Admin FAQs

Offering forms to your applicants is the number one reason you’re using GO Smart. The GO Smart platform allows you to create a tidy single offering  (a.k.a. cycle) of your grant program. Each cycle can include an application and an optional intent to apply, interim report, and/or final report. You can also create a ‘flex form’ to gather additional data such as a reimbursement or invoice information.

If you don’t see the option to add an Intent to Apply page or Interim Report pages at Grant Editor > Cycle Pages, your site may have those features turned off. If you would like to offer Intents to Apply or Interim Reports and cannot, please reach out to the GO Smart team.

Use the following tutorials to make your:

• Initial Cycle Application
• Initial Cycle Intent to Apply
• Initial Cycle Interim Report
• Initial Cycle Final Report
• Flexible Form
• Subsequent Cycles
• Subsequent Programs

Preview individual pages of your cycle forms by clicking the Preview Page button in the top right left of your Grant Editor > Cycle Pages > Page Editor.

If you are a newer admin user of GO Smart, we recommend that you create a test user, navigate the applicant’s portal, and begin and complete a test application to familiarize yourself with your applicant’s experience.

The best way to produce a read-only version of your application is to;

1. Log in as a test applicant user
2. Navigate to the Grant Applications & Forms tab and locate the form your are trying to create
3. Access the read-write application (or other form) by clicking START or EDIT for the form
4. Click the View PDF link at the bottom of any page which opens a read-only HTML version of the form
5. Click Print PDF to further create an easily printable read-only version

HOWEVER, the true purpose of this PDF preview is to view an applicant’s responses, not to create a complete offline version of the form. As such, certain questions and tables may not appear on the read-only form as they do in the applicant’s read-write form. For instance, multiple or single choice questions (ie. checkbox, radio, or drop down lists) will only show the selected responses, not all possible responses will be included. Tables with freeform rows will only display those freeform rows if a label is entered on each row.

Creating a completely comprehensive offline version of the form will require a mix of opening this read-only preview and adding some additional elements using a program such as Preview, Adobe, Paint, or the like.

If you have created a grant cycle but it is not visible to your applicants from the Grant Applications & Forms tab of the applicant portal, your cycle Display status may not be set to Show. Set your cycle Display status to Show from the Grant Editor > Program Cycles Editor > Applicant Access & Dates. See the following tutorials for more information:

• Program Cycles
• Launching Your Grant Cycle

The dates and deadlines must be appropriate. The applicant may see the opportunity (because the Display setting is Show), but if they can’t click START or EDIT, the Open Application date may be in the future or the Deadline may be in the past. If the dates are accurate, you may have an invitational code in place that either needs to be turned off or distributed to your private pool of applicants. If all of these issues are managed, you may have created an intent to apply and the “Offer Intent to Apply” setting is set to No, there is no Intent to Apply content, the Intent to Apply deadline is in the past, or the applicant’s status is not yet Intent to Apply Approved.

See the following tutorials for more information:

• Program Cycles
• Intent to Apply

Your applicant may experience a scenario wherein they click EDIT from their Grant Applications & Forms tab and are met with a mostly blank read-write form (see below).

If your applicant’s application has not followed the appropriate status workflow, the system may believe that they should not yet access the read-write form content, even if the status permits them to access the form. This is most typical if your cycle includes an Intent to Apply and the applicant has perhaps been moved to an Application status (from In Progress through Funded) without first being saved with the status Intent to Apply Approved. If you moved an applicant from Intent to Apply Started or Intent to Apply Received to In Progress, the system will likely produce a view like the one above. If this occurs, return to your Grant Manager dashboard, locate the application in question and do the following:

1. Change the status to Intent to Apply Started
2. Click Update
3. Change the status to Intent to Apply Received
4. Click Update
5. Change the status to Intent to Apply Approved
6. Invite the applicant back to their Grant Applications & Forms tab to click EDIT on the EDIT button for the application read-write form where the content will now be available

This will be true for interim and final reports if applicants are moved from In Progress to Funded or Funded to Interim report Approved. Applicant’s forms need to be submitted before they are approved.

To offer an interim report as part of your cycle, you must navigate to Grant Editor > Program Cycles > Applicant Access & Dates and set the “Offer Interim Report” setting to Yes. Then you must create Interim Report pages at Grant Editor > Cycle Pages. When you are expecting applicants to work on and submit the interim report, their status from the Grant Manager Dashboard must be Funded. From the Grant Editor > Program Cycles, the Open Interim Report date must be in the past, and the Interim Report Deadline must be in the future.

If your applicant can see the cycle but cannot see a link with the option to START or EDIT their Interim Report, it’s possible that your applicant has two (or more) applicant accounts and is logged into an account in which they did not submit the application. Double check their account activity by navigating to the Applicants tab and searching by as few parameters as possible so that you can see all accounts for that user. Click Login for all available accounts and see which, if any, have accessed the application for this cycle. Finally, direct the applicant to log in with the credentials for that account where the application was submitted to complete the Interim Report.

If you don’t see the option to add Interim Report pages at Grant Editor > Cycle Pages, your site may have that feature turned off. If you would like to offer Interim Reports and cannot, please reach out to the GO Smart team.

To offer a final report as part of your cycle, you must navigate to Grant Editor > Program Cycles > Applicant Access & Dates and set the “Offer Final Report” setting to Yes. Then you must create Final Report pages at Grant Editor > Cycle Pages. When you are expecting applicants to work on and submit the final report, their status from the Grant Manager Dashboard must be Funded if there is no interim report, or Interim Report Approved if the cycle has an interim report. From the Grant Editor > Program Cycles, the Open Final Report date must be in the past, and the Final Report Deadline must be in the future.

If your applicant can see the cycle but cannot see a link with the option to START or EDIT their Final Report, it’s possible that your applicant has two (or more) applicant accounts and is logged in to an account in which they did not submit the application. Double check their account activity by navigating to the Applicants tab and searching by as few parameters as possible so that you can see all accounts for that user. Click Login for all available accounts and see which, if any, have accessed the application for this cycle. Finally, direct the applicant to log in with the credentials for that account where the application was submitted to complete the Final Report.

See this tutorial for information on setting the order of your Shown (aka active) cycles.

Statuses determine several ways in which the applicant will interact with your forms and communications. See this tutorial about our statuses and workflows to learn more.

Though we have a comprehensive media tool that allows you to request audio and video samples, we recognize that many applicants are already hosting their a/v samples on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, etc. If you would prefer to offer applicants the ability to link to this hosted media, we recommend creating a small text field with 100-character limit per requested link OR offering one large text field for multiple links and directing your applicants to click return or enter to delineate each link. Applicants should also be directed to begin all links with ‘https://’ in order to make the link clickable while you are reviewing the read-only form. Learn more about doing this here.

Our system’s security is such that it will not redirect to an insecure website hosted at http://. If applicants only have sites hosted at http:// (without the s) we recommend that you direct them to make a bit.ly or short URL.

Absolutely. Each GO Smart site includes a private GO Smart server to which you can upload any resources or imagery you would like to make available to applicants. Follow the sections of this tutorial to upload and link to PDFs, add imagery to your custom text sections, add tables of contents, and more.