What’s New
This release of Signals™ Notebook brings improvements to our beta releases of calculations in Admin Defined Tables, configuration transfer. Plates are now no longer on beta release and available to all administrators, along with many improvements. We have also added PubChem integration, made some improvements to Orders and to Materials, and added or enhanced a number of API endpoints. We have also fixed some small bugs.
The following improvements are only available for users of Signals Notebook Individual Edition, Signals Notebook Standard and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
- Usability Improvements
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- – Additional ChemDraw® hotkeys
- – Copy selection as CDXML
The following improvements are only available for users of Signals Notebook Standard and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
- Usability Improvements
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- – Hover over for internal reference fields
- Materials Library
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- – Add Containers, Samples, Reagents & Compounds to the Stoichiometry Table
- – PubChem Pull- custom fields
- – Sequence based material libraries
- – Lineage tracking for Materials
- – Admin-defined internal reference query
- – Multiple internal reference links
- Inventory
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- – Barcode font
- – Material Request Table update
- – Disposal Workflow
- Platess
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- Samples
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- Calculations in Admin Defined Tables
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- – Removal of beta flag, on general release
- Integrations & APIs
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- – Delete single associations from group associations
- – Entity flags
- – Endpoint for Plate Summary Table
- Configuration Transfer (beta)
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- – Attributes
- – Roles & Privileges
- – Salts/Solvates
- – Biological Sequences
- – External Notifications
- – System Groups
- – Security Policy
We also fixed several small bugs in this release. Details of the enhancements are described below.
The following OnDemand videos for administrators are now available
- Export Materials with APIs
- Initial Launch Essentials
- Defining Locations
The following OnDemand videos for end users are now available
- Export Materials from Your Materials Library
The following OnDemand videos for Inventory are now available
- Getting Started with Signals Inventory
This content is anticipated for release on our Production E3 environments, and for Private Cloud customers on our deferred release schedule, in July 2022.
Administrators should note that we no longer support Tibco Spotfire ® version 10.3.
Further Details
Usability Improvements
We have enhanced a few hotkeys in our embedded ChemDraw sketcher.
Ctrl-Alt-K (Cmd-Alt-K) will toggle between kekule and aromatic representation for selected aromatic systems.
The hotkeys “j” and “shift-j” will sprout a cyclopentadiene or a phenyl ligand orthogonal to a metal atom.
Shift-Up/Down/Left/Right Arrow moves the hotspot by 3 bonds. Shift-Alt (Option)-Up/Down/Left/Right moves the hotspot to the nearest fragment in that direction.
Alt (or Option)-Up/Down arrow will rotate a selected object 15 degrees counter clockwise/ clockwise. Alt Left/Right rotate 1 degrees counter clockwise/clockwise.
The toolbar also now has a new option to copy the selected part of the drawing as CDXML to the clipboard.
The following improvements are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard and Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition.
Usability Improvements
We have added a hover over preview for Internal References in Table type entities and in the entity fields/properties of Signals Elements. This will allow users to view a simple preview which includes a preview image and the Properties/Fields of the linked entity when they mouse of the i icon.
Materials Library
The Chemical Drawing Element in Experiments can look up Barcodes, Container ID’s, Reagents (SNB) and Samples. We’ve improved the Compound look up as well as added the ability to search different sources in the Magnifying Glass Icon next to the Quick Add toolbar.
Administrators need to set up the mapping for users to take advantage of this capability.
For mapping of Samples, administrators will need to choose Samples in the System Objects configuration:
A new section called Stoichiometry Mapping is available to map the fields from the Sample to the fields populated in the Stoichiometry table.
The administrator must not only map the fields, but also Enable the mapping and save the changes:
To set up the Reagents (SNB) and Compound libraries administrators need to navigate to the relevant Material Types, and set the Stoichiometry Mapping.
If Administrators want to update the fields shown in the Stoichiometry tables, they can do so via the Chemistry Settings in the System Configuration:
The Barcode, Material ID and Container ID are hidden by default in both the Reactants and Products Tables.
Users can type, scan or copy/paste a barcode, container ID, Sample ID or Material ID, for Compounds or Reagents (SNB) into the Quick Add tool bar to add the structure and relevant properties such as Barcode, Container ID, Material ID and/or Sample ID to the Stoichiometry tables:
If users want to browse for the desired Compound, Reagents (SNB), Containers or Samples they can do so via the magnifying glass icon next to the Quick Add toolbar. When users click the magnifying glass icon, they will get a search window where the drop-down menu can be changed, and filters applied. Once the material of interest is located, the user can select where to place the compound in the scheme.
Users can type or copy/paste the name or part of the IDs, or the chemical name, into the Quick Add toolbar. When more than one option is available, the search window described above will open and the user can select which item to add and where to add it to the scheme.
Users who create content in the Reagents (SNB) Materials Library can pull additional custom data into the Reagent (SNB) that is publicly available from PubChem.
The administrators will need to add the custom fields to the Reagents (SNB):
Then the additional fields can be mapped for the PubChem Pull.
