Signals Notebook is an intuitive and effective scientific research data management
solution. Write up your research data and experiments, then drag and drop, store,
organize, share, find and filter data with ease.
Check out the latest improvements.
December 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook brings some improvements to the administrative experience, especially around the handling of System Templates, System Groups and Group Associations. We have also added more uses for the Internal Reference property type and made a few usability improvements. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Usability Improvements We added a number of additional Solvents and Solvates into the system. Solvents can be added to the Solvents table in the Reaction. Solvates can be used in the Salts and Solvates window. Spotfire .dxp files are now included as an attachment when the experiment is exported to PDF. The Favorites folder now uses our filterable search capability to give greater flexibility and retrievability. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Internal Reference Property Type The Internal Reference Property type has been extended to now include Properties (Experiment and Notebook) and Materials. Administrators can define internal reference properties to Experiment/Notebook fields in System Templates, or to Asset or Batch level fields in Materials. End users can then select other objects within Signals Notebook to create a reference to that object Administrative Updates System Templates are now all Shared with Edit privileges with all members of the System Administrators group, allowing all System Administrators the ability to see and modify the System Templates. System Templates are now no longer shared via ACLs but only with Sharing. The System now also differentiates between System Groups, used for security and Sharing System Templates and Table Templates, and UserGroups which are created by end users. Only System Groups can be used for administrative purposes. All System Groups are Shared with Edit privileges with all members of the System Administrators group, allowing all System Administrators the ability to see and modify the System Groups. The System Administrator also can promote an existing UserGroup to become a System Group if needed. The existing All Users and System Administrators groups, in addition to any Groups used in Group Associations or mentioned in the security policy, have already been converted to System Groups. The Group Associations page has also been improved. List types associated with Groups are now displayed in the relevant Groups. The List Values can also now be filtered, either by a type-ahead filter or by filtering to only the selected values or the unselected values. The following capabilities are in beta and are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud upon request. They are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Proxy Configuration for External Data Sources, External Lists External Lists and External Data Sources can now be connected via a Proxy rather than directly to an external application API. Connecting to the Proxy allows simplification of the administrative experience in connecting to various API endpoints, along with the ability to add custom configuration to the data transfer and authentication. The Proxy service is a separate application also provided by PerkinElmer as part of a services engagement. Additional Public APIs Additional GET and PATCH Entity APIs have been added. Ongoing API improvements will continue independent of Signals Notebook updates. |
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October 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook brings the initial (beta) release of our public APIs, in addition to extending our integration capabilities with the ability to source lists from external to Signals Notebook. We have also provided round trip editing with Tibco Spotfire, completed this round of improvements to the image handling and added more uses for the Internal Reference property type. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Image Improvements Images can now be rotated if the orientation needs to be changed. Rotation is available under the Edit Image view. Rotation of the image does not rotate the annotations. We have also added lines to the arrow image annotation tool. Tibco Spotfire Round Trip Editing If the user saves a Tibco Spotfire (.dxp) file into Signals Notebook, the Spotfire file can be launched in the Spotfire Analyst client for further editing. Note that this capability requires both installation of the Tibco Spotfire Analyst client (7.11 or 10.3) and installation of an add-in to the Spotfire server by the Spotfire administrator. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Attributes Updates When an administrator has set up an Attribute for use in Experiment Properties or for use in Materials, Samples or Tables, the User now has a type-ahead search for values rather than a dropdown list to facilitate using longer lists. When the experiment containing a table is Printed to PDF and documents embedded as attachments, a .csv file of the table is also included in the PDF. Internal Reference Property Type The internal Reference Property Type has been extended for use in Samples and Material Tables. Administrators can now define custom properties for these items that allow an end user to add a hyperlinked reference to another item within Signals Notebook. The following capabilities are considered a beta release and are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud upon request. These capabilities are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. External Lists The admin can now define external sources to be used for experiment attributes. External lists are configured by connecting to an external API. The key field, an additional field which can be used as a description, and additional fields displayed in Properties can be identified. Once the source is configured, the list can be used as an Attribute and included in System Templates. When an end user selects an attribute value, the associated properties are viewed within the Experiment properties. Public APIs An initial framework for accessing Signals Notebook public APIs has been developed. Administrators have online access to API documentation. Initial GET Entity and GET Entity PDF APIs have been released. Configuration and access to the API documentation is provided via the System Settings screen of the administrative console (SNCofig). |
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September 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook brings some enhancements to our image handling capabilities, to tables and to samples. We have added a new property type to tables which allows users to create clickable references to other items within Signals Notebook. We have also made the experiment properties more prominent by including them in the body of the experiment. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition, Signals Notebook E3 and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Usability Updates Large images are now automatically scaled to better display on your screen. The image is further zoomed as your screen and/or window size changes. Subsequent changes to the scaling of the image will override initial rescaling. The scaling can be manually entered in addition to the current drag operation. We have also added more colors to use for image annotations. The original image file can also be optionally included in the Attachments when Printing to PDF The Experiment and Template Properties (Metadata) are now displayed inline in addition to from the Properties view. This new view can be expanded or collapsed as desired. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard, E3 or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Search Updates Search properties from Materials Tables, Materials, Tables and Samples are now prefixed with a header to help identifying which property to use for a given search. Tables Updates Tables now support upload of data from a .csv file. When the experiment containing a table is Printed to PDF and documents embedded as attachments, a .csv file of the table is also included in the PDF. Administrators can also now define a new Reference type property in tables. Once added, users can search for other items in Signals Notebook to reference within a table. The table entry acts as a hyperlink to that item. Samples Updates Samples now support download of data into a .sdf or .csv file. Displayed properties are included in the download file. The .csv and .sdf files are also optionally included in the Attachments when the experiment is Printed to PDF. The Molecular Formula (MF) field values can also now be edited directly in the Samples table. |
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July/August 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook adds Samples capabilities to experiments. Samples can be configured by administrators and enabled for end users to create during the course of experimentation. Samples can be of multiple types, including chemical samples derived from reactants and/or products of a chemical synthesis. We have also added some usability enhancements to images and tables and exposed the capability to restrict access by IP range, or configure use of a SAML compliant IdP, to the administrator. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition, Signals Notebook E3 and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Usability Updates We have added a few improvements to our image annotation capabilities. We have added an ellipse to indicate areas of interest and extended the font sizes for annotation text. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard, E3 or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Tables Updates You can now sort tables alphabetically or numerically. Columns using numbers with units are sorted relative to the units (e.g. mg<g<kg). Any new sort order is not persisted and not included in changes in the History and can be achieved on a table in read only mode. The data in Tables can also be downloaded as a csv file, included all displayed columns. Materials Tables have been improved to make the addition of sequential items more efficient and to be more consistent with other Tables. The ability to connect Tables to external data sources has also been fully released and is now available to all administrators. Samples Once the admin has activated the capability, scientists can now add samples to their experiments. Chemical Samples can be created from reagents or products within an experiment. Other types of samples can also be created with properties defined by the administrator. Samples are displayed in a Samples Table within an experiment. Administrators can define properties to apply to different sample types. Administrators can also define the format for sample numbering. IP Range and SAML restriction Administrators can now define their own IP ranges to restrict access to the tenant. Administrators can also configure the use of a SAML 2.0 compliant Identity Provider to enable Single SignOn. |
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June 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook continues to expand our configurable tables capabilities by allowing administrators to define external databases that can be connected to tables to access, provide and update data. We added the ability for end users to change the preview generated for MS Office, PDF and attached files, enhanced the ability to add images into experiments, and improved the PDF generation from experiments. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Usability Updates Users can now provide their own custom previews for MS Office, PDF and attached files. Preview images can be reverted to the default preview. Users can now add Picture files to experiments directly via the Add Content button. The Picture option allows file upload, drag and drop and paste of suitable image files. Image files can still be added via the File Upload option or by drag and drop into the Contents panel. The Export to PDF from an Experiment has also been updated to provide more obvious timestamps, information about the Signer and Approver in the header, and to change the default settings for including the Header, Footer and attaching documents within the exported PDF. Chemistry Updates Chemical search now supports variable attachment points and alternative groups for query. Atom and bond properties are now more easily accessed via a new toolbar icon. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Table Updates The following capability is currently in beta and available to customers upon request. Tables can now be set up to connect with external databases, either populating data from those databases or pushing data into them. The database connections are now set up in a new External Data Source smart folder where connection via the 3rd party API is managed. External data sources are set up to support a GET, POST and/or PATCH operation. The Table templates are then configured to utilize the external data source. Existing Table Templates can be retroactively set up to connect also. Once Table Templates are configured, the end user can add tables to experiments. Tables connected to external data sources can retrieve data from them once the end user inserts a unique ID. |
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May 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook adds configurable tables capabilities by allowing administrators to define their own tables. We also provided administrators the ability to define date and external hyperlink fields in System Templates as well as having added an alternate autonumbering method whereby numbers are globally sequential. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard or Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Administrative Updates Administrators can now add date and external hyperlink fields to System Templates. Like other fields, such as Attribute fields, these can be set as being Required or Optional. The fields are part of the metadata of an Experiment or Notebook. We also added an alternative numbering option to allow autonumbering to occur sequentially across the whole system rather than within a notebook. With this option enabled, the administrator can advance the number sequence but cannot return to a lower number. This provides a method to guarantee unique experiment names. Tables Administrators can now define Tables to be added to Experiments. Each Table is defined using a Table Template and the administrator can define the column names, property types and if the column is hidden by default, always shown, or if any user entered value are removed when an experiment is copied. The Admin can also define Sharing to control which users are able to add such Tables into their Experiments. Once the Table is defined the User can add the Tables into their experiments by choosing from the available Table types. |
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April 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New Here are all the details about the exciting new features in Signals Notebook this month. Signals Notebook makes the capture, re-use, and sharing of your experimental data faster, easier, and provides greater security and data integrity than paper notebooks. Further Details Usability Updates Our highly powerful search engine has been extended to now include free text searching of fielded properties of type User. These properties, which are available via the specific filters in Advanced Search and come from metadata, are now included in free text searching via both the Quick Find and Advanced Search windows. Numerical and date type fields are excluded. We improved the behavior of Autotext included within Text Elements when the experiment is copied or converted to a template. If the Autotext has been selected to a value in a list, or to a specific chemical, and the whole experiment is copied, then the new Autotext will retain the linkage to the list value or specific chemical. If the Text Element is copied on its own then any Chemical Autotext items will revert to the label, however other Autotext Lists values will be retained. Adding a .txt document to an experiment now converts the document into a Text Element rather than loading it as an attached file. This has the advantage of allowing for text searching of the document and enabling access to additional editing capabilities such as incorporating Autotext. This capability is limited to .txt files up to 500Kb in size. MS Office Updates We have completed qualification of MS Office 2019 and now fully support this version of Microsoft Office. As we support 2 versions of Microsoft Office we will stop qualifying MS Office 2013 going forward. Materials Management Updates The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. We have now released the Materials Management capability to all administrators. Please note that this capability is not available to end users without administrative setup. Administrators can also now define their own library types in addition to the libraries already provided through the application. Administrators can define a unique name, define a numerical sequence for the ID, define any properties for the material and lot level fields, and define security for the Library, as they already can for the existing Library Types. E-Notebook Archive Updates The E-Notebook Archive extractor now will extract the latest PDF and metadata from the LTA (Long Term Archive) for E-Notebook customers who utilized the classic e-sign option. The PDF is displayed as a separate page within the Signals Notebook Archive. Hierarchical information is available for filtering of extracted content. A separate filter is available for each Collection Type, which can be filtered against the Collection Names. These capabilities are updates to the E-Notebook Archive extractor and do not apply to already extracted content. |
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March 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook supplements our Materials Management capability with bulk import and export capabilities, adds an additional library for Primers and a new field type (external hyperlink). We have also included text type fields into our free text searching. The following are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Search Updates Our highly powerful search engine has been extended to now include free text searching of fielded properties of type Text. These properties, which are available via the specific filters in Advanced Search and come from metadata or other tabular content, are now included in free text searching via both the QuickFind and Advanced Search windows. Numerical, date and user type fields are excluded. Materials Management Updates The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Items can now be loaded in bulk to the library via SDFile (Compounds) or csv. A field mapping workflow allows the end user to map expected fields from the source file to the destination fields. Reports on the success of the bulk import are provided to the user including the ability to download a file of any failed items. Items already in the library can be selected and exported in bulk (sd file for Compounds, or csv). A new Library type has been added for Primers. This Library type can be configured and activated by the administrator. A “External Hyperlink” field type has been enabled to be added at both Asset and Lot levels. An additional calculated field, Molecular Formula, has been added to the Compounds library. This field is only added to newly added Compounds. Example security policies for Materials Libraries have also been added to the Security Policy for system administrators. |
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January/February 2019 Monthly Update | + | ||
What’s New This release of Signals Notebook allows chemists to define Salts and Solvates associated with their reagents and products in a chemical reaction. The user interface has been updated to make it easier to access Comments and the Quick Find search. For administrators, we added policies that let you define specific behavior for personal text and experiment templates. For systems where the Materials Management capability is enabled, you can now compare before and after views of material tables. For systems where the E-Notebook Archive capability is enabled, improved searchability of lists and tables has been added along with synchronization of the archive with E-Notebook. The following new features are available for users of Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Individual Edition and Signals Notebook Private Cloud
Further Details Chemistry Updates: Salts & Solvates Chemists can now associate full or fractional salts and solvates to reagents and products. Multiple salts and/or solvates can be added to any reactant and/or product. The Reactant/Product Name, Molecular Formula and Formula Mass are adjusted accordingly. If the required salt or solvate is not found in the available list, then you can add the salt and its properties yourself. User Interface Updates Comments now appear in the left-hand panel, which can be toggled on and off and does not block the viewing of the experiment. The Quick Find, which allows easy text searching of content, has been moved to the top toolbar to make it more accessible. Quick Find supports accessing saved bookmarks and text searching with type ahead prediction. Search Updates An additional field for Molecular Weight (MW) for reactants and products has been added in addition to the existing Formula Mass (FM). Properties where multiple values may exist within the same document also now support an AND clause within the filter. An example would be properties in the reactants table where you can now search for a reaction which contain multiple reagents by the Molecular Weight of each. The following capabilities are only available to users and administrators of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and are unavailable as part of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. Administrative Updates Administrators can now modify security policies to exclude personal text and experiment templates from being shared and being available in the dropdown lists. Materials Management Updates The History view of Material tables in Experiments has been updated to show before and after views of changes. E-Notebook Archive The E-Notebook Enterprise archive has been enhanced to allow synchronous archiving from E-Notebook to Signals Notebook. Text searching of tables and property lists has also been added. This capability is only available to customers of Signals Notebook Standard or Private Cloud and requires additional licensing and services. It is not available for users of Signals Notebook Individual Edition. As a reminder, updates are posted online here. and more information about Signals Notebook is available on the product homepage here. An article explaining the difference between Signals Notebook Standard, Signals Notebook Private Cloud and Signals Notebook Individual Edition can be found here. Free trials of Signals Notebook Standard can be requested here |
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