Doc 4.11, ver. 1.2 | February 2017

ALMA Snooping Project Interface (SnooPI)
User Manual
Evanthia Hatziminaoglou

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS
(Japan), together with NRC (Canada), NSC and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republicof Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ.

For further information or to comment on this document, please contact your regional Helpdesk through the ALMA User
Portal at www.almascience.org. Helpdesk tickets will be directed to the appropriate ALMA Regional Centre at ESO,NAOJ or NRAO.

VersionDateEditors

1.0
1.1
1.2

March 2016
June 2016
February 2017

Evanthia Hatziminaoglou
Evanthia Hatziminaoglou
Evanthia Hatziminaoglou

In publications, please refer to this document as:E. Hatziminaoglou 2017, ALMA SnooPI User Manual, ALMA Doc. 4.11 v1.2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. THE ALMA SNOOPING PROJECT INTERFACE (SNOOPI) ................................................................2
2. THE INTERFACE ..........................................................................................................................2
3. “ALL PROJECTS” AND “CONTACT SCIENTIST” OPTIONS ...............................................................2
4. “MY PROJECTS” VIEW ................................................................................................................34.1.

The project tree view............................................................................................................................ 5

5. “MY SCHEDBLOCKS” VIEW......................................................................................................... 65.1.

The Scheduling Blocks detailed view ....................................................................................................6

5.2.

The Execu@on Blocks detailed view ...................................................................................................... 6!11.The ALMA Snooping Project Interface (SnooPI)
The ALMA Snooping Project Interface (SnooPI) is a read-only web application that allows Principal
Investigators (PIs) and Co-Is to follow their ALMA projects from the moment of acceptance all theway to data delivery. It also allows Contact Scientists to track all the ALMA projects supported bytheir node, by accessing exactly the same information that is made available to the PIs. SnooPI
runs on Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.

2.The interface
A user needs to log in to the ALMA Science Portal (SP) to access SnooPI, from the SP left-handmenu, under ‘Observing’. The landing page of the application is a Dashboard-like page with directaccess to the user’s projects and Scheduling Blocks (SBs) as PI (including Co-PI), Co-I andDelegee when available (showing the currently active and total number of projects). At the very topof the Dashboard, the name of the user is shown along with their Executive and ALMA RegionalCentre (ARC), as shown in Figure 1. Behind the icon, there is a direct link to the User Profile in theSP, as well as the Logout option. The details of the various views and functionalities will be
described in the following sections. Below the project buttons, an expandable newsfeed informs theusers about the latest news for their projects. At the very bottom of the home page, a Searchfeature permits to look for a specific project or SB, by selecting from the pull-down menu.
The left-hand side menu is retractable and provides direct links to the Home page (dashboardview), Projects and SBs, the SP, the User Manual, the Archive Query Interface and the Helpdesk. At
the very bottom, direct links to the pages of the three ALMA Executives (ESO, NRAO and NAOJ)
are also available.

3.“All projects” and “Contact Scientist” options
SnooPI allows users to see all their projects, including those that have been rejected. Activeprojects are those projects of the current cycle with a priority grade A, B (i.e. high priority projects)
or C (i.e. filler projects), A-ranked carry-over projects from the previous cycle, as well as projects
from the previous cycle that have not yet been fully delivered. These are listed by default when theuser selects “My Projects” view. By ticking “All projects” at the top of the dashboard, all projects arelisted, in reverse Project Code order. The “All projects” functionality also applies in the Scheduling
Block view (see Section 5), meaning that when the relevant box is ticked, the SBs from all theprojects ever submitted will be listed.
SnooPI can also be used by Contact Scientists (CSs) who wish to have a quick look at the projects
they are supporting by ticking the “Contact Scientist” box. This functionality is of no relevance to theALMA users.

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John Smith, EU Executive,EU ARC

Figure 1. The SnooPI home page, with a dashboard appearance.

