Evaluation Service

Individual Evaluation Report

Evaluation Service - IT User Manual

Individual Evaluation Report
Process and Supporting Tools

Quick Access
Introduction
This document provides evaluators with an overview of the IT support for remote evaluations organized by the
European Commission in the scope of specific Calls for Proposals. The manual is built in two sections: the first two pages
explain the basics, whereas the screen descriptions and annexes give more in-depth information about the system. We
invite you to read at least the first two pages "System in a nutshell", which contains best practices when using the
system. The system is supposed to be intuitive enough so that you do not have to read the other sections, but you can
refer to them in case you have specific questions when working with the system.
The link to the system and helpdesk reference is provided below.

System Quick Access

Supporting Tool

European Commission Evaluation Service

Link to the application

https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/evaluation/

Login used

Your ECAS login

Service Desk

DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

The service desk is available on weekdays between 9:00 and 18:00 CET (Friday 17:00)

Table of content
Quick Access .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 2
System Quick Access ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Table of content .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
System in a nutshell ........................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Principles .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Main screens, tasks.............................................................................................................................................................................. 3
How to take a good start ...................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Main Screen Description ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Login Screen ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

ECAS Login ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Select the proper ECAS domain ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Am I properly configured? ............................................................................................................................................................... 6
Task List ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 6
"My Active Tasks" versus "All Tasks" ................................................................................................................................................ 6
Overview of the Task List ................................................................................................................................................................. 6
Navigate through tasks .................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Search and Filter tasks ..................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Proposal Details ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Evaluation Report .............................................................................................................................................................................. 10
Evaluation Report screen ............................................................................................................................................................... 10
Zoom on the Evaluation Form ........................................................................................................................................................ 11
Signing the Evaluation Report ........................................................................................................................................................ 12
ANNEX I. How to create an ECAS account? ................................................................................................................................................................... 13
ANNEX II. Declining a task ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

System in a nutshell
Principles
The system is designed to allow you, as an evaluator, to provide an electronic Individual Evaluation Report of a
proposal, which will later be used to produce a consensus report which is a synthesis/consensus of your evaluation and
evaluations of other experts. In this document, Evaluation Report stands for Individual Evaluation Report (IER).
The process is rather simple and consists of:

Checking that you can provide the evaluation (no conflict of interest of any nature)
Filling-in your evaluation report within an electronic Web-based form
Signing your evaluation report, also electronically, within the same form

Main screens and tasks

To help you during the evaluation process, you will navigate in the system through 3 main screens:
Screen
Task List
Proposal Details

Evaluation Report

Description
Here you can find a task for each report that has to be written, a link to the proposal details and
buttons for specific actions
Here you can find the abstract of the proposal, the composition of the consortium, and access to Part
A and Part B of the proposal. You can also provide comments from this screen.
Here you can write and sign the actual evaluation reports. You also have access to Part A and Part B of
the proposal from this screen. Here you can provide task comments, in case a specific action has to be
taken.

The above mentioned screens provide you with a list of tasks, easy access to proposal content, and to an Individual
Evaluation Report. The tasks have a simple life cycle, but the actions you can perform vary in relation with the status of
a task:

To summarize the various statuses:

Assigned : you did not yet open the evaluation report form
Open
: you have opened the evaluation report form at least once
Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Signed
: you finished your evaluation report and can no longer modify it
Declined : you declined the task and cannot access it any more
Cancelled : the Commission dismissed you as evaluator for that proposal

How to have a good start

First look at all proposals allocated to you in order to promptly identify any conflict of interest and thus to notify the call
coordination team that a proposal should be reallocated to another expert. The suggested process is described in detail
on the next page.

1.

Connect to the system (using your ECAS account, contact the Service Desk if you have any issue).
Once connected, your active tasks list is displayed.

2.

From the Task List, click on either the proposal reference or acronym.
This action opens the task details screen, where you have access to the proposal information: abstract and composition of
the consortium. From that point, you can already check potential conflicts of interest with the partners of the project, and
decline the task if necessary see point (4).

3.

From the task details, click on Part A and Part B.

Then again, if you face a conflict of interest you can decline the task as explained in point (4).

4.

In case of a conflict of interest, click on the Decline button.

A list of official reasons is displayed and you can check if your reason to decline the task falls in one of these categories. You
are also invited to provide a comment to specifically explain the reason.
Once declined, the task still appears in your task list, with a status Declined and you cannot access to the proposal details
any longer.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

5.

You can also start editing the proposal, from task details, click on the Edit Task button.
This action opens the Evaluation Report. The first time you edit the report the task state changes from Assigned to
Opened. You are not obliged to sign your report; if you wish you may save it, and return to the report at a later time.

6.

Later on, from the Task List, you will be able to open a report by clicking on the Edit button.
This action too opens the Evaluation Report. Please note that there is an auto-save mechanism every two minutes, thus
you will never lose your comments, even if your computer crashes, or you lose your internet connection.

