reviewers.

You need only click the submit button once. You may continue to edit your proposal once you have chosen to change its state to submit without worrying about re-submitting the proposal. However, if you choose to edit your proposal after "submitting" it, be aware that TAC members may have already begun reading it. If you are paranoid about such things, you may retract the proposal and continue editing. Note, however, that the proposal may have already been downloaded by a TAC member while it was in the submitted state.