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Hints for S2S Submission

Helpful hints for successful Streamlyne S2S submission

The following items are submission issues OSPA and the Streamlyne users have discovered about S2S submissions in our collective experience.  They aren’t necessarily evident to the PD preparer, and the warning and error checks within Streamlyne may not catch them.   This list will be updated as issues are discovered or resolved, or once their existence is addressed in long term resources.

General S2S

  1. Attachment Types:  Streamlyne mirrors Grants.gov in the Attachment form types it uses to collect proposal attachments.  To locate which Attachments Form is used, check in the S2S panel.  As an example, this HHS proposal uses two forms to collect attachments:

Opening these forms, will show you the Attachment types that this form expects to find:

The associated location (Attachment Type) in Abstracts & Attachments, Proposal Attachments, that is pulled into this form is this:

The associated location (Attachment Type) in Abstracts & Attachments, Proposal Attachments, that is pulled into this form is this:

There are several types of Attachments Forms available to be included in S2S submissions. It is important to test how attachments are pulled in early in your PD development.  Streamlyne will not automatically alert you if an attachment type is not selected properly or not pulled into your submission.

To test what is pulled into the submission, in the S2S panel, Select to Print the specific form you are working with, to view the attachments.  With certain forms, it is necessary to upload forms in the order they are listed in the FOA.

  1. Attachments must be uploaded as flattened PDFs for ALL SPONSORS accepting proposal submissions via Grants.gov, unless otherwise instructed/allowed by sponsor.  To flatten a PDF, print to PDF using your Print to PDF options (Adobe or Microsoft).  Refer to these NIH Instructions, which give more detail on creating or testing flattened documents. https://www.era.nih.gov/files/How_to_Flatten_PDFs.pdf
  2. Special Characters: Grants.gov does not accept all UTF-8 special characters in file attachment names.  Applicants are able to enter all special characters from the UTF-8 character set when submitting applications and information to Grants.gov. However, if the grantor’s system is not yet compatible with these special characters, the grantor system may produce garbled or missing text in the application. As a result, the application may be rejected.  *In Streamlyne, this applies to the file name and any corresponding description for thatfile in both Proposal and Personnel Attachments sections. It is known that underscores (_) and hyphens (-) are safe characters to include, but ampersands (&) and slashes (/) are problematic.  It is best to exclude any special characters, though.

  1. Allowable Greek Characters and Where as of December 2025

Greek characters are now allowed in several fields including: Proposal Title, Document Description, Institutional Proposal Title, Subaward Title and COI Disclosure Project Title.  The following characters are all allowable:

  1. File names for attachments cannot be more than 50 characters for all Grants.gov submission.  Some specific sponsors have limits which are lower (USDA Capacity grants have a 45-character limit).
  2. Sponsors sometimes require a different Grants.gov (R&R) budget form for subs than for the prime/lead organization. Iowa State’s budget will generate from the Streamlyne budget, but the sub budgets are uploaded using the correct R&R budget form, which is embedded in the Subrecipient Budget Attachment Form in the S2S Forms Panel.  Please refer to the Entering Sub Budgets in Streamlyne Tip Sheet, found on the OSPA Streamlyne page, for step-by-step instructions.
  3. If the S2S Lobbying form is generated by the answers in the Questions tab (rather than this form being filled in and uploaded separately), the registrant and the identity of the individual performing the services will need to be NA, which can be found in the Streamlyne address book as ID# 106976.  This will need to be selected for both fields, or Grants.gov errors will be generated.
  1. Some sponsors require a full nine-digit Postal Code for the PI/Key Persons, and some may want a Fax number.  It is recommended that the Person Details are checked to ensure that these fields are complete.  These address items will be pulled into the SF424 form as well as the RR Senior/Key Person Profile (or other forms depending on the sponsor). If the sponsor does not have the same requirements as Grant.gov, these errors may not be generated until after submission. 
  1. Change/Corrected Application

When a copy of a PD is made for the purpose of submitting a Change/Corrected Application, Streamlyne will automatically change the Submission Type to Change/Corrected Application. Verify that this change has been made to the Submission Type in the Required Fields for Saving Document.

In addition, confirm that these two things have been automatically filled in from the previous submission:

  1. The Prev. Grants.gov Tracking ID is generated in the Sponsor & Program Information field.
  1. The Original Institutional Proposal ID is generated in the Institutional Fields Conditionally Required:

A change may not automatically be generated into the SF 424_V4_0-4.0 (if this form is utilized).  Be sure to go to this form in the Webforms section of the PD and change this Type of Submission. This can be done by syncing this form, or changing the form to incomplete, and selecting this submission type.

Occasionally, a proposal will be submitted in SL but not accepted by the sponsor due to errors.  When this occurs, a Grants.gov tracking number is not generated because the submission failed.  When copying the PD for another submission, SL will automatically change the Submission Type to Change/Corrected Application.  Because the sponsor never actually received the proposal, the Submission Type will need to be changed back to Application. 

