Overview of Extramural Trainee Reporting and Career Tracking (xTRACT)

What is the Purpose?

The xTRACT module, accessed via eRA Commons, allows applicants, recipients and assistants to create research training tables for progress reports and institutional training grant applications. Initially, xTRACT will support the following training grant award mechanisms: T32, TL1, T90/R90, and T15 for both progress reports and grant applications.

Main Screenshots

Figure 1: xTRACT landing page. 

Figure 2: xTRACT Application search results screen 

What are the features?

• Some of the training data will be prepopulated from eRA Commons, using xTrain appointment and related data. This includes trainee names, selected characteristics, institutions, grant numbers and subsequent NIH and other HHS awards.
• Some of the other data that is manually entered in xTRACT for one training table submission will be available for reuse in xTRACT, when preparing data for subsequent training table submissions.

What are the benefits to the Recipient community?

• Will make it simpler for applicants and recipients to create training tables required for training grant applications and progress reports to NIH, as this system will replace the current laborious method of creating the tables in free form in Word format.
• Automation will significantly reduce workload.

What are the benefits to NIH Staff?

• As part of NIH’s Biomedical Research Workforce (BMW) initiative, xTRACT will allow NIH and other agencies to capture data on the careers of trainees (students and post-docs) and provide more information on training program outcomes.

Who Can Use xTRACT?

• Signing officials, principal investigators and assistants