eRA Information: Enhancements to xTRACT Reporting Coming in December Release

We are pleased to announce significant enhancements to the Extramural Trainee Reporting and Career Tracking (xTRACT) system as part of a release scheduled for Friday, December 20, 2019. These enhancements are focused on reducing user burden when reporting on sources of support.

The enhancements include:

• Allowing users to report only the IC and the Activity code when reporting NIH and Other Agency Sources of Support on Record in the Support During Training and Subsequent Grants sections of xTRACT.

• Support data will be prepopulated into Subsequent Grants under NIH and Other Agency Sources of Support based on the individuals’ eRA Commons ID, as reported on the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR).

• Allowing users to indicate primary source support when multiple sources of support exist for a training year. The system will automatically identify the source of funding with the longest duration as the primary source of support.  However, users can modify this to another source of support if they choose. 

​​​​​​​

• Type-ahead functionality for the “Position” field will be added. For example, if a user wants to add “Assistant Professor” as their Title/Position, as they type it the letters, choices matching what they are typing will be simultaneously displayed. The user then selects the option that best fits their needs. The objective is to reduce burden on the user and to improve the consistency of the data collected. In this way, we eliminate various user options such as “asst. prof,” “asst professor,” “professor – assistant,” etc. for our “Assistant Professor” example.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

• The “Delete” option for trainees who have appointments entered through xTrain will be removed.  If a trainee has been appointed in xTrain, the user must report the outcomes of that trainee. The removal of the “Delete” option will ensure constancy of the data reported.