Video Transcript – Grantee Two-Way Correspondence

**********************DISCLAIMER!!!**********************

THIS FILE MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT AND IS NOT FOR USE IN A COURT

OF LAW.

**********************DISCLAIMER!!!**********************

Hello, my name is Jonathan and I'm with the electronic Research Administration. In this video, I'm going 

to go over the eRA two-way correspondence feature and how you as a SAMHSA grantee can use it. First, 

what is two-way correspondence? Two-way correspondence is a feature that lets SAMHSA staff or 

grantees start a special email from inside the eRA system. After this email thread is started it can be 

continued completely outside the system but have replies officially documented and stored inside the 

system on the Correspondence Tracking page.

To help explain how this works let's take a look at an example email that was sent using the two-way 

correspondence feature. Overall it looks like a regular email but let's look closer at the subject line, the 

Cc line, and at the end of the email body. These three areas contain special data elements that let the 

eRA system know this is a two-way correspondence message and where to store it in the system. As 

long as these three special data elements are not modified or removed in responses to this email, 

participants can email back and forth indefinitely and each response will be stored on the 

Correspondence Tracking page. 

The first special data element is the grant number in the subject line. The subject line should not be

manually edited in replies in order to keep the grant number correct. If the grant number is changed, 

responses may not be tracked and stored correctly.

The second special data element is a correspondence mailbox in the Cc line. It is imperative that this 

mailbox be included in any two-way correspondence email responses as this mailbox is how the eRA 

system receives two-way correspondence emails. If you reply only to SAMHSA staff and exclude this 

mailbox, the eRA system will not receive your response and will not be able to document it.

The third and final special data element is the unique token in the body of the email. This lets the eRA 

system know which conversation your message belongs to. It is unique to each email thread, so you 

cannot use the same token for a different conversation. 

As long asthese three special data elements are not removed or modified, anyone included in the email 

thread can response and have their message stored on the correspondence tracking page.

Now that you know how it works, let's see how you as a grantee can initiate a two-way correspondence 

thread from the eRA system. To do this you'll need to have a Project Director or Signing Official eRA 

Commons account. Begin by logging in to your account by using your username and password. Once you 

are logged in click on the Status tab. If you are a project director, click on List of Applications/Awards.

Once you have a list of applications and awards pulled up, expand on the core grant number you'd like 

to send correspondence about by clicking the plus icon. You can now see under the Actions column that 

there is a Correspondence button. Click this to be taken to an email template that will initiate 
correspondence about the specific application I click the button for. If you have access to multiple 

awardsfor the same grant in the status tab, a Correspondence button will be available for each row.

Click on the button in the row for the application you'd like to email about.

If you're a signing official, you'll need to search for grants on the status tab. You can do this using the 

Institution Code and Serial Number, or any other search criteria available on the General Search page. In 

your search results a Correspondence Button will be available in Action column. Click on the 

Correspondence button for the specific application you'd like send a message about to open up the mail 

template.

After you are on the email template page you can select from prepopulated recipients, add extra 

recipients to the Cc line, enter a custom subject line to appear after the grant number, populate the 

body of the email, and add attachments of word, excel, PDF, powerpoint, or .msg filetypes. Once you've 

filled everything out that you need to scroll down to the body of the page and click Generate Email. A 

notification will come up letting you know that your correspondence message was successfully sent.

If you need to view previous email messages on the Correspondence Tracking page you can access it 

from the status tab too. Instead of clicking on the Correspondence button click on the hyperlinked 

application or award number for a grant to be taken to the status information page for that specific 

award or application. From the status information page, scroll down to the Correspondence section and 

click on the Correspondence Tracking hyperlink. This will open up the Correspondence Tracking page.

The Correspondence Tracking page contains some summary information about your grant including the 

currently assigned Grant Specialist, Program Director/Principal Investigator, and Business Official.

Correspondence emails displayed on the Correspondence Tracking page are filtered based on the 

application or award they are tied to. To change which application or award's correspondence you are 

viewing, select a different record in the Choose Application dropdown. Once you've chosen your desired 

application you can see all two-way correspondence emails sent about it including their subject, date of 

last message, who originally sent it and to whom, a preview of the message itself, and links to open any 

attachments that were included. If there are replies to the initial message you can expand a specific 

thread by clicking the plus icon. Responses to the thread will be listed with the most recently sent 

message at the top of the list.

This concludes the video. To briefly recap, you can start and view two-way correspondence from inside 

eRA Commons. If you receive a two-way correspondence message you can safely reply without needing 

to log in to eRA Commons but be sure to keep three key identifiers in your email response: the grant 

number in the subject line, the correspondence mailbox in the Cc line, and the correspondence token in 

the body of your message. Thank you, and have a great day.