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PIMS Sample help
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Overview

PiMS has facilities to enable you to record the details of all reagents used in the laboratory.
This includes a 'Recipe', or Reference data to describe the composition of a reagent, and Samples or 'Stocks' of the reagent based on the recipe. PiMS will also record details of any Experiments where the Stock is used.

PiMS also creates reports of Sample usage and allows you to assign Samples to particular users.
Links for up to 10 Samples from a report are also displayed in 'Bricks' on the PiMS homepage

Contents

Guide to using PIMS.

Frontpage Bricks

There are 2 'Sample' bricks on the PiMS homepage. Each contains a list of links to up to 10 sample records, according to the circumstances of the sample. Each sample-link takes the user to a 'details' page, containing information about the sample, its parameters, whether it may have been used as an input sample for anything, and new experiments that can be performed with it.

Both bricks all contain different lists according to their purpose:

Active samples older than 7 days:
  • The top 10 samples created more than 7 days ago which are active and have not been used in any Experiment.
    sample brick 7days old
Active samples ready for use:
  • The top 10 New Samples that are ready for use, active, and have been produced by a successful experiment.
    Sample brick new ready
  • If you put the mouse over a sample's name, a tooltip will display the number of days since the last experiment.
  • If you click the link after the list of samples in a brick, e.g: 'All samples older than 7 days', you will be taken to the 'Sample List'.

Sample List

You can search all the samples in the database, matching the sample name or details.
Sample list result

Active Sample Report

This shows the whole list of samples from the database, or as specified by the search terms, along with several details about each. Some of these can be used for searching for a set of samples.
You can search the samples by:
  • The person that they are assigned to.
  • The amount of 'No progress days' - this is calculated by the end dates of the experiments that produced the samples.
  • Whether they are 'Ready/not ready for next', which means whether the experiments that produced these samples are/were successful or not.
  • Experiment type.
  • Whether they 'Have/haven't been used', which means whether the samples have or haven't been used as input samples of other experiment(s).
Sample list result

The Sample View

You can select to view a sample by clicking on the sample name or on the magnifying glass icon beside. The sample view shows attributes of the sample, and the experiment and parameters that were used to create the sample (if appropriate). These values can be changed but must be saved by clicking the 'save' button.
The samples location is shown, and can be changed by selecting 'Move'.
If the sample has a value for the amount, the sample can be split into several portions by selecting the Divide Sample button. sample list assign to
If you want to perform an experiment on the sample, a list of next experiments available can be seen in the 'Use sample as input in a New Experiment' block.
sample list assign to

Move Sample

From the sample view select 'Set sample location' or 'Move Sample' to record the whereabouts of the sample. After selecting the new location, a breadcrumb trail of the hierarchy of the new location now shows in the sample view. sample list assign to

Divide Sample

From the sample view select the 'Divide Sample' to split the sample into a number of portions. Equal portions are created with Aliquot X appended to the sample name. Both the name and the amount of each portion can be adjusted afterwards from the view of each portion. sample list assign to
Protein Information Management System
Version 3.1 DEMO