QESTLab Preferred Laboratory for List Fields

Overview

Often times, in the case of large organizations, customers are shared across labs. In such a case, it is advisable to set up all clients as "global" entries. This could lead to the issue of a large (and therefore bulky) list dropdown for all users from all labs. To avoid this problem and to keep the list drop-downs manageable, customers can be "nominated" against labs when they are added to the system. Thus even though all the client entries are global items, when the preferred lab option is set to True, and a sample/WO is being registerd for a particular lab, only those clients that have the selected lab being set/nominated as the preferred lab are shown in the drop downs.

Currently when using a data filter to search for Samples or Documents users need to scroll through a considerably large list (for Client and Project lists in particular) to select the required items. This has been identified as being inconvenient. Existing functionality exists to reduce the length of similar fields based on Preferred Laboratories. It is suggested that this "Preferred Laboratory" functionality be extended to data filters as well.

Enabling Preferred Lab Status

Through the new list option management in the Administrator Console, lists are able to be set to include a 'preferred lab' column. When using the list through a drop-down list box the user has the option (via a small toggle button on the right of the list) to show the list items which have the current laboratory as their preferred lab in addition to the normal list items. When the preferred laboratory option is not being used there is no visible change to lists.

Enabling preferred lab status for a lab happens through the QLA. A detailed explanation on list configuration/options is available here.

Setting the Preferred Lab Status

Using the Preferred Lab Status in QESTLab

Once you have ticked the "Preferred Lab" for a particular list, as described in the section above, an additional column called "Preferred Lab" is available for that list. You will not be able to see this column in the 'data entry view of this list'. This column is only available in the spreadsheet interface for the list (available by toggling the data entry view present at the top, right hand corner of the list)" or in the grid below the data entry interface.

Setting Preferred Laboratory for Data Filters

No change will be made to the way the option for "Preferred Laboratory" is set. The functionality being extended to Data Filters will use the existing option in the QEST Administrator Console which is accessed via QESTLab->Configuration->Lists

Once the option is set for a particular list then the Preferred Laboratory button will be accessible for that particular list in the data filters section.

The Data Filters section of the QESTLab screen will now include the "Preferred Laboratory" button for those lists which have the "Preferred Laboratory" option checked.

When the Preferred Laboratory button is OFF then local and global entries only are displayed. As shown in the images below.

When the Preferred Laboratory button is ON then the entries are restricted to those Clients that have the Preferred Laboratory option set the same as the current laboratory (in this case Lane Cove West Laboratory). Refer images below.

Note the restricted list of entries in the above image when compared to the previous restriction without the Preferred Laboratory restriction.