Applicant guide

This guide follows an applicant (a principal investigator or proposal submitter) end to end: finding an open call, creating and filling in a proposal, answering the call's compliance checklist, submitting, tracking the proposal through the evaluation workflow, reading technical-assessment feedback when the call shares it, and finally responding to an award.

For the call manager's side of the same workflow see the Call manager workflow; for the reviewer's side see the Reviewer workflow.

Note

Screenshots in this guide use the 2025 Spring HPC Allocation Call demo call, which shares its technical assessment with applicants and includes an award-response step. Your calls will show different names, offerings, checklists and reviewers, and the steps you see depend on how the call manager configured the call.

Finding an open call

Open Calls → Calls for proposals from the sidebar. The dashboard lists Open calls you can apply to and the Available offerings they grant access to. Each call card shows the managing organisation, a short description and the submission cutoff.

Use Details to read a call's full description and eligibility rules, or View all (or All calls in the banner) to browse the complete catalogue. When you have found the call you want, click Apply to call.

Tip

The Calls for proposals catalogue is also reachable without signing in, from the public landing page — handy for sharing a call with colleagues.

Starting a proposal

Apply opens the Create proposal dialog. It confirms the call name, the round you are applying to and the round deadline. Give your proposal a Name and click Create.

The proposal opens in the Applicant editor. The Progress panel on the right tracks each section's completion and holds the Submit and Save as draft actions; the main area presents the sections as expandable cards. A proposal stays in Draft — and is never seen by the call team — until you submit it, so you can save and return as often as you like.

The editor opens on Details overview, a read-only summary of the call, round and deadline you are applying under. The editable sections follow.

Project details

Expand Project details and describe your project:

Field	Notes
Name	Required
Summary	Required
Description	Optional, longer free text
Project for civilian purpose?	Yes/no, with room for a comment
Research field (OECD code)	Required on deployments configured to mandate it
Is the project confidential?	Yes/no, with room for a comment
Project duration in days	Required, unless the call fixes the duration
Upload supporting documentation	Optional attachments

Required fields are marked with a red asterisk, and the card header shows how many fields are filled.

Resource requests

Expand Resource requests to choose what you need. On a template-based call the call manager has predefined resource templates — tick the ones your project requires (here, the GPU Compute Package) and click Save. Each template shows its offering, plan and preconfigured attributes.

Compliance checklist

When the call has a compliance checklist, a Compliance checklist step appears between project details and resource requests. Answer every required question; the card header tracks your progress as n/N answered, and its subtitle warns that additional questions may appear based on your answers — so the total can grow as you answer.

Checklists support many question types — single- and multi-select, numbers, dates, file uploads, confirmations and more (see Checklists and forms). Some questions are conditional: answering one may reveal a follow-up, flagged with a Shown based on: … hint naming the answer that triggered it.

Project team

Expand Project team to add colleagues who should have access to the resulting project and set their roles. You are added automatically as the creator.

Reviewing and submitting

Before submitting, review each section. The Submit button stays disabled until every required step is complete — the Progress panel shows a green tick against finished sections and an empty circle against those still needing input.

When everything is complete, click Submit. A note beneath the button records that submitting means agreeing to the platform's terms of service and privacy policy. The proposal moves out of Draft and into the evaluation workflow, and the call team can now see it.

Warning

Submit before the round deadline. Once the round closes you can no longer submit, and a proposal left in Draft is not evaluated.

Your proposals

Open Calls → My proposals to see everything you have created, across all calls, with its call, round deadline and current state. Use the state filter to focus on drafts, submitted, in-review or accepted proposals.

Proposal states an applicant sees:

State	Meaning
Draft	Not yet submitted — only you can see it
Submitted	Submitted and awaiting evaluation
In review	Moving through the evaluation workflow
Accepted	Approved — a project and resources have been (or are being) provisioned
Rejected	Not funded
Canceled	Withdrawn, or an award you declined

Tracking progress

Open a submitted proposal to follow it through the call's evaluation workflow. The stepper at the top shows every step, with completed steps ticked, the current step highlighted, and later steps greyed out. Here the proposal has cleared Administrative check and Technical assessment and is in Expert review.

The sections below the stepper are read-only once submitted, so you always see exactly what you sent. Which steps appear, and how much of each you can see, depends on the call's configuration at the moment you submitted (see The evaluation workflow). Steps that were not part of your proposal's sequence are omitted from the stepper, so two proposals in the same call can show different steps if the call was reconfigured between their submissions.

Technical-assessment feedback

Some steps can be made visible to applicants by the call manager. When the Technical assessment step is shared, a Technical assessment decisions section shows the feasibility decisions from the technical reviewers — one entry per reviewer, each with a colour-coded decision badge and comment.

Note

You only see this section when the call manager has marked the step applicant-visible. On calls that keep technical assessments internal, the section does not appear — this is expected, not an error. The decision wording and badge colours come from the call's own technical-assessment checklist, so they differ between calls.

Responding to an award

If the call includes an award response step, an approved proposal pauses for your decision before resources are provisioned. The stepper shows an Award response step, and the Progress panel offers Accept award and Decline award.

Accept award asks you to confirm; once you do, the requested resources are provisioned, a project is created under your organisation and your team is granted access.

Decline award asks for a Reason for declining — it is required — and moves the proposal to Canceled. Use it when you can no longer take up the allocation.

Tip

Not every call uses an award response step. When it is absent, an approved proposal is provisioned automatically at the Allocation decision step without asking you to confirm.

Call management — the call lifecycle and rounds
Checklists and forms — question types and conditional visibility
Call manager workflow — how call managers drive proposals through the workflow
Reviewer workflow — the reviewer's perspective