Overview of the Proposal forms step

This step is the core of the submission process.

To access a previously saved draft proposal form, take following steps:
In the Funding & Tenders Portal, click on the Actions button next to the proposal and select Edit Draft:

Your proposal will open showing the Proposal forms screen:
When clicking the Edit forms button, the administrative form (Part A) opens.

The action buttons of the wizard

The main action buttons shown in the Proposal forms screen of the submission wizard are:

Part A: Administrative Form

Click the button in the Administrative forms section to read the help instructions for editing the administrative forms of the proposal, as shown in the picture below:

Click to start editing the forms. You can check Recommended system configuration for further information about the compatibility recommendations to work with the form.

What you need to know about completing the form

Who can fill in the form?

Any contact with full access from the coordinator organisation can submit the proposal and can also modify the whole form Part A on behalf of the rest of participants. The rest of participants can preview the form and the main contact/contacts with full access can edit the contact details information of their organisation and the line in the budget table corresponding to their own organisation.

Click the button to access the forms.

Read-only fields

Some fields cannot be edited in the form. For instance, the list of participants and contact persons, the Participant Identification Code (PIC), etc. To modify the list of participants or contact persons, please go back to the Participants step. To modify the legal data of the organisation, please read more about it in this Data Updates section.

Guidance in the form

If you click on the question marks in blue, you can read more information about the sections/fields.
Fields where you need to type display a short text with guidance on the format, the length and/or type of required input. Once you click on the text or start typing the information, the support text disappears.

Mandatory fields

An asterisk indicates a field that needs to be filled in. Depending of the type of form in use (see Editing and completing the form for more details), there are further indications about what happens if you do not fill the field:

• Colours in the field: red indicates that an error will be encountered when validating the data in the form, whereas if the colour is yellow, it will be just a warning. 
• Icons next to the field: an exclamation in a red circle indicates that it will generate an error when validating the data in the form, whereas if it is an exclamation in a yellow triangle, it will be a warning.

Editing and completing the form

Currently, there are two types of form. Whereas the functionalities and the data you need to provide are the same in nature, the specification on how you navigate the form and complete it can vary from one to the other. 

Please click on the Edit forms button and compare what you see with the images below, then continue reading accordingly:

Top-aligned Menu Forms

When clicking the button in the submission wizard, Proposal forms screen; the form opens in the first page within your browser. This first page includes the table of contents and the Call information. You can return to this screen by clicking the button at any moment, to be able to navigate to any of the sections in the form by clicking the Show button in the Table of contents:

To start completing the form, use the navigation buttons on the banner to advance through the different sections:

Then, fill in the corresponding fields for each section:

When filling the form, if you need a clarification about a section you can click on the question mark buttons to get a text explaining about what to provide for that field/section:

In order to provide the basic information of the Department carrying out the proposed work, click on Show the Participants section, then on Participant’s details and scroll down to page 2:

There, you can also select the Same as proposing organisation’s address or the Not applicable checkboxes, as well as adding a department by clicking on Add a Department.

Navigation in the form

To view the different sections, you may either use the navigation in the header of the form or click on the Show buttons in the table of contents (cover page).

Action buttons within the form

You have three buttons:

Validating, saving and closing the form

Clicking the button saves your input at any moment. Please note that no data is saved until you perform the saving action. You can continue editing after clicking on Save.

Before closing the form, click the button. It just saves the data and closes the form for further editing later, but it does not mean that the proposal is submitted yet. This will take you back to Proposal forms, where you can upload the technical annex and any additional documents. You may return to edit the form as many times as you wish before the closing date of the call. However, remember that any changes saved in the form need to be resubmitted, if you already submitted the form once.

Please note, the  Web Form allows you to go back to Proposal forms in the submission wizard by either clicking the Proposal forms button in the cover page of the proposal (backwards button) or the Proposal forms button of the validation results page (forward button). In any of the two cases, leaving the form using these buttons does not save your changes, so please make sure to save the form first:

The form has built in checks and gives error or warning messages in case fields are not completed.

You can click the button to make sure that your proposal form is correct and complete. Validating the form must be done before being able to submit. If you do not run it via the Validate Form button, when you finish filling the form you will automatically arrive to the validation step, as the last step in completing the form.

Note: For the calls with multiple participants, every participant's page needs to be visited at least once to be able to validate the section. Otherwise, you will receive a blocking error: "This section has not been validated yet".

You will be presented with any errors/warnings.

Errors mean that mandatory information is missing (such as the Proposal Title). The proposal cannot be submitted until these errors are corrected.

