Case study · Research management

Making research progress visible, structured and connected.

Monthly Research Progress Connect (MRPC) brings research progress, activities, project information and monitoring into one centralized digital workspace — from the target a department is set, to the record a faculty member submits, to the report the institution prints.

Project: Monthly Research Progress Connect
Client / Institution: Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology
Category: Research management, progress tracking
Platform: Web application

MRPC Dean Research and Innovation dashboard showing research counts, inter-departmental output chart, research portfolio breakdown and departmental streams — **Dean (R&I) Overview.** Institution-wide counts, output by department, portfolio split by activity type, and every departmental research stream on one screen.

01 The challenge

Research progress needs more than scattered updates.

A research office runs on a continuous cycle: targets are set, faculty do the work, someone verifies it, and the institution has to be able to answer for all of it. When that cycle lives in documents and mail threads, each stage loses the one before it.

01Scattered informationPublications, patents, funding and consultancy records sit with individual faculty in separate files.
02Manual follow-upVerifying what has been done means chasing people, not opening a screen.
03Limited visibilityA department cannot see how far it is from a target while there is still time to act on it.
04Difficult monitoringConsolidating across twelve departments and five faculty cadres is rebuilt by hand every reporting cycle.

02 The solution

One connected workspace for research progress.

MRPC holds the whole cycle in a single system: institutional targets, faculty submissions, review at department level, automatic point calculation, and reports generated from the same verified records. Each capability below is one that exists in the live product.

Target definition

Research targets are set per department, research sheet and academic year, with a target count.

Target assignment

Targets are assigned to a department and on to faculty, across fourteen research work fields.

Activity submission

A three-step record: choose a category, choose the activity sheet, fill the details.

Review & status

Pending, approved and rejected counts per department, with a status carried on every record.

Points matrix

A published RPP matrix maps each activity category to points, shared between contributors.

Department consolidation

Criterion-wise summary across Q1–Q4 with totals, exportable per department.

Faculty progress

An achievement score, target progress and a full submission history per faculty member.

Reports

RI 600 progress report, faculty self-appraisal analysis, and a full institutional MRPC report.

03 Users & roles

Four views of the same record.

The screens show four distinct views — Dean (R&I), HOD, SPOC and Faculty. They are views rather than walled-off products: the Dean's header carries a My Faculty View switch, and switching announces “Switched to FACULTY view” with an Open Dean View control to return.

Dean (R&I)

INSTITUTION

Sees: Institution-wide counts, output by department, portfolio by activity type, all twelve departmental streams.
Manages: Department research targets and the institutional assignment form.
Monitors: Every institutional research submission and its status; generates the full MRPC report.

HOD

DEPARTMENT

Sees: Department targets with achieved-versus-needed progress, and all department activities.
Manages: Set Target and Assign Faculty; faculty records under Manage Faculties.
Monitors: Pending approvals, the consolidation summary by criterion and quarter, and department export.

SPOC

DEPARTMENT · REVIEW

Sees: The department approval dashboard: total, pending, approved and rejected.
Manages: User management for the department; the points matrix reference.
Monitors: Pending approvals and the full list of department activities with status and last update.

Faculty

INDIVIDUAL

Sees: My Activity Dashboard — achievement points, submission counts, assigned targets.
Manages: New submissions through the three-step activity form.
Monitors: Status and remarks on each submission; completed targets; the RI 600 report.

Dean (R&I)→ HOD / Department→ SPOC / Review→ Faculty / Research activity→ Research progress

04 MRPC workflow

From a target to institutional visibility.

Seven stages, each one a screen in the live product. Assignment travels down from the institution; a record travels back up through department review and ends as institutional data.

DEAN (R&I)

Target is defined

A research target is created against a department, a research sheet and an academic year, with a target count. The form sits directly on the Dean's dashboard.

Define Department Research Target form with department, research sheet, academic year and target count fields — **Define Department Research Target.** Shown above the institutional research submissions table.

05 Dashboard

Start with a complete view of research progress.

The Dean's landing screen answers the institutional questions first — how much research exists, where it came from, and what kind it is — before anyone opens a table.

