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New updates for the Researcher Access Service

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Adam Coulson | Average reading time 4 minutes

10 Feb 2025

The aim of this post is to shout about some of the changes to the Researcher Access Service, and mainly to highlight how we’re working to continually improve it.

By Adam Coulson, Delivery Manager

At the end of January, we released an update to the Researcher Access Service. The aim of this release is to help researchers progress through the service faster, and help the eDRIS team triage, review and progress projects quicker. 

Our Approach 

Our focus for this release has been to continue our agile approach and deliver on our commitment to user-centred design by responding to user feedback.   

We’ve been working with our delivery partner, Yexle, since November 2024 and testing the release with the eDRIS team. The current delivery phase is named ‘Improve’ as it contains several enhancements informed by both user feedback and known issues which were de-prioritised from the first release in April 2024. 

‘Improve’ is the first substantial release since launch, and we’ve spent the last eight  months gathering feedback from users to understand how the service is working. Talking to users has allowed us to identify targeted areas of improvement for both researchers and the eDRIS team. This also sets us up well for our next delivery phase, which we’re referring to as ‘Transform’ because it will bring more significant change to the service.  

What did users tell us? 

Researchers told us they wanted more regular updates from the service as their projects progress through review and approval. They were keen to have more visibility as their applications are progressing to help with reporting to funders and project teams. 

Researchers also told us they wanted to quickly understand the potential cost of a project at enquiry stage to help inform funding applications. 

The eDRIS team told us they needed a way to identify the projects which were ‘on hold’ from a reporting perspective, for example due to researchers being on leave or seeking funding before being able to progress their project. 

 

“This release [...] includes a range of improvements for both researchers and the eDRIS team to speed up application submission and project review.”

Adam Coulson, Delivery Manager

What does this release include? 

This release went live on 23 January 2025. It includes a range of improvements for both researchers and the eDRIS team to speed up application submission and project review. Our public Release Notes archive includes detail of all releases to date.. 

For Researchers 

  • Email updates - researchers told us they wanted more regular communication on the status and progress or their application when it is being reviewed. We've addressed this by adding a few targeted system-driven emails to notify researchers of progress through the approval process. 

  • Enquiry cost estimates - the service has been updated to display a greater range of automated cost estimates when researchers submit an enquiry. This provides researchers with cost estimates more quickly for projects which meet certain criteria.  

  • Managing Research Teams - the process through which a research team’s details are added to applications has been improved, with a simpler view of each team member and their details including safe haven access at-a-glance. 

  • We've made a number of minor visual improvements for all users, including how documents are displayed and how fields are validated.
     
  • We’ve also fixed known bugs which were preventing researchers adding more than one additional researcher to their research team.
     

For the eDRIS team 

  • Pathway updates - the eDRIS team are now able to reassign a project to a different approval pathway during either the Triage or Application stages. This caters to the changing nature of projects during the feasibility assessment and enables the team to guide researchers to the most suitable approval pathway. 

  • ‘On hold’ status - the eDRIS team are now able to flag when a project is considered to be 'on hold' from an administrative perspective. This flag is only visible to back-end users and will provide a clearer snapshot of in-flight case statuses and improved reporting.  

  • Application history - the RAS team are now able to view a new ‘Application History’ tab which displays an audit trail of activity for each application. This captures status changes, email logs and application updates in a grid view to aid project review and comparison between submissions. 

     

What’s next? 

We’re already working on the next phase of service improvement, which will consist of a series of development sprints from February to September 2025. This work will focus on improving accessibility, configuring more reporting, and improving how researchers communicate with the eDRIS team. We’re also considering how the service will evolve to accommodate wider changes to onboard new datasets and information asset owners. 

 

Links to more 

The Researcher Access Service 

Release notes – an ongoing archive of service improvements 

Information for Researchers 

Begin an enquiry  

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