7.

When you are satisfied with your comments, you can click on the Sign button from the Evaluation Report or from the Task
List. Once signed, the report task state changes to Signed. The report is no longer editable, but is still accessible from the
"All tasks" List using the View button.

Main Screen Descriptions

Login Screen
This section describes in details how to enter into the system. Your identity is checked by the ECAS system (European
Commission Authentication Service), now widely used to secure most of the European Commission systems. If you do
not have an ECAS account yet, please create one by following instructions provided in the Annex I of this document
"How to create an ECAS account".

ECAS Login
When you click on the login button, you will be prompted to authenticate through the ECAS login screen:
Please pay attention to the domain which is displayed on the login screen;
your domain should be External as displayed on the screenshot on the
left.
If the domain shown is not External, please click on Change it and select
the correct domain (see below, section "Selecting the ECAS domain")
Once the proper domain is selected, simply provide your ECAS user name
and password to enter the system.

Selecting the ECAS domain

ECAS is used by the European Commission for authentication of all
staff of European Union bodies (Commission, Council, Parliament,
etc), and also by you as external users of Commission IT systems.
The ECAS domain that corresponds to your profile is "Neither an
institution nor a European Body".
Please select this domain or else your login will not be accepted.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Am I properly configured?
Once authenticated, you should see the list of tasks similar to the list shown
on the right (figure a), and not an empty task list (figure b).
If you get an empty task list, it most probably means that you have several
ECAS accounts and that you are not using the account we have used to
configure your access.

(figure a) a correct task list

In this case, please contact the service desk immediately; provide the login
you are using (but not your password) along with a screenshot of the login
screen to facilitate troubleshooting.
They will configure your account accordingly.

(figure b) an empty task list

Task Lists
The task lists are pivotal screens of the application, where you will navigate through your tasks. In addition to basic
navigation functionalities, the task lists also provide advanced search, sorting and filtering facilities.

"My Active Tasks" versus "All Tasks"

The system will propose you two tasks list, as described above:

My Active Tasks: all the tasks that you have to carry out, so all the Evaluation Reports that you have to write
and sign. As soon as a task is signed, it disappears from this tab and can be consulted in the All Tasks tab.
All Tasks: all the tasks that you have finalized or have the right to see. During the Individual Evaluation Report
phase you can see only your tasks. Once the consensus report phase starts, you can see all the other kind of
tasks such as Review Consensus Reports, Write Consensus Report, etc., in this tab.

Overview of a Task List

The screenshot below describes the task list screen:

A summary of your tasks (you can easily check whether all tasks had been performed)
Access to the task details screen in order to consult proposal information
Access to the actions available on a task: edit a report, decline a task, etc

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

At the top of the screen you

can see the account used to
connect to the system; this
might be requested by the
service desk.
The summary applies to all the
tasks allocated to you.
You can sort all columns, at any
given time.
To access a proposal's details,
simply click on the proposal
reference or acronym (see
proposal
details
for
a
description of this screen).

The actions available vary depending on the status of the activity. Click here for an explanation of the various states and
actions possible depending on these statuses.
The score displayed in the task list is the computed based on the marks you provided in the report. The way the score is
computed depends on the call, therefore it is not explained in this document, but will be presented during the expert
briefings to which you will be invited.

Navigate through tasks

Navigation through the different tasks is rather simple: tasks are displayed in a number of pages and you can navigate
through these pages (the size of pages is customizable).

You can choose the number of tasks

to be displayed in the page. Simply
select another value to implement the
change.

On the bottom-left of the task list you

see a summary of the number of tasks
actually displayed in the page.

On the bottom-right of the task list you

will find the links to navigate through
pages.

Search and Filter tasks

The screen provides you with advanced search and filter functionalities to ease your navigation through the proposals.

A full text search on all columns of the list:

o

Simply type the text to search (e.g. the proposal acronym to display, the status, the panel, etc.)

The Task list is automatically filtered with your selection.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

To narrow the displayed list to a more specific set of proposals through the filters: simply click on search to
activate the filters, reset to go back to the regular list and cancel the filtering.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Proposal Details
The proposal details screen gives you an easy access to:

Abstract of the proposal

The composition of the consortium, some partner information and contact persons' information
Access to Part A and Part B of the proposal

Tips
The proposal details screen allows you to quickly identify conflicts of interest, without even opening the
evaluation report. The detection of conflicts of interest is relatively easy thanks to a display of the composition of
the consortium, and eventually by quick access to the Part A and Part B of the proposal.
If you want to raise a conflict of interest, you can flag it directly from here by clicking on
the Decline button at the bottom of the screen (see ANNEX II. "Declining a task" for
more details). You can also go back to the task list, or click on the Edit task button to
open the evaluation report.
You can open the evaluation report from the task list at any moment.

