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GMS Open Forum July

POSTED BY Admin | 15 Aug 2017 | Open Forums

  1. General questions
    • Contact person of the Fund has changed

    Discuss with POU on which person’s contact details should be put there until a replacement is found. Send an e-mail to GMS Support with the new contact details, we can update the application parameters for you.

    • Operational modality GA operation on the GMS: Additional features in GMS? And if so when will they be active on the system?

    Please follow-up with George Petropoulos (who sent the e-mail on 4 July 2017), and keep GMS-Support in copy so that we can assist if necessary. James is aware of this e-mail and we will keep you posted if any changes are made in the system.

    • Country fund overview – dashboard / Country funding process - interim financial report – reports submitted but does not show the amount reported. Would be helpful to bring the latest expenditure (now only the total budget is shown).

    Noted, we will take a look at the possibility to display the latest expenditures there.

  2. Organization registration
    • Organization registration in GMS and Due Diligence: What documents need to be submitted to GMS Support?

    If you want to register a new organization in the GMS we prefer that you send us the Registration Certificate of the organization in your country. The reason is that because sometimes there are spelling mistakes or differences in the name and later on this creates problems when creating GA. So, for that reason we ask both the registration certificate and a Bank Information document (like a transcript of their bank statement to check the names used).In some countries, this might not be applicable, some of them are written in Arabic and not everybody can read that, so then we will accept the translation by the HFU because we are sure that the HFU looked at it / made sure the translation is correct.At this moment we can also check if the name on the bank transcripts is different from the name under the registration certificate and we can request you to have the NGO to get a letter from the bank to confirm that both names are the same. In this way, while they are doing the project proposal, it saves a lot of time by the time they submit the proposal. The letter can be uploaded under the Due Diligence right away so that FCS Finance can immediately check it.

  3. Project proposal submission
    • Application window – submissions after deadline: possibility to block after the deadline?

    The window to apply (create a new project proposal) will no longer be visible after the call for applications end date, but if a partner has already created a draft project then the partner will still be able to submit it after the application end date closes. It is left it open for flexibility, some countries might have issues on for example internet-connections. Maybe what we can do is to look in to the possibility of blocking it which does not exist right now. To do so we might have to discuss with the HFUs on their specific country situation. The blocking of the project proposal is under development.

    • Reporting and proposal submission for hard to reach areas and target populations

    We have this item on the task list but yet to be prioritized

  4. Logical Framework
    • Risks and assumptions at outcome level: not shown in the logframe but shown on the printed copies

    Assumptions and risks are displayed as a tooltip (see screenshot) – you will need to hover over this symbol to see the Assumptions and Risk appear on your screen   ar

    • Different clusters not properly visible

    We will try to increase the visibility of these headings in the different formats. Currently these are being displayed as follows:

    HTML File

    a

    Word document and PDF

    b

  5. Budget (review)
    • If a partner only has to change a couple of budget lines but changes others – possibility to highlight the changes?

    Technically we would like to block the budget-lines and open only what is allowed to be edited. This work is in our task list.

    • Hard to track what the original budget was when the IP changes the budget after TR (lots of back and forth)

    For now, what you can do is download the Excel file and save it to your computer before the budget goes back to the IP to address the comments. Our team will need to see how we can simplify this.

  6. Documents
    • Suggestion for documentation relating to monitoring (categories for uploading these files): Supporting documents vs. monitoring (only if there is a monitoring report)? What about files with big sizes?

    All documents should be captured under the monitoring right now, ideally when dealing with bigger file sizes we would like to incorporate in the future a possibility to give a link to where the documents are stored

  7. Timelines / Reporting
    • GMS reporting - Is there an e-mail alert going out when we click the box? Can we for example when we activate a report click on it or will it automatically send it when the report is activated. Sometimes IPs do not submit timely so instead we send them a reminder from our e-mail address. Would it be possible to send out an additional e-mail alert via the system?

    Currently, there is no switch off or reminder at this moment in the system but it can be developed. The possibility of developing this feature will be discussed further with James.Alerts are sent when reports are activated. Reminder modules are under development, but not yet activated. We need to discuss this further internally.

    • Reporting comments - only one box, Possible to upgrade to provide sub-boxes?

    We would need to provide comments box tagging, this is a planned development

    • Narrative Reporting: Executive summary – direct beneficiaries are reported here. Cover page has a note saying that the total direct beneficiaries should match to beneficiary group (highlighted) – total from beneficiary groups should not exceed the direct total (sum of beneficiary groups). Can we put a similar note in the executive summary for the narrative report?

    This should not be a problem; it is just an enhancement. We can discuss with the team if we can put a similar note there stating to that fact (as we did on the cover page for the project proposal).

    • Financial Report – disbursements: Signed financial report tab – disbursement or disbursement request box where you can see the tranches that have already been disbursed. If the IP has already received the second tranche, in this drop-down menu the second tranche will still appear in addition to third trance – can we make it go out of the lines?

    It is possible, we wanted to add this feature. Where there are cases that the same trance is in multiple financial reports, this was a requirement why the trances are kept available. We will check if that is not a requirement, we can try to disable already paid tranches.We need to discuss this with FCS Finance and formulate the final strategy.

     

  8. Strategic / Technical Review
    • Access to review board members to do scoring (SR, TR): would it be possible for them not to have access to everything? Give them a specific profile instead of calculating the average and then enter this in the GMS?

    For now, for the score cards, we have the clusters and the sector co-leads profile, so I am guessing a similar profile to that would work. It depends little bit on how much access they would need so maybe if you can write us an email and say which access they would specifically require so we do not disclose too much?At the moment GMS will not allow for different persons to put in a score, one person will have to put in the data (and calculate the average of all people scoring). This might be difficult to estimate with some scoring answers such as e.g. 3 people saying average and 1 person saying below average and 1 person saying above average – in such a scenario you would go for average. If there is really a big clash, then it should probably be discussed amongst the people scoring as to find out why they disagree. In the meantime, it would be a solution to put all people scoring around the table and have them decide together on a mutually agreed score.

  9. Project Revision
    • Revision of a project – when is the project updated?

    The partner sends a request for a revision (revision request, step 1) to the HFU – if you approve you can open the specific tabs that want to allow them to amend in the project revision (step 2). Depending on the changes that were made, a GA amendment will need to be created or not.The last stage of a project revision (with or without GA amendment) is pushing the ‘overwrite’ button. Once you have pushed this button there is no way back – the system will put all the new data from the revision into the project proposal that you see displayed in GMS. There is no way to get the original project proposal data back. The system will however save a PDF version of the original proposal, so you can still consult it to see what it looked like.See Workflow screenshot   Revision Workflow