4.“My Projects” view
The Projects view for PIs (including Co-PIs), Co-Is and Delegees when applicable (in a different tabeach) lists in a table the code, name, status and priority grade of the projects and is sortable by anyof these columns. The status of a project is indicated by one of the following icons:•

a white “thumbs up” symbols marks a project that has been submitted (Phase 1)•

an asterisk indicates an approved project (priority grades A, B or C) for which the Phase
2 material (SBs) has not yet been prepared;•

a blue “thumbs up” symbol indicates that all SBs have been submitted for Phase 2, but
the project is not yet set to “Ready’, in other words it has not yet been placed in theobserving queue;•a red circle indicates that the project has been set to “Ready” but no data have beentaken yet;•an orange triangle indicates that some data have been taken;!3•

a green check-mark indicates that all the data have been taken;•a check-mark inside a square indicates that the project has been completed and all data
have been delivered; such projects only show if “All projects” is selected;•a stop sign indicates that the project has timed out; this can happen for time-criticalprojects or projects that require configurations that are no longer coming back in thecurrent cycle;•a red cross marks project rejected at the proposal review stage;•finally, a question mark indicates an unknown project status, i.e. not properly set in thedata base
John Smith, EU Executive,EU ARC

2015.1.09876.S

A most inspired project title

2013.1.04567.S

Observing stars, planets, nebulae, open clusters, globular
galaxies and galaxy clusters with ALMA

2013.1.06789.S

Observing the centre of the galaxy with ALMA

Figure 2. “My Projects” list with the SB list of the last project deployed, after clicking on the cube next to theproject code.

By hovering over a symbol, a text box explaining the meaning of the symbol will appear. To the leftof the project name, a cube indicates that SBs have been submitted for this project. Clicking on thecube will open a list with all the available SBs for a given project listed by their names, with anassociated status next to them. A blue “thumbs up” indicates that the SBs have been submitted but
not yet set to “Ready”. The red circle, orange triangle and green check-mark have the same
meaning as for a project, namely no/some/all data taken (and successfully passed a level 0 quality
assurance - QA0), checked against the required number of executions. A small blue cross marksSBs that have been cancelled, while a question mark indicates an unknown state. Hovering over asymbol will again trigger some explanatory text (see Figure 2). The Projects view for CSs also
shows the PI and CS names in the same table view.
The Search function at the top of the list allows the user to look for specific projects by project code.

!44.1. The project tree view
Clicking on the project code will open the project tree on a new panel of the application. The projecttree structure is identical to that in the ALMA Observing Tool. The number of successful executionsin shown next to each SB. After the successful completion of executions, the status is no longer
shown next to the SB but next to the corresponding Member Observing Unit Set (MOUS), with oneof the following symbols:•

a set of gears indicate that the MOUS is being processed;•a smiling face shows that the MOUS are ready to be delivered;•a truck indicates that the MOUS has been delivered (see Figure 3).

Clicking on the project title will reveal the list of Co-Is, the abstract of the proposal and the ALMA
Proposal Review Committee (APRC) consensus report. Each SB links to its individual detailed viewpanel, described in Section 5. At the top of the project panel there are links to the web page of thecorresponding ARC node, the project report and the pdf file of the proposal. The name of the CS isalso shown, when available.
John Smith, EU Executive,EU ARC

2013.1.06789.SJack Black2013.1.06789.SObserving the centre of the galaxy with ALMAFigure 3. The project tree view.

!55.“My SchedBlocks” view
The SchedBlock (Scheduling Block or SB) view lists in a table the project code, the SB name, theSB unique identifier (UID) mentioned in the data delivery e-mail to the PI, the status of the SB andthe number of successful (i.e. that have passed QA0) executions. This view is the same for PIs andCSs alike. To facilitate users searching, the SB table can be sorted by project code, SB name, UID
and status, and is also supported by the Search functionality.

5.1. The Scheduling Blocks detailed view
Clicking on an SB name, a new panel will open with the project tree on the left-hand side and thedetails of the SB on the right side (see Figure 4), namely:•

the name of the original Science Goal;•the ID of the MOUS;•

the Array (12-m, 7-m or TP), band, science target coordinates and the representative
frequency;•

the number of successful executions;•a list of all the corresponding Execution Block (EB) IDs, with their execution end times,
execution duration, QA0 status (green checkmark indicates ‘Pass’; red circle indicates‘Fail’) and links to the corresponding QA0 reports.

5.2. The Execution Blocks detailed view
Clicking on an EB will expand the bottom of the SB panel to list EB details on the Tsys and the Array(number of antennas, minimum and maximum baselines, angular resolution and maximum
recoverable scale), as well as the science target and a list of all the calibrators used in thisparticular EB with their respective on-source times (see Figure 4).

!62013.1.06789.S

Observing the centre of the galaxy withALMA

7m observations of my most favourite objects in the whole
Universe
7m Array
3Figure 4. Detailed SB/EB view next to the project tree view.

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