How to Use the Effort Certification System

Overview

The Effort Certification System consists of six main pages and many small accessory pages. You will learn about each of the main pages below.

A user taking a typical path through the system will begin at the Home Page; look at the details of a project; possibly review information on individuals and/or salary distributions; certify; and maybe return to the home page to certify other projects.

1. Log On and View the Home Page

Access to the system requires a UT-EID with High Assurance status. Because you are seeing this page, you must have already logged on with a high assurance UT-EID. For more information on the UT-EID, please see the online EID Help Suite.

On the Home Page of ECS, you will see a list of Unit Codes that contain sponsored projects for which you are authorized to view or certify effort. Only sponsored projects that actually paid employees during the certification period listed will appear in ECS, so the number of projects listed on the home page may not correspond exactly to the total number of sponsored projects in the unit.

By default, the Principal Investigator and any Co-Principal Investigators on a project are authorized to final certify effort on that project. In addition, the person listed on the *DEFINE CA3 screen as the Payroll Contact for the project, if any, is authorized by default as a Precertifier.

The role of a Precertifier is to review the information for a set of projects in ECS, verify its accuracy against payroll and/or the clearing account system, make adjustments if necessary, and precertify the information as correct. Precertification permits the final certifier to know that the figures are correct, but it is not a prerequisite of final certification.

2. General Features of the Pages

• There is always a link back to the Home Page on the Navigation Bar at the left.
• The Navigation Bar at the left also has links to related ECS pages and websites.
• Many of the column headings are also links (a different color and underlined). A column heading link will explain the meaning of the column.
• Wherever you see a green question mark image (), you can click for information about the page.
• The name of the page and the current six-month Certification Period appear near the top of the page.
• There is a Logoff link in the Navigation Bar, and another at the bottom right of each page. Always log off when you are finished, so no one else coming to the computer later can take actions using your UT-EID.
• The link "ECS Support Team" at the bottom of the page contains an e-mail address for the maintainers of ECS. You can send an e-mail if you have questions that are not answered in these pages or in the ECS classes, or to report an error in the system.

(Most are these features are illustrated above.)

3. Select a Unit

• By clicking on the Unit Code number or on a button, you can go to the Project Detail page. If the Unit contains only one project for which you are authorized, you will go directly to the Project Detail page. If the Unit contains more than one Project for which you are authorized, you will first see the Select Project page, where you can select which project to view. To learn about the Project Detail page, go on to #4 below.
  
  
• Alternatively, on the Home Page, you can select a unit for which to view and/or modify authorizations. Look for the "View Authorizations" menu at the lower right, choose a unit from the pull down menu, and click the "Go" button. To learn about the Authorizations page, skip to #8 below.