User categories

General Introduction

The users associated with your institution fall into several different categories:

The Institutional Account Holder is a single user for the entire institution, who has special administrative rights. This user can:

• Set up new Workflows for the institution. Workflows determine the series of steps that lead to a new fully-executed transfer agreeement.
• Modify institutional settings on TTConnect, such as whether PIs can sign transfer agreements, whether newly registered users need to be approved by Technology Transfer before they can set up new transfer agreements, email notification settings, etc.
• Administer users, determining which user has which special function (see below).

The Institutional Account Holder can identify themselves when registering on TTConnect by clicking on the checkbox "I am the Technology Transfer representative for this institution". If you have already registered, and would like to become the Institutional Account Holder for your institution, please email us at info@ttconnect.org

Most users will not have special functions - these are the scientists of your institution. The scientists are typically organized into groups with a single group leader, the Principal Investigator (PI). The PI is typically the official Provider Scientist or the Recipient Scientist of the material and/or data, and is personally named in transfer agreements. The PI also sees all the transfer agreements generated by his/her group members. The group members can initiate transfer agreements with other institutions, and can enter all the relevant information into the TTConnect system, but typically do not sign the final agreements.

Users can also be assigned to one of 8 possible "Special Functions". The first special function is the Technology Transfer office. (The name of this function, and of the other 7 functions, can be changed by the Institutional Account Holder to fit the organizational structure of your institute). Users belonging to the Technology Transfer function have special privileges on the TTConnect website, because they are the ones that administer the transfer agreements with other institutions, and control the entire process.

The other 7 special functions constitute users that may need to review and/or approve transfer agreements. By default when a new institution is registered on TTConnect, they are named "Legal", "Safety", etc, but these names can be changed to fit your organizational requirements (see below). For instance, a workflow may specify that if a material being transferred is Biological Safety Level 2, the agreement needs to be reviewed by a member of the Safety department. Or, if the data being transferred contain personal patient data, the agreement may need to be reviewed by the Data Protection office. As described below, the Institutional Account Holder determines the names of these 8 special functions, and which user has which function.

How to change the name of a function

The names of these 8 special functions can be changed by the Institutional Account Holder. This user has a special menu option in the top menu bar called "Institutional Dashboard". Click on this link, then click on "Administer Users":
Click on the name of the category you wish to change:
Enter a new name for the category, and click on "Update":
The category now has a new name:

How to associate a user to a function

This, also, can be done by the Institutional Account Holder. Click on "Institutional Dashboard", then on "Administer Users":
Then click on the corresponding toggle. For instance, to indicate that Max Mustermann belongs to "Bio Safety", click on the toggle designated by the arrow:
Now the toggle turns green, indicating Max Mustermann is associated to Bio Safety. Clicking again on the toggle will undo this action.
A user can belong to more than one function.