Laboratory Document Management System

Background

The CMS features of Plone, the exceptionally reliable and secure enterprise CMS framework Bika is built on, are not available to labs looking to turn their LIMS into an administrative and marketing tool. It was depricated in the interest of performance and maintainability.

The workaround is to install a separate Plone site on the same Plone instance as the LIMS, and cross-reference one another

Plone's role-based authorisation and workflows, document management with version control, and ability to work on SOP development and accreditation administration in private project teams are all useful for promoting lab services on a public lab portal

Bika LIMS users wil find themselves at home with familiar UI and workflows

In future, when an instrument fails QC, the LIMS should be able to initiate corrective and preventative workflows in the CMS

By displaying QC control charts, maintenance records, and other information from the LIMS in CMS forms that are presented to auditors in their preferred formats, accreditation administration can be made simpler

User Groups and Permissions

Autorisation per group

Workflow

Manage your documents form inception to publication

Document Versioning

Changes logged with precision

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

Activate the Barcelona theme

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, Google any question you have, and you are most likely to find an answer

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

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

Folder Structure

A portion of the website will be accessible to the public, usually promotional content and instructions, assuming the lab would use it as a marketing tool to attract new customers and prospects. This video demonstrates how to log and track samples remotely using the LIMS as a lab client and how to generate reports on their data

Lab users can be granted access to private folders that house the LIMS user manual and other training and e-learning materials, as well as project teams that handle SOP creation and accreditation administration

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