PHT Plan of Record

For 13B proposals in priority order assigned by Joan:

1. Extract and convey reasons from the VLA prioritizer
  • We suggest an extension to the current pressure plotter, namely associate a message from the prioritizer with each session. Currently, one may click on an LST bin to get the list of the sessions at various priorities. We suggest adding the capability of clicking on a session in the list to get the reason that it is not at the next higher scheduling priority. As the prioritizer tries to fit a session at the various priority levels, it would store a message into that field if it doesn't fit.
  • For something that doesn't fit at scheduling priority A, the message would be "Not priority A because exceeds <whatever>% at LST <whatever>"
  • For something that doesn't fit at scheduling priority B, the message would be one of either "Not priority B because exceeds <whatever>% at LST <whatever>" or "Not priority B because LST range already filled beyond <whatever>%"
  • For something that doesn't fit at scheduling priority C, the message would be "LST range already sufficiently filled"
Programmer's Notes: We believe we understand what is desired here, but are not sure we will be able to do it easily, especially given Keith's impending departure.

2. Include carryover in the VLBA plots

Programmer's Notes: We believe we understand what is desired here. The VLBA should have a carryover file that is read in at the beginning of a PHT session, similar to VLA and GBT. The creation of that file is up to Mark C. and Barry.

3. Multi-telescope proposals. Ditch Joan's version in favor of Barry's:

We need a facility for proposals requesting more than one telescope to be displayed together, and to appear on the pressure plots of all
telescopes involved. What we need comprises two parts - getting a session from a proposal for telescope A into the session version
for telescope B, and displaying selected sessions for telescope A while handling sessions for telescope B. Both parts come in
multiple levels of plushness. Facing reality, I suspect we may end up with only the minimum.

3.1. Loading sessions. These sessions are to be treated like any other in the text display and the pressure plots. They will require special handling at disposition letter generation time.
  • a Minimum. Emulate for VLA what GBSE does for GBT - when sessions are loaded from PST, include sessions from VLBA or VLBI that request phased VLA.
  • b Medium. Also include, at PST -> PHT time various named proposals (eg VLBA proposals requesting VLA time for polarization position angle determination).
  • c Nice. Ability to add such things after the initial transfer.
  • d Plush. Copy and paste from another telescope's sessions ad libidum (at one's pleasure).
3.2. Displaying sessions. The displayed sessions appear in the text listings, suitably highlighted so we know what they are, but do not appear in pressure plots.
  • a Minimum. If the prop_id appears in another telescope's version, the data from that version are also displayed in the text listing, adjacent to the listing for that proposal in the current version.
  • b Plush. Permit establishing an arbitrary link between proposals, such that they are displayed together.
Programmer's Note: after consulting with daniel, we believe we can implement 3.1a, 3.1b, and 3.2a.

4. The disposition letter should first list the Principal Investigator, then list the Co-Investigators in the order that they appear in the proposal. If the latter ordering is hard, list the Co-Investigators alphabetically by last name.

Programmer's Note: We believe we understand what is desired here, and this should be straightforward to implement.

5. The GBT disposition letter should reference the semester's TAC report (the VLA and VLBA letters already do so).

Programmer's Note: We believe that this is entirely up to Toney, in his boilerplate template for those letters.

6. The disposition letter should contain text about the SOS application process. If the proposal was approved for time at a scheduling priority of A, B and/or C, then insert the following text just after the Comments from the Time Allocation Committee (TAC):
  • NRAO Student Observing Support (SOS) Funding: <line break> You may be eligible for funding through the NRAO SOS program. See the NRAO SOS proposal information page at https://science.nrao.edu/opportunities/student-programs/sos for further information. The deadline for an SOS proposal associated with this disposition letter will be June 7, 2013. Contact Jeff Mangum <mailto:jmangum@nrao.edu> with questions.

Programmer's Note: We believe we understand what is desired here, and this should be straightforward to implement.

Programmer's Notes on items 4-6, and disposition letters in general: We believe what is needed for this is a separate tab (or some other mechanism, but the ability needs to be there to get to it) in the PHT for disposition letters. This should have the ability to do the following:
  • Import boilerplate template for any of: VLA, VLBA, GBT.
  • Generate initial disposition letters for any of: VLA, VLBA, GBT (only after template has been imported).
  • Email disposition letters for any of: VLA, VLBA, GBT (only after they all exist). Or email a disposition letter for a single proposal. The date and time that it is emailed should be attached to the disposition letter as it is sent out. Note that after a disposition letter has been emailed, it must no longer be possible to edit it.
  • Select a single proposal for editing of the disposition letter, and allow for that editing.
  • Create a new disposition letter for a project, if one has already been emailed (i.e., a given proposal needs to have the possibility of having multiple disposition letters attached to it).
  • After a disposition letter is sent, it should probably trigger the copy of the PHT data to the PST database (total time allocated, public bit, disposition letter, and eventually maybe modified sessions and scheduling priorities).
We don't know if we will be able to get all of this done this cycle (probably not), but this should be retained in the POR for the next cycle.

7. Add a copy/paste command to let us copy information from one PHT version to another. It would let us fix errors and the like, and would be a fool-proof way to get the decisions from the prior TAC meeting into the current PHT version. But only worthwhile if easy to do.

Programmer's note: We believe we understand what is desired here, but it involves some significant changes to the code that we do not believe we will be able to accomplish in this cycle. This should be deferred until next cycle.

8. Import data from PHT to PST. This includes: the modified sessions; the total time allocated (presumably derived from the modified sessions); the scheduling priorities; the TAC comments; and the disposition letters. There may be other data fields.

Programmer's note: We believe we understand what is desired here, but to do all of this will involve significant changes to the way things are organized in the PHT. This is because of the way that modified sessions are dealt with - mostly because we don't keep track of linkages from modified sessions back to the originating session. So, although there is a place in the PST database for a modified session, we are not sure how to populate that field, and in fact, sometimes there are multiple modified PHT sessions that could point back to an original PST session, and there is no way to handle that. There is a similar issue for the scheduling priorities - since a proposal can have different sessions with different priorities, we're not quite sure exactly how to do this. Supporting this will probably have to wait for the PST database redesign. We do believe we can get the total time allocated, and the disposition letters back into the PST (in fact we already put the disposition letters there), in this cycle. I also believe that we can get the total time allocated per scheduling priority, if this is useful. We can also get the TAC comments this cycle. For those, we should be sure to get the comments from the PHT itself for GBT, but for VLA and VLBA, they already exist in the PST. The GBT TAC comments should be appended to existing (VLA & VLBA) ones, if they exist, i.e., we should be sure we don't overwrite the old comments.

9. Is the PHT schema documented ? If so, where? If not, documentation would be desirable.

Programmer's note: It was not clear from the last PETA meeting whether this was really still needed or not. Gareth can get direct access to the PHT database (he should have a read-only account for that), and that seems like it will suffice for what he needs? Gareth does not need this until July 1 anyway, so we will reconsider doing this after the TAC process concludes.

-- Main.BryanButler - 2013-02-22

-- JoanWrobel - 2013-02-26

-- BryanButler - 2013-02-28

This topic: Software > ProposalSubmissionTool > PHTPlanOfRecord
Topic revision: 2013-02-28, BryanButler
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