06 Activity records

Keep research records organized and traceable.

Research is recorded as activity sheets rather than free-form entries. The same row is readable at three levels — institution, department and individual — because there is only ever one row.

Institutional research submissions table with department, faculty, sheet type, title, status and actions — **Institutional Research Submissions.** Department, faculty, sheet type, title and status, filterable by the department cards above, with view and print actions on each row.

All Department Activities table with faculty, category, sheet, year, status and updated date — **All Department Activities.** The same records at department scope, carrying category — Research or Faculty Development — the sheet name, the academic year and the date last updated.

Eighteen activity sheets, one shape

Journal Publications, Book Publication, Conference, Patent, Research-Submitted, Research-Preparation, IPR-Preparation, Research Project, Research-Funding-Submitted, Consultancy (Project), Consultancy (Training), Consultancy-Planning, Students In-house Seed Money, Technology Transfer, Expert Certification, Skill Services, Conference Organization and PhD Completion. Each one is a defined sheet, which is what makes a single consolidation table possible later.

07 Research progress

Make progress measurable, not descriptive.

Progress in MRPC is a number a person can act on. A faculty member sees an achievement score and how far a target still has to go; the institution sees the same progress rolled up over a reporting period as the RI 600 report.

RI 600 Monthly Research Progress Connect report with period, category tiles and detail tabs — **RI 600 — Monthly Research Progress Connect.** Faculty name, staff ID, department and designation over a stated period and calendar year.

What the report holds

Six counters open the report — Published (1.1), Submitted (1.2), Preparation (1.3), IPR Details (2), Funding (3.1) and Consultancy (3.2) — and each one has a matching detail tab beneath, ending at PRO 600. Opening 1.1 lists indexed article details: type, authors, title, journal or conference name, publisher, volume and page, month and year, DOI and indexing.

APeriodA stated date range within a calendar year.
BProgressCounts per research category.
CActivityThe individual records behind each count.
DStatusOnly verified records reach the report.
EReviewPrinted, or carried up into the institutional report.

08 Targets & assignment

Turn research expectations into trackable work.

A target in MRPC is not a statement of intent — it is a record with an owner, a count and a progress bar that moves as approved activities arrive.

Assign Department Research Targets institutional assignment form with research work field options — **Assign Department Research Targets.** Target department, academic year and target count, then a single research work field chosen from fourteen options, confirmed with Update Department Assignment.

HOD view showing department targets with percentage progress and achieved versus needed counts — **Department Targets, HOD view.** Each target shows a percentage, an achieved-of-total ratio and what is still needed — with Set Target and Assign Faculty beside them.

The same target appears on the faculty dashboard as My Targets, marked as auto-updating and showing pending and completed targets together. Nothing is re-entered between the three levels.

09 Faculty experience

Give faculty a clear view of their own research activity.

For a faculty member, MRPC is four things: what I have been asked to do, what I have submitted, where each submission stands, and what it adds up to.

Faculty My Activity Dashboard with achievement points, submission counters, targets and submissions table — **My Activity Dashboard.** Achievement points in the header, counters for all, pending, approved and rejected, then every submission with its status and remarks.

Submit New Activity three step wizard on step two, selecting an activity sheet — **Submit New Activity.** Three numbered steps — choose category, choose sheet, fill details — with the sheet grid shown at step two.

Faculty Self-Appraisal Analysis printable institutional performance assessment record — **Self-Appraisal Analysis.** A printable performance record for the academic year, with criterion-wise detail tables and scores under Research and Development.

The faculty sidebar keeps these apart deliberately: Submit activity, Reports for completed targets, Self report for the appraisal, and Research progress for the RI 600 report. A submission is one action; everything else is reading.

10 Department & institution monitoring

Visibility at the level where decisions happen.

HOD and SPOC views open on the same question — what is waiting on me — and then let the reviewer widen out to the whole department without changing screens.

SPOC view approval dashboard with pending approvals empty state and department activities — **SPOC View.** Total in department, pending action, approved and rejected as four counters; when the queue is clear the panel says so and the department list continues below.

