InfoReady Reviews

The Review features allowing verified signatures (with notes/feedback) from multiple stakeholders, including the ability to set up a process where one person has to sign off to send it to the next, etc., is incredibly helpful for complex approval processes. I also am grateful for the ability for administrators to a) edit applications after submission (since submitters cannot) and b) review by proxy. It's easy to copy competitions for a new semester/year. The ability to customize notifications that are sent automatically is great, as is the ability to export application data to Excel.

Inability to edit questions after the launch of a competition. The software is not super intuitive and frequently confuses our less-tech-savvy users. I also wish you could edit the button text and other default text. (My department uses it sort of eccentrically, for an application approval process rather than for "competitions", so the default text sometimes confuses folks.

I like the batch operations the most. It is super easy to download zipped packets containing all the application details. The report is also very nice as it is downloaded as an excel sheet allowing us to use the information in an easily accessible manor.

I don't like the UI, it is super clunky and there is a lot of hard coded things that would be nice if we were able to edit.
My main issue is with the Organization Hierarchy its hard to easily access the organizations to make edits. We have about 300 different programs offered and the designated reviewer for certain roles change often. The UI box is too small and there is an issue with scrolling. Even when inside the box if you scroll up or down the whole page scrolls along with the box.
Another issue with the is with the lack or organizations allowed during the creation and implementation of competitions. By that I mean it would be nice if there was away to make questions that only showed to applicants if they selected a certain answer to the previous questions. It makes the application very crowded especially for those applicants who don't apply to the questions.

• The ability to create templates has been very useful. Building a competition from scratch requires a fair amount of time as there are numerous options for customization, so templates have saved hours of work.

• Competitions can be phased, from letters of intent to invitations for full proposals and progress reports. Each may be assigned intermediate routing steps, such as requiring departmental approval, etc.

• Competitions are built from modular sections, rather than one single long document. It helps in fine-tuning details and attaches descriptions to individual components such as required uploads.

• The entire review process is run through the system, including for non-university reviewers. Whereas before reviewers might have to be emailed materials or links, once assigned they are able to enter the system and respond to all set questions / scores. This allows quick export of reviews, expediting overall review decisions and reducing any potential errors in transcription. The system will also send reminder emails on your behalf and simplifies notification of awardees.

• It’s SSO, so university folks just need to log in to create an account.

• We’ve run into occasional problems with providing access to different types of accounts, such as our Sponsored Programs Office proposals team who needs to view information on PIs selected for campus limited submissions. We were able to find a workaround, but it took some time. It would be more efficient if it were able to communicate with other campus databases directly.

• The interface is a bit cumbersome in creating exports and the competition creation pages are very busy.

The software provides a streamlined process for our faculty to submit requests for internal research funding. A software package cannot provide or meet every function since each customer has competing demands, but it has the core functionality that greatly improved the submission process from the previous Outlook email process.

The inability to send an application back to the PI to update is high on my list of enhancements. Also, more notification options to administrators would be beneficial.

The ease of use for end users as well as administrators to learn and deploy.

Currently there is no way to accept or reject a Progress Report. Many times we require additional information and would like a way to return a Progress Report for corrections to request more details.

InfoReady Review greatly streamlines the advertisement and management of funding competitions (application management).

We do not routinely use the reviewer function, as we find that it's still easier to download and forward PDF versions of the applications to reviewers. Given that "review" is in the name of the product, I hope that InfoReady puts some extra effort in improving that aspect of the software.

- Easy to assign reviews and collect them
- Very convenient to build multi-track competitions
- Convenient to have all messaging come from the system
- Progress reports allow us to collect materials and calculate our return on investment for awardees
- Outstanding customer service and support team (this is the #1 item, to me)
- Very easy to download reports and PDFs of materials

- Sometimes run into difficulties downloading files (i.e. progress reports where there may be a blend of excel files and PDFs included)
- It may be nice to apply logic to the application pages, but not a major deal

InfoReady helped organize applications, nominations, and limited submissions. When we started working through COVID policies and procedures and as our internal awards were being impacted by restrictions, I was able to create an application to move review processes that were happening through email exchanges into InfoReady. This gave us a way to track requests and update awards in InfoReady. The software was easy to use and made the work I did easier. I especially liked that InfoReady would send reminders to reviewers and that it was automatically built into the system.

More flexibility with the application form fields would have been nice to have but it wasn't something that blocked productivity.

The ease of use for both administrators and, most especially, our applicants is a major plus. The platform is robust and allows a variety of ways to post opportunities, collect applications, and have them reviewed.

The fact that reviewers are not allowed to update their comments after submitting their original critiques is awkward. Our review process includes allowing reviewers to edit their original comments so that they accurately reflect the roundtable discussions, which are then sent to the applicants. To capture updated edits, a workaround is used on another (internal and separate) platform to ensure the comments remain anonymous. This is a rather lengthy workaround that would better served happening within InfoReady.

We have a number of users across the institution who use InfoReady Review, and they all found it easy to learn and implement in their units. It really is pretty intuitive assuming you have a basic level of comfort using web-based software and forms. Personally, I use it for managing our internal competitions and it works great for that! Handling the submissions and reviews through the platform makes my job so much easier - I can't imagine not having it.

InfoReady Review started small and has grown a lot over the years as the company and users have recognized its potential. Now it has become so feature-rich that you can sometimes miss some of the functionality because there is so much there.

I thought it was fairly intuitive, it was organized, and the 8 other users who rated competitions/applications with me also thought it was easy to use. In addition, the customer support was SPEEDY and fantastic!

Figuring out log on/new user accounts for those of us rating applications was difficult, but again, customer support was nice.

Very user friendly for our applicants. We have very little complaints about using the system to submit documentation and very little error with document submission, routing, etc. The support teams is super responsive - we'll get after hours responses from them within minutes (although we don't expect it).

The backend is not as customizable as we would like. We can't always get out all the data that goes into the system the way we want to see it. And we can't customize the competition as much as we want. But we have found work-around for almost everything with the help of InfoReady support.

Collecting application materials through InfoReady eliminates the need for emails, shared folders, and other cumbersome processes that were previous in place to manage internal and limited submission competitions. The automated reviewer reminder emails also save quite a bit of time.

The system is not intuitive to use, and there can be a learning curve for users and reviewers.

The software is very easy to use. It's easy to use as an administrator as well as for our faculty and students. Very straightforward and ease of layout. I have especially been pleased with customer service whenever there is an issue.

Since the last changes and updates, I find that the software runs slower. I may have to go back out and back in to get things to load.