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PIE Frequently Asked Questions

A problem that you may encounter may be very common, so check below to see if any of these frequently asked questions match your requirements before contacting the AIS Support.

Launching PIE

Date Format

Persons/Participation screen

Institutes screen

Persons/Addresses screen

Persons/Register & Update

Experiments/Teams

Persons/Role Assignment

Persons/Origin Institute

Greybook


The application takes ages to load !!! (on a PC)?

When you start PIE, a few things occurs :

  • your browser has to enable JAVA (load the so called JAVA virtual machine),
  • Download the complete PIE application into your machine (done once),
  • Initialize the application.

These steps usually take around 40 secs on a normal PC.

If the application hangs for a longer time (other symptoma are : everything is slow on the machine, no grey box in the PIE screen area) , this may be due to the action of a virus scan program. The virus scanner is checking if no virus are downloaded with the PIE application. Since the application is downloaded from a UNIX secure server, there is no point to make such a check.

You may disable virus scans during working hours :

On your task bar, at the opposite of the start menu icon, you should see the Virus scan program icon (in yellow) :
Click on the icon, the following menu will appear :


Choose configure scan Options. Under realtime Protection, unset the option "Enable Realtime protection". The screen turns grey :


Press OK to exit. The virus scan icon should now look like .

You get the message:
Your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on this page. As a result, the page may not display correctly.

When you've just installed W2000 and try to access PIE using Internet Explorer the message above will appear.

Solution:

  1. Choose option 'Tools- Internet options' from the Internet Explorer menu
  2. Then go to 'Security'
  3. Select 'Internet' and press the 'Custom level' button




  4. Then ensure that you have the same options ticked:



  5. Press OK, then select 'Local Intranet', press the 'Custom level' button and follow steps 4 and 5
  6. Press OK.
  7. Launch once again PIE. A message related to the installation of a Java plugin will appear on your screen.
  8. Answer 'YES' and follow the procedure.


It complains about a date. What is the right format?

Dates have to be entered with the following format: DD-MON-YYYY. This is to force Year2000 compatibility. Nevertheless, we have to distinghish :

  • how dates are stored (DD-MON-YYYY, Y2K compliant)
  • how data may be entered (as long as there is no ambiguity, a date such as 01.10.99 may be automatically converted to the right format).

What happens to the status of an EXMP or EXMP+Applicant who comes to participate in an experiment as EXTERNAL?

When an EXMP or EXMP+Applicant comes to participate in an experiment as EXTERNAL, you must only enter his/her participation. The status remains EXMP or EXMP+Applicant.

May a person participate to several experiments at the same time?

Yes! But just one of the participations is considered as a primary experiment. The notion of primary experiment is mainly used to indicate the experiment secretariat responsible for any changes that needs to be made on a person's file.

Why can't I modify a participation to an experiment?

Modifications can only be done by the users office and the experiment secretariats. The experiments secretariats can only modify participations belonging to their own experiments.
Furthermore, you cannot set your experiment as secondary if it is currently primary, but you can always set it as primary. In other words, you cannot give work to someone else, but you may take some extra work !

I cannot assign an institute to a person in the participation's screen.Why does it happen?

There is a list of values associated to the institute field in the participation's screen.This will help you to fill it out. You have to proceed in the following way:

  • select your experiment,
  • fill out the institute field with the name of the city institute.
  • call the list of values (click on the three points next to the field)
  • a list with the possible institutes located in that city will pop up. If your institute is not in the list, you will need, previously, to associate it into your team.This screen allows to enter and maintain an experiment/sub-group's teams i.e. institutes which collborates in the experiment/sub-group. An experiment may have more than one team at a time. Once teams are defined persons may be registered as members of those teams in the Persons - Participation screen.
    Have a look at the help, we have added a description of a few procedures such as the registration of a participation.

Do I always have to look for institutes by town?

The town is the normal criteria to search for an institute. However if you do not know the exact town spelling you can search by country giving the search criteria in the following format : %(XX)% where XX is a country code.

Do I have to give both: English and Original title?

No, only one is mandatory. The preferred one is an English title. However you may always register both of them.

Do I always have to specify a location with the new institute?

Yes, whenever you create a new institute please specify it's location. By default, the institute which you create is going to own an address of it's parent institute (which you define when creating a new institute). You will notice that in the 'Institute Location' part the message "This is the address of the parent institute" will appear. In most of the cases, you may prefer to create a new location with the new created institute. While doing it you will see the message "This is the address of the institute".


I cannot register an internal address for a person. It complains... Why?

This operation can only be done by the experiment secretariats, the Users Office, or the divisional group secretariat.
Please, if you are an experiment secretary, check that this person participates in your experiment. (Person. Participate's screen)
As long as the person does not participate in your experiment, you cannot do anything on his/her file. Have a look at the procedures on the help.

