Go-live
This module walks through the features you’d use in grant administration when publishing a grant round. Understanding the SmartyGrants elements involved will ensure that your team can comfortably and efficiently manage applications, and your applicants can have a smooth application experience.
Table of contents
Publishing your first round
You’re ready to go live with your grant round on SmartyGrants - congratulations!
To refresh yourself on how rounds work, and for instructions on how to publish your round, please complete the LMS course below:
Creating and managing public and private rounds (≈ 10 minutes)
Once you have finished this course, return to this page and continue from Managing applications below.
Managing applications
After your round is published and open, you’ll start to receive applications in the system.
Applications that have been started, but not yet submitted, will show as Unsubmitted applications. At this stage, you’ll only have access to the most basic of information about that application.
Once an application is Submitted, it will create a complete application record.
There are many SmartyGrants components to managing the day-to-day applications that you receive in your funding programme. Applications are the backbone of any funding programme and the core source of data in SmartyGrants. The below courses have been selected to help you navigate and use application records effectively.
As next steps, please complete the four courses below (≈ 1 hour and 10 minutes). Once all courses have been completed, head to Sending emails.
Submitted applications | |
Managing submitted applications and variations (≈ 30 minutes) |  |
Filtering | |
Filtering application records (≈ 15 minutes) | |
Bulk actions | |
Bulk action applications (≈ 20 minutes) | |
Late and hard copy submissions | |
Late submissions and hard copy applications (≈ 5 minutes) | |
Sending emails
In SmartyGrants, users with the Standard User or higher access level can send an individual email to a contact on a specific application through the Send Email function.
This can be found from the Contacts tab on an application record.
This section will only cover how to send an email to a contact (or multiple contacts) specifically associated to a single application.
Bulk emails - through Mailouts - are tackled in the upcoming training path “Assess & Decide”. This is because you are unlikely to need to send a bulk email immediately after publishing your round, and this functionality is only available to Administrator users by default.
If you did want to learn how to create and send a Mailout now, you can optionally do so with the course here, but take the course after reviewing this article.
Step 1 - Compose email
After selecting Send Email, you will be taken to the Send Email function where you can begin composing your email.
From
The From field controls what shows as the sender of the email in the recipient’s inbox. The default text populated is the name of your SmartyGrants account that the email is being sent from.
Enter the From details as required. If the default response is sufficient, no further action is required.
Reply-To-Address
The Reply-To Address will default to the username (email address) of the user who is logged in and sending the email.
To edit, from the dropdown, select the required Reply-To Address from the options available.
Note that the options displayed will only show registered users in the account.
Important: SmartyGrants does not handle inbound emails - only outbound ones.
If a recipient replies to an email, it will instead redirect that reply to the Reply-To-Address email that is set here. Note that all individual emails are sent from noreply@smartygrants.co.uk.
Recipients won’t see the Reply-To-Address unless they attempt to reply to the email, in which case the email they see in the To field will be replaced with the Reply-To-Address email.
To
The To is the recipient of the email.
To edit, from the dropdown, select the To recipient from the options available.
Note that the options displayed will be all available email addresses for all contacts linked to the application.
Tip: While you can only select 1 contact as the To recipient, you can have as may CC or BCC recipients as required.
Cc & Bcc
Cc and Bcc are additional recipients of the email, noting that Bcc recipients are ‘invisible’ to other recipients.
These fields can have email addresses entered in manually. Select the Cc or Bcc field to manually enter the full email address(es) of the required Cc or Bcc recipient(s). Note that for multiple email addresses, these must be separated by a comma.
Subject
The Subject is the subject line for the email that shows in an email inbox.
Manually enter the required subject.
Related Applications
By default, emails sent from the application record will automatically populate with the application number in the Related Applications field. This establishes a connection between the email correspondence and the application record.
If the email instead relates to a different application, from the Related Application dropdown, select the Application ID from the options available.
Tip: In 99% of cases, your correspondence will be connected to the application. When this is the case, you should avoid changing the related application pre-selected.
Relating an application:
Ensures the email appears in the History within the application, and
Avoids confusion when viewing email history for the contact from the Contacts Directory (Administrators only). A single contact could be associated with multiple applications in the same or a different programme.
Email contents
The Email Contents is the body of your email. Select the canvas area to begin composing.
In addition to entering text, you can also:
Use basic formatting and styling, available from the toolbar.
Use a template, available from the Insert Template button on the toolbar.
Use insert field(s), available from the Insert Fields button on the toolbar.
Insert template
Templates are created from Mailouts (Administrators only). This functionality allows you to automatically create the contents of an email from a pre-existing formatted template. This can be helpful for sending any correspondence that should be communicated in a consistent way.
If there are templates available in your account, these will be listed after selecting the Insert Template button. Select the name of the template, then select Use Template.
Depending on the scope of your implementation, you may or may not have templates created for you, and if they are in scope, they may not yet be set up at this stage in the process.
However, Administrators are welcome to explore creating templates using our documentation found here.
Insert fields
Insert fields are placeholders for real data, and work similarly to a traditional mail merge. When the email is sent, data from the specific contact or application record will be overwritten into the email.
Using insert fields can save you a lot of time as they eliminate the need to search, copy and then paste in data manually.
Select the Insert Fields button, then select the name of the field. If the field is a standard field or contact field, select the + icon to expand before selecting the name of the field.
The only available insert fields are:
System fields - e.g., Application ID, Round Name, the Decision, the Funding Conditions field
Contact fields - e.g., the contact's first name, primary phone, primary email, primary address
Standard fields - e.g., Project Title, Project Start Date, Total Amount Requested
Important: If you need to insert data from a field from a form, only ‘standardised' data types can be used, which includes standard fields, contact fields, and reference fields. You cannot use an insert field to pull data from a single question.
Once you’re done composing, select Next.
Step 2 - Choose Attachments
On this screen, you can choose to upload email attachments.
To add an attached file to your email, select Browse, and select a saved document from your device.
If you have a report created within your program, this can be run and uploaded as an attachment when your email is sent. Choose the report you’d like to use from the dropdown, then select Add Template.
Otherwise, select Next.
Step 3 - Review and Send
Once you have selected your recipients, composed your email, and added any attachments, the Review and Send step lets you review your drafted email before sending.
If any adjustments are required, select Back. This will allow you to go back through the steps above and make any required changes.
If you are happy with your email, select Send. In the pop-up window that appears, select Yes.
Warning: Only select the Send button after you have reviewed your email and are happy with the contents. Once you select Send, you will not be able to cancel the process, and the email will be delivered to the selected recipient(s).
Step 4 - Confirmation
On this next screen, you will be able to review the status of your sent email.
You will receive a successful status message once the email has been sent. Select Close to close the window.
If you related the application in Step 1, SmartyGrants will keep a record of this email under File Notes from the Contacts tab of the application record.
To view more information in relation to the email sent, select View Details.
Managing contacts
To understand how to manage contact records, please complete the LMS course below:
Managing contact cards (≈ 20 minutes)
Once you have finished this course, return to this page and continue from Where to next? below.
Where to next?
Once you feel confident with the topics above, you can focus on managing your live grants round.
When you’re ready to perform assessments and communicate on award outcomes, head to Assess and Decide.