A number of people have indicated that the project line descriptions in the Effort Reporting System are confusing. Upon investigation it was found that there were some projects that had a description of “TBDGRAN 5220A220EMUN” or something similar. Having this random SmartKey description on the main page of the effort form has caused confusion for certifiers because it wasn’t obvious which project was being viewed. To resolve this issue, the effort system has been updated to pull project descriptions from the grants table, as opposed to the SmartKey table. This change is only for sponsored projects and should help to make the effort form more clear. This change will not apply to effort forms that have already been pre-reviewed or certified. These forms were saved with this historical data and will not update. any new forms or forms not yet pre-reviewed will display the new description.
Unfortunately, the description field on the effort form only allows 20 characters, so it may not be enough to properly identify a project. If it is unclear exactly what project or SmartKey is displayed on an effort form, the user can simply click on the SmartKey number listed. This will drill-down to a detailed description of the project or Smartkey, which includes the proposal/Award ID, Project Number, Account Dept ID, Agency Award Number, title of the Award, Agency name, Begin and End dates, EMPL ID, the employee certifying, their role on the project and the proposed Effort.