Using Customer Sample Login Options

In a busy lab processing a large volume of samples for many customers, LIMS sample login can be time consuming. Any technique to reduce the time required for sample login is helpful. Consider using customer[1]specific sample login options to speed sample login.

Use the Sample Login tab of the Customers setup screen to define sample login parameters frequently used for a specific customer. The following simple example will help demonstrate the benefits.

Assume our lab has just acquired a new customer that will be submitting water samples for a new river study they are conducting. The client will collect samples at five different locations along the river and, of course, they will want to see the river location on any final report we supply with their results. We add the five new river locations to the existing list of sampling locations using the Locations setup screen.

Since the Locations screen already has many hundreds of locations, the Locations pick list in the sample login screens may seem unwieldy. We can help the folks logging samples for our new customer by adding the five river locations to the customer’s sample login options and enabling the “Automatically display these options during sample login” setting as shown in the screen below.

Now if we first select the customer in either of the sample login screens, we are automatically presented a list of this customer’s options. In this example, instead of navigating the lengthy Location pick list, we can select from the customer’s five river locations in the popup screen.

The above example demonstrates a simple way to eliminate use of the Locations pick list at sample login for our new customer. In practice, you can further speed sample login by defining combinations of sample characteristics frequently used for a customer.

Returning to our example, assume we will be performing either microbiological analyses or a combination of microbiological and metals analyses for our customer’s river water samples. In this case we can further refine the customer’s sample login options by including project, sample type, and sampler along with location. Sample login is even simpler with these options presented for our customer’s samples as shown below. Just double-click on any row or single[1]click and select the OK button to automatically insert the row’s values into the sample login screen and close the popup.

Use any combination of the sample characteristics available on the Sample Login tab of the Customers setup screen to define frequently used parameters for your customer’s samples. If applicable, you can also define frequently used customer login batches during batch sample login. Put this handy feature to work in your lab and streamline sample login.