Warning messages do not block submission, but they indicate missing information that may be important for the proposal. Ideally, these warning messages should be addressed by correcting the information provided.

Validate your results by reviewing the indicated errors/warnings. Click on the Show Error / Show Warning buttons to go to the affected parts:

The error/warning will be highlighted for you in the form. Amend contents accordingly. Any errors must be corrected to be able to submit your proposal. Warnings will not prevent you from submitting.

If the errors/warnings are related to missing data for the participating organisations or main contacts in the consortium, the Show Error / Show Warning buttons will take to the part in the form where you find those problems, but to fix this specific issues you need to Save and close the form and go back to the Participants screen. After any change in the consortium, you need to edit and re-validate the form.

When all issues are fixed, click the button. Your form has now been saved on the Commission servers, but your proposal is not yet submitted.

If not done, the following step would be to upload the PART B and annexes, continue reading Part B - Downloading and completing the annex forms.

Left-aligned Menu Forms

To access the forms and to start editing, click the button, the form opens showing the content of the General Info section.

On the left of the screen is the menu showing the different sections in the form. To start completing the form, use the navigation in the menu on the left-hand side to advance through the different sections:

The three bars at the top of the menu allows you to collapse, or expand it accordingly, once clicked:

Each section in the menu will display an icon indicating its completeness. The possible icons are:

• Green circle with white tick:– all fields in the section have been completed. 
• Red circle with white exclamation mark (error): – mandatory fields have been left blank in the section. The mandatory fields will be visually indicated via the same sort of icon when accessing the section. When trying to submit a proposal where mandatory information is missing, you will be blocked.
  
• Orange triangle with a white exclamation mark (warning): – fields that are not consider mandatory have been left blank in the section. It may affect the proposal admissibility and eligibility during evaluation. Though the related sections are not mandatory to complete, it would be advisable to do so. 

Please review the sections by clicking on them, then fill in the fields accordingly. The icon will change alongside while filling the missing information, turning into a green circle with a tick when all fields have been completed. 

The content of some of the sections can vary depending on the specific configuration for that call/topic, but the following elements are always common to all cases:

General Info

You need to provide manual input for the following fields:

• Proposal Title
• Language
• Duration in months
• Free keywords
• Question about previous submission of similar proposals.

 The Acronym and Abstract show what was provided when creating the proposal, but you can modify both on this screen if needed.

Declarations

Most declarations are mandatory. Please read them carefully and acknowledge them accordingly, by checking the corresponding tick box.

Participants

In this section you need to encode the details for the participating organisations, namely:

• Type of organisation
• Information of the department(s) carrying out the proposed work
• Links with the other organisations in the consortium
• Information about the contact person

To provide the information, click Participants in the menu. In the centre of the panel, click the down arrow and the sections for the participant details will expand. You will be able to complete as necessary:

When accessing one of the participants, the name of it will remain frozen at the top of the screen allowing the user to confidently complete necessary portions of the form. Use the and icons to add or remove elements (i.e. to add a department, a link to the other participants, etc.). You also have the possibility to reuse the organisation's address when applicable.

When you have filled in the details for that participant, click on the arrow on the participant details on the top, the participant will collapse and you will return to the participant list.

Repeat the actions with the rest of participants. You can expand all participants at the same time if you wish, then scroll down to see all details for each one. 

Budget

Enter the requested grant amount per organisation, the system will calculate the total requested grant amount.

Other Questions

This section will appear only for the topics that have specific questions, and the content will be different depending on the call/topic.

Action buttons within the form

Validating, saving and closing the form

Clicking the Save data  button saves your input at any moment. Please note that no data is saved until you perform the saving action. You can continue editing after clicking on Save data.

To close the form Part A and return to the Proposal Forms screen click , you will be able to select whether you want to save or not your changes.

Click the icon to check the data in the form. You will be presented with the relevant section, and its specific areas, that need to be completed for the system to accept the submission of your proposal. Click the black text and you will be taken directly to manage the field accordingly.

If not done, the following step would be to upload the PART B and annexes, continue reading Part B - Downloading and completing the annex forms.

Part B - Downloading and completing the annex forms

Click on to download all the proposal templates, which will be different from call to call.

The template describes the information that must be included in your application and how to structure that information. You will need to complete this package as thoroughly as possible. You can receive assistance from the contacts listed in the Get Support section on the topic page from the Funding & Tenders Portal. It is important that you remain within the file size and page limits that a proposal may have. Once you have completed your proposal based on the downloaded template, you must convert it into a PDF file, which you will then upload as an Annex form of the proposal. This is referred to as Part B of your proposal.

