This page contains information on the transition of the NOAA grants management platform to eRA, with an emphasis on the most common validation errors applicants have been encountering and tips to avoid them.

For additional training and information for DOC Applicants visit the Applicant and Grantee Training page.

It is important that your application is submitted in a way that allows us to efficiently process your application and make it available for funding consideration. Please note that your application will be checked at Grants.gov, and by our eRA system before it can begin the application review process. These business rule checks, when systematically enforced, are also referred to as “validations”.

The key to getting through this series of application checks is simple

• Follow the Application Submission and Tracking Business Process Guide and Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) instructions
• Submit early enough to allow time to address any system identified errors and submit a corrected application prior to the deadline

Validations Done by Grants.gov

Grants.gov processes applications for all Federal agencies. Consequently, they only perform application checks that apply to all application submission to the Federal government and the checks done are typically related to application processing rather than application content or completeness.

Common examples of Grants.gov checks:

• Does the submitting organization have an active System for Award Management (SAM) registration?
• Will the submission be made before the deadline specified in the NOFO?
• Are attachments added to each required form in the application package?
• Do any of your submitted attachments contain a virus?
• Do any of the submitted attachment filenames contain characters other than A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore, hyphen, space, period, parenthesis, curly braces, square brackets, ampersand, tilde, exclamation point, comma, semi colon, apostrophe, at sign, number sign, dollar sign, percent sign, plus sign, and equal sign?

If an application passes those checks, Grants.gov will indicate a successful submission by sending an email to the applicant from [email protected] that contains a tracking number.

Validations Done by the eRA System

We receive a large number of grant applications and rely on eRA system validations to efficiently and consistently process them. Our system validations enforce many, but not all, application requirements. Read and follow all documented instructions rather than relying on validations to ensure your application is complete.

Common examples of eRA system validations:

• Does your SF 424 application include the eRA Commons ID for the PD/PI in field “4. Applicant Identifier”?
• If submitting a Research & Related application, does the Research & Related Senior/Key Person Profile (Expanded) form include the eRA Commons ID for the PD/PI in the “Credential, e.g., agency login” field?
• For US addresses, did you specify the state and 9-digit zip code?
• For US addresses, did you specify the correct Congressional District? This should consist of the state’s two-letter abbreviation and end with a three-digit district number. For further details, review the How to Find Your Congressional District page on the grants.gov site.
• For Canadian addresses, did you specify the province?
• Are all your attachments in PDF format (flattened, under 100 MB, with a file name less than 50 characters and have a standard letter paper/page size)? To avoid other common attachment issues, please take the time to review the full list of eRA formatting requirements.

A full list of system checks performed by eRA will be made available soon.

After eRA validation, the PD/PI listed on the application will receive an email notification from [email protected]. This email will either confirm a successful submission to eRA or list validation errors and warnings associated with the application. If validation errors are indicated they must be addressed, the application must be resubmitted via Grants.gov (which will create a new Grants.gov tracking number). All resubmissions must be completed by the NOFO specified deadline, and the listed PD/PI must receive an email from [email protected] with no errors indicated before an application will be considered a successful submission to eRA. Validation warnings will not prevent a successful submission. Alternatively, applicants can view the submission status of an application in eRA Commons.