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In the past, the National Ocean Service required applicants for Coastal & Marine Management Program funds to complete a large number of text documents and spreadsheets, which described and summarized complex financial data, cost allocations, and task details. Two previous attempts at automating this process failed because of usability and security concerns. The lack of workflow management meant grant officers were constantly tied up answering countless e-mails and phone calls from applicants checking on their status. Solution: an integrated grants application system. After carefully reviewing the workflow required to complete a grant application, Apex designed a web-based application to manage information more effectively. Our project team created a user interface that provides easy access to any level of data in an application. The new system enables users to generate an entire grant application much more quickly and then submit it as either a draft or final version. We also designed the system to make program managers more efficient. They can now access grant applications in any state of completion, review submitted applications on-line, and accept or reject them electronically. During this assignment, the National Ocean Service was evaluating an upgrade to Microsoft .NET technology. In just a few months, Apex delivered a fully featured ASP.NET application, the first in the Service's portfolio of on-line applications.Technology: ASP.NET, SQL Server 2000 |