In the Part B and Annexes section, you will see a small coloured vertical line at the left side of the different fields to upload documents: if this line is green, it means that the field is completed successfully and, if the line is red, it means the field is incomplete.

Part B - Uploading the annex forms

When you complete the annex forms, you must prepare them for uploading. Only the coordinator organisation of the proposal can upload files in Part B. All annexes must be in PDF format, except if a different format is specifically mentioned in the attachment info (under File type). The file name cannot contain other than Latin characters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), dot (.), dash (-), underscore (_) and spaces.

Several limitations and requirements are in place for each of the forms, depending on the call – such as, page size and page limit, document size limit, etc.

The breach of certain limitations, such as document size limits, could result in failure to upload. As a result, you may need to amend the documents and upload them again. If you exceed the page number limit, when applicable, you will be still able to upload the document, but all of the excess pages will contain just a watermark as content.

You will also see the following warning, informing that the content of those water marked pages will be dismissed during the evaluation session:

In the process of completing your annex forms, and prior to uploading them, make sure that your documents comply with the mentioned requirements and recommendations, as generally outlined below:

1. PDF conversion issues and checks:
   • Before you start the conversion to PDF, clean up your document - accept all tracked changes, delete internal review notes or comments, check for any formatting issues, and so on. The document to be converted into PDF must only contain the final, "clean" content.
   • Check that your PDF conversion software has successfully converted all the pages of your original document (e.g. check for any problems with page limits, tables, graphics or footnotes).
   • Check that your PDF conversion software has not cut down pages with landscape orientation to fit them into portrait orientation format.
   • Check that captions and labels have not been lost from your diagrams.
   • Embed all fonts in the PDF file (math symbols, non-Latin alphabet text, etc.).
2. Limitations in document page number, font size, and page margins: each form template, depending on the specific call, may impose certain limitations in the document formatting regarding the maximum number of pages in the document, the minimum/maximum font size allowed, and/or the minimum margins you must allow for the page layout.
   

   Always make sure to check and apply the guidance for the specific call, available on the Funding & Tenders Portal, as well as the instructions at the beginning of the annex form templates for each specific call.

   If you attempt to upload an annex form that contains more pages than the specified limit, you will not be blocked by the system. However, after the upload, the system will display a warning message, advising you to shorten and re-upload the proposal.

   If the number of pages in one of the uploaded documents still exceeds the allowed limit and the deadline has not yet expired, you will see an Eligibility Warning advising you to shorten and re-upload the file.

3. Document files size: the allowed file size of annex forms may be limited, too. Check the guidance documentation available in the Topic page information package on the Funding & Tenders Portal.
   

   When the document file size exceeds the allowed limit, the file will not be uploaded and the system will display an error message immediately during the upload process, as shown in the picture below:
   

4. Graphical resolution: use a maximum resolution of 300 dpi for all graphics and text (photocopy quality). This can considerably reduce the PDF file size.
5. Documents file name and security:
   
   • Ensure that the annex forms file names contain alphanumerical characters only (A-Z, a-z, 0-9). Dot (.), dash (-), underscore (_) and spaces are allowed in the file name.
   • Be aware that any digital signatures will be removed when uploading the file.
   • Do not protect the uploaded files with a password nor encrypt them with a certificate. If you try to upload a protected file, you will see an error message about the file being locked.

     

     Please remove the password/ encryption and upload the file again.

6. Post-upload verification: once you upload your files, check their quality - download them to check whether the file transfer was successful and if the file is complete. If not, make the necessary corrections and upload it again.

Once the downloaded templates have been completed and are ready to upload, follow these steps to upload them:

1. Click the button for the respective document in Proposal forms of the submission wizard:
   

   

   Note

   The number of annexes shown in the image above is specific to the example used to capture images, the actual list of necessary annexes requested in the submission system is different from topic to topic.

2. Select the file to upload from the Open window. If your file has blank spaces in its name, the system will upload it filing the blank spaces with "_".
   

   
   

3. Click on .
4. Optionally, you can click on an uploaded file to remove it and replace it with a new file.

Editing and completing form Part C

Depending on the call/topic, filling in an additional Part C may be required. To complete it, from the Proposal forms screen click Edit Part C :

The form will open, the questions and sections within will be different depending on the call/Topic:

To save the changes, click on Save data, no data is saved until you perform this action.

Click on the Validation Summary button, if availalbe, to check fields that have not been completed yet; you will be presented the list of fields to review. If this button is not available, simply check all fields in the form to make sure that no data is missing; the presence of the button responds mainly to the existance of mandatory fields or not and the specific configuration of the topic:

When the form has been completed, click on Close and select Save Changes and Close. You will return to the Proposal Forms screen. At this point, the content of the Part C has been added to your proposal. 

