Thursday, 9 am MT, 11 am ET, 9 February 2023

Logistics

Agenda

• 23B
  • Proposal Deadline Postmortem (Dana)
  • Individual Reviews
    • Science (Dana)
    • Technical (Amy, Robert, Toney)
    • External Facilities (Dana)
• 24A
  • Software Timeline (Allie, Charlotte)
• GBT Special Call Disposition Letters (Toney, Charlotte)
• AOB

Minutes

• 23B
  • Proposal Deadline Postmortem. DanaBalser briefly summarized the results of the proposal deadline. Overall the new my.nrao.edu server performed well---the load was always low and no known issues. Between the CfPs and the deadline we received 22 helpdesk tickets in the proposing department and 63 tickets in the account department (20% password reset/80% institution requests). The following were noted:
    • Carry Over Proposals: We allowed two proposals from previous semesters to carry over into 23B since this appeared to be the TAC intent. In the future we should encourage the TAC to be more specific in such cases.
    • GMVA-ALMA @ 7mm: We added this resource at the last moment and had several issues (e.g., sensitivity calculator). In the future it would be best not do add resources at such a late date.
    • Bogus Validation Errors: This is a known bug that is not very common anymore but occassionaly happens.
    • Withdraw Button Missing: This is a long standing and annoying bug. We agreed to discuss two possible solutions at the next PST software requirements meeting: (1) fix the withdraw button issue; or (2) allow users to re-submit.
  • CfPs PDF. DanaBalser reported via PatMurphy that there were 84 real downloads of the CfPs PDF. AnandCrossley will generate the number of unique PIs and unique authors. The ratio of real downloads/PIs and real downloads/authors should give us a range of what fraction of people actually use the PDFs to prepare their proposal.
  • Individual Reviews.
    • Science. DanaBalser summarized the status of the science reviews: all but 5 reviewers have declared their conflicts over 4 SRPs. There are two SRPs that have already assigned reviewers to proposals. There are two proposals in the EGS SRP that only have two reviewers due to conflicts. DanaBalser has sent out emails to see if some of these conflicts can be relaxed.
    • Technical. ToneyMinter, AmyMioduszewski, and RobertMinchin reported that the emails to technical reviewers have gone out. Two issues were reported:
      1. RobertMinchin noted that there was an "(N)" next to his name, indicating he has not declared his conflicts yet, but he has indeed done so. After a brief discussion, this probably is a result of the change we made a few years ago when we allowed the SRP chairs to assign reviewers. RobertMinchin will create a JIRA ticket so that we can investigate.
      2. AnandCrossley noted that he merged two accounts for a user who is also a GBT technical reviewer. This person can now no longer see their technical reviews. In near-real time ToneyMinter thinks he has solved the problem by reassiging the review to the account which has survived the merge.
    • External Facilities. DanaBalser reported that proposals were released for technical review to three external facilities with joint proposals. The contact for ALMA has not responded. In near-real time AnthonyRemijan found that this person is traveling and should be available in a couple of days.
• 24A
  • Software Timeline. AllieCosta reported that the software timeline is similar to last year. After some discussion we agreed that we need to finalize TTA requirements for the CfPs on 23 March 2023; therefore, we should use the TTA meeting slots of 2 March 2023 and 23 March 2023 to finalize the priorities. She will send out the links to JIRA tickets before the first meeting.
• GBT Special Call Disposition Letters. ToneyMinter reported that the disposition letters for the special call, which are listed as DDT, are ready and can be copied over to the PST at any time. CharlotteHausen said she would work on this over the next few days. There is also a current JIRA ticket to deal with GBT DDT proposals in general. This will be addressed later.
• AOB
  • VLA-->ngVLA Transisiton: AnthonyRemijan reported that there is a requirement to include in the PST an acknowledgement of this transition (e.g., reduced VLA functionality). He will create a JIRA ticket with the details.