Click on the Mapping option under PubChem to set the field(s) that users can populate from PubChem:
To use the PubChem features, users can create a new Reagent (SNB) with a valid CAS number or choose a currently existing Reagent (SNB) and click the PubChem refresh icon in the top right corner. The data available will be populated in the table below and the date will be next to the refresh icon in the top right corner:
Biological sequence files are now supported in the Materials Library. Admins can define a new Material type as either Custom, DNA, or Protein. The sequence file itself can be defined as required or optional. Uniqueness checking by submitted sequences is supported during registration. Uniqueness is based on an exact match of the submitted sequence.
When registering, users may add supported sequence files. Sequence files can be previewed in static or dynamic modes with properties appearing below the sequence file.
Admins now have several enhancements when defining a Material internal reference property. The admin can allow for multiple internal references, may predefine the query the user will leverage, and can define if the internal reference will be for tracking the lineage of the underlying Material.
There are two types of Internal References. A General internal reference allows the admin to leave an open or defined query and users may select any object allowed by the admin for the internal reference.
The Lineage-Parent internal reference will only allow another activated Material to be focus of the internal reference. This will allow for tracking Parent-Child relationships between related Materials. The underlaying relationships will enable future enhancements for better search, analysis and understanding of Material lineages.
When configuring an internal reference field on a Material property field, the admin may now predefine the search query. This allows the user to easily pick the internal reference desired by the admin (e.g. Library). When selecting the appropriate internal reference/s during registration, the user may further refine the query but may not change the underlying query path for the internal reference.
When allowing for multiple internal references, uses may select more than one internal reference when registering a material. These references will also display in Materials Tables in Experiments and elsewhere.
Inventory
The Barcode font has been updated to be bolder with thicker lines to accommodate printers that use lower dpi print options. This will also aid scanners to be able to read the barcode more accurately.
The Material Request Table Request column has been updated from e-mail address to the user’s name with a hover over with additional information.
The Inventory Disposal Workflow is a 2-step process: Dispose and Final Dispose. Users can dispose containers, but only users with additional permission may move the disposed containers to final dispose. Disposed containers can be restored, final disposed containers may not be restored and can no longer be updated in any way. Final Dispose is for record keeping information of the containers and their materials have been removed from the premises.
To provide additional permission to a group of users, the administrator will need to navigate to the User Roles, Containers tab and check off the groups that should have Final Dispose permission:
Users can dispose of containers by navigating to a container and choosing the Dispose button:
Once confirmed, and the container has been disposed, the additional buttons are removed, and the status is displayed in the top right corner:
If the container was disposed by accident, the user can restore the container by clicking on the ellipse in the top right corner and choosing Restore:
If the user has navigated away from the container screen, but would still like to restore the container, they can navigate to a list of the disposed containers.
Under the User Name menu choose the Disposed Items option:
Select the container(s) to restore by using the checkboxes. If all containers are to be selected, use the checkbox in the top left next to the Restore button:
Final Dispose can be performed from the same location as the Dispose Restore if the user has permission. Select the container(s) to be Final Disposed and select the Final Dispose button:
Once confirmed, the container is Final Disposed and cannot be restored:
We highly recommend that a location for Final Disposed containers is created in the system and that all containers to be placed in Final Disposed be moved to that location prior to selecting the Final Dispose button. Locations cannot be deleted if containers are in them, this includes Disposed and Final Disposed containers. Containers that have been moved from Disposed to Final Disposed will disappear from the Disposed page and appear on the Final Disposed page.
Disposed and Final Disposed containers do not return in the Global Search. Users can see and filter by location for Disposed and Final Disposed containers in the Disposed Items pages only. To toggle between Disposed and Final Disposed users can use the radio buttons on the left side:
Users can filter by location and the text search within the results to narrow down results.
Plates
The Plate Element in an Experiment now has Plate ID’s that can be filled in by the user. The Plate ID is a text string that can be different for each plate.
Plate 1:
Plate 2:
The Plate ID is searchable in the Global Search interface:
Samples
Users can append sample templates to existing samples to add content from a sample template to an existing sample. This appends content only and does not alter the sample properties. This functions in a similar way to the “Append Template” function currently available for experiments.
Calculations in Admin Defined Tables
Capabilities enabling calculations in admin defined tables, released in beta over the last few months, are now available to all administrators without request.
Integrations & APIs
The endpoint PATCH/groups/{groupID}/associations has been updated to allow deletion of a single association.
We have added an additional parameter to our POST/entities/search endpoint to allow the results to include the CanEdit flag indicating if the user making the API call has edit on the given entity.
The CanEdit flag is also reported in the GET/entities/{eid} response.
We have added an endpoint GET/plates/{plateContainerID}/summary to export the contents of a plate. This provides access to the same data as the Summary Table/csv for the Plate element created in an Experiment
The following capabilities are in beta and are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud upon request. Please contact your account representative or our support team if you would like access to the following features. They are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition.
Configuration Transfer
We have extended our configuration transfer capability to support transferring Attributes, Roles & Privileges, Salts/Solvates, Biological Sequences, External Notifications, System Groups and Security Policy.
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