Once all necessary fields have been completed, should you wish to view the content as a document, click View PDF:

MEDIA DB

For some calls (i.e. CREA), you may be required to provide additional information about media works which are part of the application. In these cases, you will see an additional Edit MEDIA DB button, which will lead you to an online form where you can enter all the required information about the media works considered in the application.

Click on it. The page Creative Europe MEDIA database opens. Follow the specific application instructions provided in the form itself (the sections and the instructions in the form will be different from call to call).

When you have completed the form, click the Download as PDF button to download the PDF file that you need to upload as an annex to your proposal.

Then, go back to the Submission system (Proposal Forms step). Scroll down to the Part B and annexes section, locate the entry for the MEDIA DB information and upload the PDF file:

GIS data

For some calls (i.e. CEF), you may be required to provide information about the location of your proposal. In these cases, you will see an additional Edit GIS data button. GIS stands for Geographical Information System and you can find the instructions on how to use it here.

Clicking the Edit GIS data button will lead you to the tool.

Access rights to the Part C, MEDIA DB and GIS data forms

Validate and submit your proposal 

To make sure that your application meets the requirements run a validation of your draft proposal. To do so, you click on the button at the bottom of the Proposal Forms screen.

Please note that this action is not the same as clicking on Validate form / Validation summary buttons within the administrative form. When you run a validation from within the form, the validation checks only the content of the form, i.e. the completeness of the fields in the administrative form Part A.

When you run a validation from the submission application via Validate, you run a validation of your whole draft proposal. This includes all fields in Part A, the uploaded files under Part B and Annexes and the presence of a saved Part C (if available for the call).

You are presented with a list of errors and warnings. Errors prevent you from submitting the proposal, whereas warnings do not prevent you from submitting, but will require that you provide a justification if you submit the proposal containing warnings.

The list of errors/warnings looks slightly different on the screen depending on the type of Part A in use (see Editing and completing the form for more details), but in both cases, the errors are listed first, followed by the warnings:

Top-aligned Menu Forms: If your administrative form presents the call and proposal data in big letters, with the table of contents below in a kind of cover page. 

For this kind of form, the list of errors/warnings, if found in the administrative form Part A, will include a link to open the form. Click on it to go to the form and apply the corrections.

Left-aligned Menu Forms: If your administrative form presents the call and proposal data in a box on the top, with the menu of the sections on the left.

For this kind of form, the list of errors/warnings, if found in the administrative form Part A, will not include a link to the form. You need to close the list of issues and manually open the administrative form Part A via the back in the Proposal Forms screen.

However, remember that the left-aligned menu forms indicate already on the menu which sections contain errors () or warnings (). Therefore, it is very easy to locate where you need to go to amend the errors.

In both cases, error in other forms (i.e. Part C, Part B), are simply indicated in the list, you need to go to the respective part B section or Part C to fix them.

When the issue is that the consortium has been modified after having edited the form Part A, you will get the following message. Click Edit Form, review the participants section and click on Save and Close. Then click on Validate again, back in the Proposal Forms screen.

Once all the errors have been corrected, run the validation again. If there are no more errors, you can proceed to click the Submit button.

If there are still unattended warnings left when clicking on Submit, you may proceed with the submission by entering a justification and acknowledgement of those warnings:

The Submitted status will also be shown on the Proposals page of the Funding & Tenders Portal. The Proposal Coordinator will also receive a submission confirmation e-mail, including details about the submitted proposal. Note that the e-mail could end up in the spam folder or get blocked by the anti-spam software of your organisation, so make sure that you check your inbox regularly.

The submission is completed when the Proposal Coordinator clicks on , and the confirmation email has been received. Uploading the Annex documents only, does not finalise the submission process.

It is highly recommended to submit your proposal as early as possible and at least 48 hours prior to the call deadline. This will avoid being confronted with incompatible local IT configuration settings shortly before the call deadline, when insufficient time would be left to handle it. There is no reason in delaying the submission for confidentiality concerns as the system does not allow any access to the proposals before call deadline or cut-off (other than to selected data that is part of the Terms and Conditions for the Submission of Applications). You can submit the proposal as many times as you wish up to the deadline, except if your call does not have a deadline (i.e. continuous call), where you will be able to submit only once. Every submitted version will replace the previously submitted one.

Once you have clicked the Submit button you will arrive on the Submit page, see Submit for more details.