Laboratory Document Management System

Disclaimer

Background

Since the move to the Senaite code base, where performance and maintainability were key design considerations, the CMS capabilities of Plone, the super robust and secure enterprise CMS framework, was unavailable for labs who want to expand their LIMS into an admin and marketing tool

Plone features all the role based authorisation and workflows, full document management with version control, are all handy to promote lab services in a public lab portal and work on SOP development and accreditation admin in private project teams

On the next level, the LIMS should be able to triggered workflows in the CMS, e.g. Corrective and Preventative workflows when an instrument fails QC

Accreditation admin can be simplified by surfacing QC control charts and maintenance records etc. from the LIMS in CMS forms presented to auditors in their trusted formats

First prize

In the ideal setting the lab will use the CMS as complete lab web portal and the LIMS is available from there, part of a bigger structure

The Site can be themed to look like any other corporate site

With the correct routing, the two can be fully integrated and the LIMS used to populated document pages

1.7.1 User Groups and Permissions

1.7.2 Workflow

1.7.3 Document Versioning

1.7.4 Forms

To follow... Plone Training documentation

Create web forms with PloneFormGen

1.7.5 Plone Development

More documentation by the Quinta group

Installing Plone CMS

As the admin user, navigate to the root folder of your installation in the management interface, ../manage_main, and add a new Plone site

Adding and editing Content

For populating the site you can very much rely on the Plone 5 User manual from here, and the chapter Working with Content

The Plone Training site carries very good next level information

Plone has a dynamic user community and you may Google any question you have and you are most likely to find an answer at https://community.plone.org/. Please contribute your own assistance once skilled:)

Branding

Front page

To clean the default front end up, start by removing the Plone Welcome page - create a new page, go to the home page, click "Display" and then "Change content item as default view", select your new page

A front page for each folder can be created like this

To add content to any of the bottom, left or right hand portlets, see Portlet Management in the Plone manual

Changing the logo

To replace the portal logo, navigate to the Site setup as admin user

Upload the logo. NB  Don't forget to Click [Save] at the bottom of the page

Laboratory Specifics

Folder Structure

Assuming that the lab will be using the site as a marketing tool to new prospects and clients, part of the site will be public, typically promotional content and instructions, video on how to use the LIMS as lab client logging and tracking samples remotely, how to run reports on their data

In private folders, lab users can be given access to folders containing the LIMS’ user manual and other training and e-learning content, and to project teams dealing with accreditation administration and SOP development

Collaboration through Sharing in the Plone manual

Authorised user may now start collecting lab information here, in sub folders if necessary