Please note that the proposal details screen is not the only screen where you can access to the Part A and Part B; you
can also view these documents directly from the evaluation report form.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Evaluation Report
The Evaluation Report screen is the screen where evaluators actually write and sign evaluation reports. The report is a
Web form where evaluators are invited to fill-in evaluation criteria defined in the scope of the call. The criteria
themselves are text fields which do not accept any formatting in order to avoid any problems of interpretation later in
the evaluation process.

Evaluation Report screen

The screen as such provides access to all

information necessary to write the
evaluation report: the proposal (Part
A/Part B), task comments provided by
the organizers of the call, actions that
can be performed, and the Report Form
itself.
The Form is detailed in the next section.
An evaluation progress index is
displayed on the top of the form,
computed on the basis of your data
entry.

Besides Sign (explained in a specific section), and Decline (see

ANNEX II. "Decline a Task"), you can Print the report and of
course Save your data entry at any moment. Printing a report
will generate a PDF file that you can then print or save.
You can get explanation on the rankings to apply by clicking on
the help link
at the top of the screen. The help provided
depends on the call (the example provided here is just
presented as an illustration).

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Zoom on the Evaluation Form

The evaluation form displays all criteria and specific sections of
the evaluation report. By default, all the blocks are hidden and
only the title for each criterion is displayed. To expand or
collapse the criterion, just click on the banner of the criterion or
section. To expand or collapse all criteria, click on
"Expand"/"Collapse".
On each banner of an evaluation criterion, you will find a
summary of your evaluation of that criterion: the score you
provided, the threshold for the criterion.

If you expand a criterion, you will see the fields you are
expected to complete. Depending on the evaluation, the report
contains only a text input per criterion, or a list of sub-criteria to
fill-in. Some are mandatory, while others are not. An asterisk (*)
indicates a mandatory field.
Your scoring of the criterion is requested at the top of the
criterion section. The precision of the mark is also dependent on
the call (full point, half point of full decimal).
A character counter is shown to help you in your data entry.

Tips
You may save your form at any moment with the Save button at the bottom
of the screen, but your form will be saved automatically every two minutes.

After Signing (see next section), the Evaluation report form will become readonly. You will still be able to read your assessment or print it, but you will not be
able to modify it.

Warning
If you signed by mistake, or if you wish to reopen
your evaluation report, please contact your
Coordinator, who is the only person authorized
to reopen your task.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

Signing the Evaluation Report

Signing the evaluation report is done by clicking on the Sign button at the bottom
of the Evaluation Report. During this operation, the system will check that you
have provided all the mandatory information.

If you try to Sign a form without filling all the necessary

fields, a red warning will notify you of the missing
information.
The form automatically expands criteria and sections which
contain the errors; simply browse the form to check which
field is pending completion.
On the left are a few examples of common mistakes:
1.
2.
3.

A score which had not been provided

A mandatory field without any content
A YES/NO selection which was not performed.

It is not possible to sign a report without resolving all the

errors raised by the system

As soon as all mandatory fields are provided, the system will ask you to confirm
that you indeed wish to sign the report. The system requires that you confirm that
eventual conflicts of interest had been checked (see ANNEX II. "Declining a task"
for more details).

Warning
After signing a report, you no longer have the possibility to modify it. If you signed by mistake, or if you wish to reopen your
evaluation report, please contact your coordinator, who is the only person authorized to reopen your task.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

ANNEX I. How to create an ECAS account?

In order to start using the system you need to get a personal user ID with the European Commission Authentication Service (ECAS).
1.

From the Evaluation System login screen:

Click on Register your ECAS account.

2.

You are then presented the Sign Up screen

Please take note that there is a specific help link
which is dedicated to External users.

3.

Fill-in the required fields

4.

Click on Sign up at the bottom of the page.

5.

The system acknowledges the creation of your

account with this message:

6.

Click on the link you receive by email to activate

your account.

7.

The system then invites you to choose a password

for your account.

8.

When provided with a valid password the system

confirms the creation of your account with this
message:

9.

Simply go back to the Evaluation Service (link provided at the beginning of the
document) and click Login to enter into the system.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222

ANNEX II. Declining a task

You can decline a task at any moment in the process. However declining a task exposes you to various choices - se
below:
1.

The Decline button is available from the task list, from the
proposal details screen, or from the evaluation report.
Click on Decline to decline the task.

2.

You are then proposed to choose the main reason for

declining the task.
The Other reasons are basically covering unforeseen
reasons, and are not covered in this section.

3.

A sub-list of reasons is then proposed.

You are invited to select one of these options. In the case
of conflict of interest, you may choose from the official list
of direct and indirect conflicts of interest that will explain
why you feel you cannot evaluate the proposal.

4.

Once you have declined the task, you no longer have an

access to either the proposal, nor to the evaluation report.

Warning
After declining a task, you no longer have the possibility to access the task. If you declined by mistake, please contact your
coordinator, who is the only person authorized to reopen your task.

Service Desk: DIGIT-EFP7-SEP-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu / Phone: +32 2 29 92222