Troubleshooting

Outlined below are some common difficulties faced by Sponsor/CRO representatives when confirming data in CPMS,

and some tips and tricks to allow you to solve them.

I have downloaded the spreadsheet but it won't accept my changes?

The process of sending research activity data automatically means CPMS no longer allows for data to be manually manipulated via spreadsheet. Only study teams at sites may amend the data in their Local Portfolio Management Systems (LPMS).

However, CPMS now has the function to download a complete dataset in an Excel spreadsheet. This capability enables Sponsor/CRO representatives to see all the research activity which has been submitted for that particular study. Downloading an Excel file is particularly useful if the dataset is large or there are a lot of recruiting sites.

Please use this tool to filter and check through the data to identify any errors and then confirm the corresponding lines as accurate, or not, in CPMS.

I have marked a line of data as Accurate (or Not Accurate) by mistake!

Lines of data can easily be amended to accurate, or not, using the Detailed View filter. All you need to do is select "Confirmed - Not Accurate" and/or "Confirmed - Accurate" in the Filters section and then click "Apply Filters" (see below).

You can then identify the data which has been mistakenly confirmed and change the status.

There are data to confirm for a site I do not recognise?

If you receive research activity data for a site that is not actively recruiting participants into your study, including Patient Identification Centres (PICs), you can mark this as inaccurate in the normal way, and include a note to indicate that the site is not a recruiting site in your study.

There are too many zeros, I don't know where to start?

CPMS automatically generates lines of inactivity, or “zeros”, for each site open to recruitment for your study. This provides a more complete picture of the research activity taking place for the study and also creates a line of data should you need to confirm it as inaccurate. However, we appreciate working through these lines of data, especially when you have a lot of participating sites, can be challenging.

To more easily identify rows of data with recruitment, rather than the zeros, sort the "Total Participants" column from high to low. This can be done in Detailed View by clicking on the downward facing arrow. Please see below for where to find this filter:

Once you have confirmed all the participants you were expecting to see, and marked those which were incorrect as not accurate, you can easily clear the remaining zeros by going back to Study View and confirming them as accurate in bulk.

My dataset is too large!

There is functionality in CPMS to filter and organise the data you are presented with. If you are asked to confirm a large amount of data we would advise to firstly confirm as many zeros as you can, to clear these rows from view.

Another tip would be to export the data into Excel and review the data in a spreadsheet. You may find it easier to use tools in Excel to filter the information by site, date, participant type and status. The data is presented without zeros and each row in the spreadsheet has a corresponding line of data in the Detailed View.