 

How can I register a newcomer with a composed first name (Maria Isabel or Jean Paul)?

You may enter it as Maria-Isabel or as Maria Isabel. The system does not care. In order to decide, you should ask the person if it is a composed name (ex: Jean-Pierre) or 2 separate first names (you may want to register two first names for Olivier Francis MARTIN because there are several Olivier Martin at CERN). Latin people mostly use composed names and English people separate first names.

How can I register a newcomer whose name is J. Michael?

Please,avoid these kind of J. You may have problems, later on, during the search. Try to contact this person, and get the full name.
Please remember that some minimal information is necessary to register somebody in HR such as the complete surname and first name, date of birth, sex, nationality.

 

How can I efficiently use the list of value when I am searching for a team leader or/and deputy team leader?

When searching for a team leader or deputy team leader, you can enter the lastname followed by a commas then the title and firstname. The format would be : lastname+","+title+firstname.

For example, you can search for Smith by typing: Smith,Mrs.Margaret

Can I have two team leaders at the same time to the same institute team?

No, you cannot. Don't forget that the team leader has to be registered in HR.
The cause of this request is generally a political issue (nobody wants to frustrate one of the team leaders). Having multiple team leaders per team would lead to inconsistencies : for instance, it would not be possible to identify the person to whom you should route a document.

 

What is the 'Official Collaboration' flag ?

You should set the flag to "Yes" if the institute/team should be included in the Gray Book.

How do I search for Role?

Role name consists of the experiment name and the role function itself. For example, Spokesperson in ATLAS will be called: ATLAS-SPOKESPERSON.

Why, while creating a Role the list of values of roles does not show me all of them?

When you create a new role the list of values will give you a choice of roles that have not yet been created. If the role that you want to create does not exist on the list, it means that this role was already created. In this case, go to the search part to find it.

I want to define a role for a person but the role does not exist on the list of values?

The role has to be previously created in the Role screen. There you also may define other specific information for a role such as phone(s), email. Once this is done you will see that the role will appear in the list.

Can I assign the same role to two different persons?

Yes, you may wish that two or more persons have a same role (for example, the experiment has 3 contact persons). Then, you assign the same role to each person.

Which addresses can be modified by the experiment secretariat?

The following addresses can be modified:

  • HP: Non Local Private Address
  • SM: Special Mailing Address
  • TL: Temporary Local Address

Can you have two Home Institutes at the same time?

A person can only have one Home Institute at the time. Whenever you enter a new Home Institute, an end date is set automatically to close the previous one.

When can I close a collaboration?

A collaboration can be closed when there are no people participating in an experiment for an institute working in that collaboration.

What's the difference between an official and an unofficial institute?

An official institute appears in the Grey Book.
An unofficial institute does not appear in the Grey Book.

The Home institute information appearing in the xwho where is it taken from?

The Home institute information appearing in the xwho is provided by the origin institute screen in PIE application. If the origin institute periode in PIE is terminated, then the home institute information is provided by the primary experiment screen in PIE. If the primary experiment is also terminated then the label 'unknown' will appear as Home institute in xwho.

The information of Home institute is updated by the Users Office.

How are the participations to a team and their order displayed in the Greybook?

The display of participations is the following:

  • if there is a pseudonym then it is displayed as entered
  • if there is no pseudonym, then the preferred name is displayed if it exists else it displays the firstname and lastname in capital letters.

The ordering of the participations is the following:

  • if there is a pseudonym then the latter is taken as entered
  • if there is no pseudonym, the ordering is by lastname.

What institutes are displayed in the Greybook? (PIE flags to be selected)

To be displayed in the GreyBook, the Institute flags have to be either Users Office- flag set to YES or Library flag set to YES [1]

Institute data displayed in Greybook, where does the data come from?

  WHO HOW
Name UO-Ursi PIE
ADDRESS:Street|Post Code|Town|Country UO-Ursi PIE
Telephone Library(Dallman) Foundation
Telex Library(Dallman) Foundation
Email Library(Dallman) Foundation
Research Type Library(Dallman) Foundation
Contact Library(Dallman) Foundation
Research Progr. Library(Dallman) Foundation
Synonym institute with accents Library(Dallman) Foundation
Address synonym Library(Dallman) Foundation
If a town or address has an synonym defined,
the synonym will be displayed. (Examples: Belgium's towns)

 

I cannot see a person in PIE when this person is registered in HR. Why?

When you enter in HR a person at a future date, you will not see this person in PIE because in PIE you cannot alter the effective date.

When should a contact be entered for an EXTERNAL?

  • If the EXTERNAL has a participation in an experiment, it is not compulsory to enter a contact.
  • A contact IS COMPULSORY for all other EXTERNALS such as those from divisions.

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