  1. External Person in ISU budget

When external persons are added to a proposal, they will automatically populate under the Personnel section of the budget. When this is done after Initial Review approval, but before Final Review, a warning will occur within the Budget Versions.  This can cause the proposal to become “locked” and will create future data entry and navigation issues.  To properly address and correct the warnings, if an external person is added between Initial and Final review, the Initiator should go back to the budget and remove that external person from the Personnel section prior to final (Workflow) routing.

  1. Highlighting of Invalid Special Characters

Starting in December 2025, invalid special characters that are entered into the Title, attachment descriptions on the Abstracts & Attachments tab and budget entry descriptions in the Budget tab all show up with an orange highlight.  However, this functionality is still not active in the Webforms tab.

Invalid characters, when recognized and highlighted in Streamlyne, will appear as shown below, and should be deleted and re-typed into the field.

NIH Specific

  1. The warning below is generated with NIH S2S submissions. It has been checked by Streamlyne and does not cause submission issues. This warning can be ignored.
  1. PHS Human Subjects form

If having trouble getting this form to autofill, first ensure that the Questions and Special Review section are completed. Next, navigate to the forms tab and then click Sync.  Once things fill in correctly, mark the form as complete.

If a project has human subjects, additional report data will need to be entered into this webform.

To view required entries, expand the Study Record by clicking on the carrot to the left of this section.

As applicable to the project, complete the data entry in field 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, and attach items for 2.3, 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7.  Select the appropriate Recruitment Status in the field for 2.6. 

Complete the applicable data in field 2.8.

Inclusion Enrollment Reports are Required if data has been entered into the sections 2.3, 2.4 or 2.8 above.  A report is needed for each of those sections that have been completed – unless Exemption category 4 (secondary research) applies.

Expand the Inclusion Enrollment Report(s) by selecting the carrot next to the section.

Complete all applicable questions in that section.  To complete this section, follow guidance found here: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/how-to-apply-application-guide/forms-h/research-forms-h.pdf

  1. The Data Management and Sharing Plan is required with all research proposals unless otherwise directed by the FOA.  This document is attached under PHS Research Plan Other Plans:
  1. Effort for the PI must be entered for each budget year.

PIs must show effort in each budget year on NIH proposals.  This effort will be accompanied by a minimal budget amount.  Follow these steps:

For a 12-month appointment, the effort percentage must be entered as 0.05%, which will register as .01 Person Months (PM) effort.  A 9-month appointment PI can be entered as 0.06% to register as .01 PM.  To check whether the person-month effort is registering as the minimum PM effort required, click on Details under the % Effort entry.  Person Months effort is what is pulled into the R&R budget.

For specific FOAs, the effort does not need to be accompanied by a budget amount because it is shown elsewhere (for example with NIH MIRAs where salary is expected to be entered in Other – Other).  You can change the base salary to zero and then enter the full effort anticipated.  An example of the entry is below:

Once the base salary has been set to zero, the effort entered will still result in 0.00 Requested salary.

Streamlyne will generate a warning when a base salary has been set to 0.00, but this can be disregarded if it was intended and aligns with sponsor’s requirements.

*NOTE: there may also be special circumstances where the base salary needs to be zero in some years, and the actual amount in others (an example is NIH K99-R00).  Reach out to OSPA for details about how to address this budgeting need.

USDA Specific

  1. AFRI project type form must be uploaded as a fillable form (not flattened) which is an exception to the standard grants.gov rules.  To ensure you are uploading in the correct format, follow these steps:
  1. Download a fresh copy from Streamlyne by selecting and opening the AFRI Project Type form. 
  1. Complete the form by selecting the appropriate boxes to match the project’s type.
  2. Save it to your computer without changing the name
  3. Upload it to the User Attached forms section by selecting Choose File and selecting Add.  A description can be added.

DOD Specific

  1. In Streamlyne, both a Project Abstract and a Project Summary Attachment Type are available as Proposal Attachments. In addition, there may be alternative locations to attach a Project Abstract or Summary in these proposals, such as in the S2S section of the Questions Panel.  When the number of locations available for upload, or the labeling of the Attachment type doesn’t match the FOA, determining how to include this/these documents in a DOD S2S can be confusing.  This has been a known issue in DOD proposals but could show up in other types of submissions.

You may need to test uploads in both the Abstract and Summary Attachment Type and see how and where they are pulled into S2S proposal package.   

In one example, per the guidelines, the summary/abstract was instructed to be in Field 7 of the proposal.

When uploaded as “Abstract” the attachment shows in the proposal as a separate form attachment, but not listed in Field 7.  When uploaded as “Summary”, the document shows up listed if Field 7, but not in the form attachment.   

If significant notice is given, prior to the submission deadline, OSPA can help the Initiator and PI test which location most closely matches the FOA and can troubleshoot how to clearly address any discrepancies that may be part of the full submission.