All laboratories have different sorts of inventory lists for plasmids, antibodies, chemicals, bacterial stocks, etc. In your electronic notebook, you can create such inventories in the Labregister
.
Labregister is a highly customizable tool: You can create as many categories and items as you need. Furthermore, you can also define your items’ attributes. In this guide we will show you how to create this very common inventory structure:
- Primary antibodies (category)
- ATP13A2 (item)
- Clonality (attribute)
- Lot number (attribute)
- Application (attribute)
- Alpha-synuclein (item)
- ATP13A2 (item)
- Secondary antibodies (category)
Create your inventory
Labregister allows you to incorporate your inventory lists and directly link them to your laboratory notes. You can create material lists by manually adding them or uploading existing inventories.
Add categories with attributes
Within Labregister, you are able to organize your inventory in categories and assign attributes to further describe each item.
- Click the
Add category
button. - Give the category a name and define the attributes you want to be associated with it.
- Click
Save
and you are ready to add items.
Insert the first item
Once you have created a Category
, you can start adding your items.
- Click the
Add Item
button. - Give your item a name and fill in the attribute fields.
- Click
Save
and you are done.
Upload existing inventory lists
To ensure an error free import, your Excel inventory file has to be pre-formatted, so that the inventory items from the Excel worksheet can be matched to a corresponding Labregister category.
For a comprehensive list of formatting options please refer to our in-depth Helpdesk article.
- Include a header row in your file! During the import process, column headers of the Excel file will match to the category’s attributes in Labregister. Where needed, you can manually map your column headers to attributes.
Once you have created a Category, you can start adding your items.
- Click the
Import from Excel
button. - Select the file you wish to import
- Choose the appropriate worksheet and match existing column from the Excel to category attributes.
- Click
upload
and you will now be able to view and edit the inventory items.
Adjust access rights
Each laboratory has a set of common stocks that are shared between multiple people. By using Labregister you can also select who from your group you wish to share the inventory with and further specify the extent of the access rights. Labfolder distinguishes between 4 different roles:
- Owner: Is able to view, share, edit, and delete the category and every item inside.
- Manager: Is able to view, edit, and delete categories and their items inside.
- Editor: Is able to view the category and can create, edit, and delete items inside.
- Viewer: Is able to view items inside a category.
- In your category, click the
Options
icon in the top right hand corner. - Choose to manage the category permissions.
- Select the team members you want to share with.
- Click
Save
and they will now be able to view and edit the database.
Export your inventory
With Labregister you can export each inventory list, for it to be stored as an Excel spreadsheet for your own records. This provides an overview of the stocks you had in your laboratory at that particular time.
- In your category, click the
Options
icon in the top right hand corner. - Choose
Export category
. - After confirmation, the export file will automatically start.
Connect your ELN and Labregister
Naturally, in research you want to link certain experiments to a specific antibody or other inventory items that you used. You can use Labregister Items
to create the connection between your electronic lab notes and Labregister
.
- In your
Notebook
, click on theData Elements
icon. - Select
Labregister Item
. - Search for the name of the inventory item.
- Select the desired item.
- Save the block.
Use the Labregister Item
When you reference something from your inventory, a hyperlink to Labregister is created.
Change availability
All your reagents in the lab have a life cycle that goes from ordered to available to out of stock. These exact same statuses can be applied to your items in the inventory, so from your Labfolder ELN you will always know if the specific antibody you need is in stock or if someone else finished it.
In order to let people know that a reagent ran out, simply follow these steps:
- Go to
Manage
>Labregister
. - Select the
Category
and the specificItem
you want to edit. - Click
Edit
and select the status from a drop down menu. - Press
Save
.
TIP: You can also use these steps to update any information regarding your item.
Update your templates
Data Elements
are also extremely useful for your templates. You can duplicate your entire protocol with an empty amount for the Data Elements
that can be filled every time someone uses the template.
Versioning
All changes made to the items in Labregister are recorded. Although you will not have a visible history or audit trail, you can be sure that the changes are documented. This becomes obvious when you are using Labregister Items
: The created hyperlink is versioned, which means that it will always refer to the original inventory entry. But when the inventory gets updates, you will see a note at the bottom of the page saying that a newer version of the item is available.
Next: How to ensure data integrity and Security with Labfolder