Plan Ahead and Act Early: eRAM Upgrade, Outage Scheduled for May 21–23
The eResearch Animal Management (eRAM) system is scheduled to undergo an upgrade beginning on Friday, May 21, 2021, at approximately 5:00 PM and lasting through approximately 6:00 AM on Sunday, May 23.
During this time, the entire eRAM system will be offline and unavailable to process:
- Animal orders
- Animal transfers
- Protocol submissions
- Protocol amendments
- Protocol reviews and approvals
The system status can be checked at any time during the scheduled outage window by visiting the ITS Service Status webpage.
System Upgrades
This upgrade brings a number of user interface changes and improvements to projects within the eRAM system, including Applications/Protocols, Amendments, Annual Reviews, Use Forms, Controlled Substances, Action Items, and more.
The degree to which individuals will notice, and be impacted by, these changes is largely dependent upon their assigned role(s) and tasks within eRAM.
An overview of how different roles are impacted by these changes is provided in the following table. Specific details about the features highlighted below (e.g., Navigation, Validate, Compare, etc.) are available on the eRAM Release Notes Page.
Several newly-added and updated features offer notable enhancements for Study Teams; PIs, PI Proxies, Protocol Editors; and IACUC/Veterinary Reviewers/ACUO Staff:
- Navigation – Much of the system navigation (including the Jump To list) has moved to the left-side panel vs. the top of a page. This change is most noticeable within the protocol.
- Validate – Previously titled Hide/Show Errors, users can now select ‘Validate’ from the Navigation menu to run project validation and view Error/Warning Messages. Pages/questions with green checkmarks indicate verification/completion, and red circles indicate incompletion and/or warnings. Warnings will display within the Navigation menu.
- Compare – Previously titled View Differences, Compare has a new interface that allows users to view changes between application versions and steps at the page level. Users may select which protocol versions to compare and can see different aspects of the changes, including:
- Who made the change
- When the change was made
- What the change was
- Continue Where You Left Off – The system now remembers where an individual user left off within a smartform. A “Welcome Back! Continue Where You Left Off” message displays, and the project will open directly to the most recent page a user had saved.
- Reviewer Notes – This feature has a new user interface and improved functionality. Notes that were previously displayed at the top of the smartform now display in a new pop-up window. Most pages also have the option to enter notes in-line at the question level (vs. top, page-level only), so reviewers no longer need to identify the specific question/species in their notes. As questions/notes are added by the reviewer, the quote icon will display the incremental number of notes in the upper-right corner of the smartform and on pages in the Navigation menu.
A summary of all changes can be found on the eRAM Release Notes Page and in updated eRAM Step-By-Step Guides that will be released during the system upgrade.
Questions?
- Please contact your Research Compliance Associate in the Animal Care & Use Office with questions about protocol submissions, amendments, approvals, or reviews.
- Questions about animal orders, transfers, or billing should be directed to the ULAM Business Office at ulam-questions@umich.edu.
- Technical assistance may be requested via the ITS Help Center at its.umich.edu/help or 4Help@umich.edu.
We apologize for any inconvenience this brief outage may cause and appreciate your patience as we work to enhance the technical infrastructure that supports our entire Animal Care & Use Program.