Department consolidation summary table with criteria, metric parameters and quarterly columns — **Consolidation Summary.** Criterion by criterion — Q1-indexed journals, Scopus/SCI/WOS, conference publications, book chapters, seed money, patents filed and granted, copyrights, grants — across Q1 to Q4 with a total, exportable.

Research Performance Points matrix modal listing categories and points — **Research Performance Points matrix.** The reference both reviewers and faculty can open — category to points, with a stated rule that points for a multi-author activity are divided equally among MCET contributors.

Manage faculties screen with register new faculty form and existing users grouped by cadre — **Manage Faculties.** Register a faculty member with name, ID and academic cadre; existing users are listed by department and grouped by cadre with a member count.

Status labels visible on records include Approved by R&D Dean (R&I) Approved OD Approved (Awaiting Proof) — a record carries where it has reached, not just whether it is done.

11 Reports & analytics

Turn recorded progress into a document the institution can use.

Generate Full MRPC Report produces a complete institutional research document from the same records the dashboards read. Below are pages from a report generated by the live system for a 2026 reporting period.

Generated MRPC report cover page for the Office of Dean Research and Innovation — **Cover.** Office of Dean Research & Innovation, the reporting period, institutional score against current achievement, and the target-points calculation.

Institution research dashboard summary table of research outcome — **Summary of research outcome.** Publications by indexing, IPR by type, technology transfer, and funding and consultancy with amount received.

Departmentwise ranking based on research points table and heatmap — **Departmentwise ranking.** Research points per faculty across publications, IPR, funded projects and consultancy, with a heatmap of the same table.

Faculty cadre analysis at institution level with target, achieved and gap — **Faculty cadre analysis.** Count, target, achieved and gap for each cadre, with cadre-wise contribution to research outcome.

Top faculty members based on research points earned table — **Top performers.** Faculty ranked on research points earned to date, split into publication, IPR, and funding and consultancy columns.

Index page of the generated MRPC research report — **Index.** Nine sections, from the institution research dashboard through departmentwise dashboards to cadre performance and department toppers.

12 Screen flows

Screen by screen, for each role.

The path each user takes after login. Pick a role, then a step, to see the screen it lands on.

Where the paths meet

The four flows are one flow seen from four seats. A record created in Submit New Activity appears in the SPOC's All Department Activities, in the HOD's Pending Approvals and consolidation summary, and in the Dean's Institutional Research Submissions — the same row, gaining a status rather than a copy.

13 Interface gallery

Inside MRPC.

Every screen shown here is from the live application. Select any image for full-screen view; arrow keys move between them.

14 Design system

The system read back from the product.

MRPC uses one warm palette throughout: a deep brown navigation rail, a single orange for every primary action, and white surfaces on a warm off-white page. Status is the only place additional colour is allowed in.

Navigation#2E1B0E

Primary action#E8420A

Page#FAF6F2

Surface#FFFFFF

Status badges

Pill badges carry the review state on every row.

Approved Dean (R&I) Approved Pending Rejected

Actions

One solid orange button per screen region; secondary actions stay outlined.

Set Target My Faculty View

Forms & tables

Stacked label-over-field forms; tables with a tinted header row and per-row view and print actions.

-- Select Department --

15 Impact

A clearer operating layer for research progress.

What changes is where the work lives, and who can see it without asking.

01Centralized research informationPublications, IPR, funding and consultancy in one record set rather than per-person files.
02Structured progress trackingProgress is a count against a target, visible to the faculty member and the department at the same time.
03Better activity visibilityEighteen defined activity sheets instead of free-form entries.
04Easier monitoringPending, approved and rejected are counters on a dashboard, not a question to ask.
05Clearer departmental viewCriterion-wise consolidation across quarters, per department, ready to export.
06Transparent pointsA published matrix and a stated sharing rule, readable by everyone involved.
07Reporting readinessInstitutional, departmental and individual reports generated from verified records.

Research progress, connected.

MRPC brings monthly research progress, project information, activities and monitoring into a single digital workspace.

MONTHLY RESEARCH PROGRESS CONNECT

MRPC

Dr. Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology