The experiment group screens allow you to enter several similar experiments at once, more easily than entering them individually. All experiments in a group must share the same protocol.

Creating a new group

From the Experiment menu, select New Experiment Group.

You must give the group a name, and say how many experiments are in the group. You also need to choose a protocol for the experiments.

Click "Save and continue". There will be a short delay while the experiments are created.

Editing experiments in the group

The experiment group page consists of a number of tabs. In brief, these are:

• Basic details - The information common to the whole group, which you entered when creating the group
• Quick setup - Allows you to make changes to ALL experiments in the group at once
• Group view - Lets you select experiments to change, and then make changes to them
• Spreadsheet - Lets you edit individual values for particular experiments

The quickest way to work is to

• use Quick setup to set everything that all experiments have in common
• then use Group view to set values that are the same for several experiments
• then use Spreadsheet for changing individual values.

When you first create an experiment group, the Quick setup tab is selected for you.

Quick setup

Anything you change here will apply to all experiments in the group.

You can change the experiments' status by using the drop-down list.

You can specify input samples and their amounts (see "Choosing samples" below), and enter values for the experiment parameters.

When you have finished, click Save (at the bottom of the form). You will see a message "Updating..."; when this disappears, your changes have been saved.

Group view

Group view works much like Quick setup. The difference is that you can make changes to any number of experiments within the group.

Parameters and samples

Setting parameters and samples works exactly as it does in Quick setup.

Selecting experiments to change

Experiments in the group are numbered consecutively from 1. There is a grid of checkboxes on the right of the tab, each box corresponding to an experiment. To select or deselect an experiment, click on the corresponding checkbox.

Spreadsheet

As the name suggests, this tab contains a table showing all the values recorded for each experiment. Each row in the table represents an experiment.

The Name column contains links to the view of each individual experiment. This name is not editable.

Similarly, there is a link to the output of the experiment. The name of the output sample is not editable.

As in the Quick Setup and Group view tabs, you can edit the samples and parameter values.

To save your changes, scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet and click the Save button there.

Choosing samples

As with single experiments, you can record which samples (and how much) you used in your experiments.

The sample selector consists of:

• A magnifying glass icon - this lets you view the currently selected sample
• A dropdown list of samples, with the option to search for more
• A box for the amount

View icon

Click the icon to view the selected sample.

The icon will be greyed out if a sample is not selected.

List of samples

The drop-down list shows the currently-selected sample - or (None) if no sample is selected - and allows you to change it.

In the Quick Setup and Group view tabs, this may read (Various). This means that not all experiments (in Quick setup), or not all selected experiments (in Group view), use the same sample. You cannot select (Various) yourself.

If you have recently viewed any samples that can be used here, they will be available in the drop-down list. Simply select one.

If the sample you want is not in the list, click Search...

A pop-up window appears over the page, and you will be shown a list of samples that can be used. Click Select beside the sample you want. The window will close, and the sample will be added to the dropdown list and selected for you. If you decide that you don't want to use any of the samples listed, click the [x] in the top right corner of the pop-up to close it.

Amount

Simply enter a number. The unit is automatically recorded for you.

And finally...

Don't forget to save your changes.