DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Below are the administrative steps involved in the development of System-to-System (S2S) interfaces for applicant organizations developing their own systems.

Step 1: Determine if your organization qualifies for development of a S2S interface. Factors to consider when determining if a S2S interface should be developed are:

• Application volume: A S2S interface might not be cost effective if you are only submitting a few applications per year.
• Technical capacity: Your organization must have the technical capacity to develop a S2S interface. This includes having a technical staff member familiar with Web Services technology, XML, and SOAP with attachments.
• Knowledge of the Grants.gov forms and submission process: Your organization must be familiar with the Grants.gov forms and submission process.

Two documents available to help you determine if a S2S interface is right for your organization are:

Applicant Web Services Integration
Refer to section 2: When to Develop a System-to-System Interface

Applicant System-to-System Test Process

Step 2: Actively learn about the Grants.gov applicant S2S program:

• Become familiar with the technical information on the Grants.gov website. For technical information to assist you in building your application, please begin with the Applicant Web Services Integration Design Documentation and Applicant Web Services Integration Reference Materials .
• Sign up for the Grants.gov S2S listserv by going to https://list.nih.gov/archives/grantsgovs2s-l.html

In addition, you should become familiar with any business rules and processes specific to the agencies that you plan to submit applications to.

Step 3: Develop the code for your W3C compliant SOAP client. You may wish to extend the functionality of the Grants.gov provided Reference Implementation (RI) or use the RI as an example to build your own custom client.

Step 4: Provide the Grants.gov PMO the following information in a Certificate Request Form:

• Certificate HEX number
• Your Organization's DUNS number
• Email address for notifications
• AOR name and email address
• Name of your organization

Link to the Certificate Request Form . Be sure to specify that you need the certificate installed for the Testing environment in the drop-down box.

The Grants.gov team will create your User Account. Note that for testing, Grants.gov will set up your DUNS as all zeros.

Grants.gov will notify you via email once your certificate has been installed.

Step 5: Perform initial connectivity testing in one of two ways:

• Test with Grants.gov provided Reference Implementation using the SSL client keystore (certificate) provided in the RI.
  • For information on downloading, installing and configuring the open source tools that are used in the development and execution of the Reference Implementation, refer to the XML Reference Implementation Materials
  .
• Test with your custom client. If you choose this option you will need to register your certificate with the Grants.gov AT environment by following Step 4.

The GetApplicantList Web Service shall be executed for the purpose of connectivity testing.

Step 6: Validate your well-formed XML grant application produced by your system against the appropriate Grants.gov XML schema.

Step 7: Perform integration testing:

• Before beginning to test, please read over all S2S documentation regarding testing on Grants.gov.
• Refer to the Applicant System-to-System Test Plan and follow the steps in that document.
• If you have successfully completed the test plan, then you are ready to move your Web Services application into production.

Step 8: Prepare your Web Services application to point to the Grants.gov production environment.

Step 9: You will need to register with Grants.gov. This includes getting a DUNS number, registering with the CCR, creating a username and password with ORC, and using that username and password to register with Grants.gov. You will need to select an E-Biz Point of Contact to authorize the AOR(s) to submit grant applications on behalf of your organization. For information on how to register with Grants.gov go to http://www.grants.gov/applicants/get_registered.jsp.

Step 10: You will need to get your certificate registered again for production. Repeat Step 4, but specify that you will be using the Production environment.

After the certificate has been installed, the E-Biz Point of Contact must authorize the certificate.