Office of Animal Care Compliance

The first thing you should always do when you login to TOPAZ is hit the “F11” key on your keyboard (for PC’s) to minimize the browser.

Login using your Novell Net ID username and password (case sensitive)

You’ll be logged in to “My Dashboard”. On it you’ll see “My Protocols” at the top and “My Reviews” at the bottom.

Any protocols you are associated with as either PI, Co-PI, author or creator will be listed here.

Any protocols that are assigned to you for review will be listed here. The type of review, due date for the review assignment, assignment type, and the protocol type are also listed.

Double click on the protocol you wish to review.

You will see the protocol form on the left and the protocol outline on the right.

Open up each section of the protocol outline as you’re working on it so you can see all the questions in that section as well as any associated icons.

The little person icon with the single quote bubble is the one that “Contains My Reviewer Comments”.

The double quote bubble is the one that “Contains Other Reviewer Comments”.

You can filter by just your comments if you turn on the “My Review Comments” filter at the top. It’s on when illuminated. Click again to turn it off.

You can filter by just the other reviewer’s comments if you turn on the “Other Reviewer Comments” filter at the top.

Turn on both icons to see questions where both you and the other reviewers have commented.

Click on a question that has review comments next to it to be taken to that question on the form. The question will become illuminated on the outline and on the form.

You must click on the “Add Comment” icon that’s located on the question itself to enter your own review comments and to access the other reviewer’s comments.

You enter your own comments here in the white box and you can view the other review comments below.

This screen is showing the current comments but you can look for previous comments as well.

This screen shows the previous set of review comments for each person if there were any.

Try not to ask any questions while making review comments because there is no way for the PI to ‘write back’ to you. Word your comments so that PI’s can go change something on the form. This approach takes a little getting used to. 

Click on the “Close Panel” icon to close out of the “Add Comments” screen.

Whenever you see a blue underlined item at the top of a protocol section you need to click on it to open it for review. These are important attachments like permits, grant sections, animal tables, etc. *Transfer protocols that were entered administratively have the old infoEd forms attached here as a zip file.

Click here to compare the current protocol version to another version of the protocol.

Click on the version of the protocol you wish to compare to the current version.

Two panels will be opened on the left. One shows the current and the other shows the previous version of the protocol.

Questions where changes have been made will be surrounded by a red rectangle on the form and will have a red flag next to them on the protocol outline.

You can turn on the red flag filter at the top of the outline to view only the changed questions.

Any text that has been removed will not be showing in the current version of the protocol but will appear in red on the previous version of the protocol.

Any text that has been added will show up in the current version of the protocol and will appear in green on the previous version of the protocol.

When you’re done comparing versions, you can close the split screen by clicking on the “Close Protocol” icon on the previous version.

There are several icons at the top of the protocol outline. They are all filters and will become illuminated when you click on them to activate them.

The red flag icon “Changed” is used to compare versions of a protocol that has had changes made to it (maybe during a review process or an amendment). Only questions where changes have been made will be highlighted. This flag must be used in conjunction with the compare versions flag icon on the left above the protocol form.

Click on the “Completed” icon to see if all the required questions (red asterisk) have been answered.

Click on the “Required” icon to see which questions in each section had to be filled in.

Click on “E-signature” to see where the PI ‘signed’ the protocol with their Novell username and password. *Only the PI can sign the assurances. You’ll need to look on the protocol information page to verify the e-signature.

Click on the protocol number at the top of the protocol outline to view the “Protocol Info” page.

Here you can see lots of useful information such as protocol status, date of approval, expiration date, version, etc. You can also view the e-signature if you click on that tab.

Once in the e- signatures tab, you can see who signed the PI assurances or any other things like closing a protocol (which only the PI can do).

You may want to print the protocol or the review comments. You can click on the printer icon and then select the type of protocol report you’d like to see.

This is the “Protocol Detail Report”. *Notice that it’s 15 pages long.

All questions are included regardless of whether or not they were answered.

This is the “Protocol Detail Report – Answered Questions Only”. *Notice that it’s two pages shorter than the full report.

Only answered questions are included on this report. You can see the numbering is different from the previous report because unanswered questions have been omitted.

This is the “Review Comments Report”. It shows all the review comments that were made on each question as well as the summary.

Once you’ve entered and saved all your review comments, click on the blue “Enter Opinions and Closing Remarks” icon.

Here you will select your vote/opinion (depending on the review type) from the drop down menu and decide whether or not you’d like this review to go to full committee (always say “No” if you approved it for DMR).

Then you’ll enter your closing remarks in the white box (other’s remarks are visible below). Hit “Save” at the top and you’re all done with this review! Yippee!