MeristemLab

User guide

How MeristemLab is organised, how the records connect, how the bench works, and what each setting affects. Everything here is on the live site today.

How it is organised

The navigation follows the order a lab works in, not the record types. Each group is a verb; the lists are what the verb acts on.

Home

Owners, admins and managers on a desktop open on the overview: eight cards for overdue transfers, contamination this week, losses by cause, throughput, orders due, media expiring, stock below reorder and hood use. Each card opens the list behind it.

Technicians, and everyone on a phone, open on the worklist: the jobs due today grouped by hood, with due, overdue and done counts above it. Where each role lands can be changed in Settings, Roles and home, and each person can set their own on the Account page.

Work

The bench and the media room.

  • Today’s jobs: the worklist. Click a job to see it and start it.
  • Due for transfer: cultures whose next subculture date has arrived.
  • Media to prepare: batches running out or expiring, with Prepare media.
  • Record a loss: scan or type a culture code and record the loss with its cause.
  • Scan: open any record from its label with the phone camera.
  • Print labels: a sheet or roll of labels for any records.

Plan

The manager’s surface: orders, the planner that works back from an order using your stage durations, jobs by week, production batches, tasks, and the exceptions that need attention.

Stock

What is on the shelves and where: cultures, mother plants, media batches, stock solutions, chemicals, consumables and locations. The counts beside each list are live.

Quality

Contamination events, losses, quality tests, protocols, the audit trail and reports.

Sales

Customers and their orders.

Setup

Reference data and administration: media recipes, equipment and stations, the team, import, and settings.

The records and how they connect

Every record has a code in your own format, assigned when it is saved. Leave the code blank and the next one is used.

Mother plants and cultures

A mother plant is where a line starts: species, variety, source and health. A culture is a vessel or a set of vessels taken from it. Subculturing a culture creates child cultures with the next codes, carrying the passage number, the media batch and the technician. The lineage back to the mother plant is on every culture.

Media

Chemicals are what the lab buys. Stock solutions are the concentrates you make from them. A recipe is the formulation. A media batch is one pour of a recipe on a date, with its volume, pH and expiry. Every culture is linked to the batch it is on, so a problem batch can be traced to every vessel that shares it.

Locations and stations

Locations form a tree: a site, its rooms, their shelves and racks. A location’s form asks only for what its type needs: a room for its climate, a shelf for its capacity, a station for whether it is a hood or a bench. Signing on at a station puts its jobs first on your worklist.

Jobs

A job is a unit of bench work: subculture these vessels into that medium, move this rack, pour this much media, record this loss, pack this order. Jobs are generated from stage due dates, media expiry and equipment service dates, nightly or when you press Suggest jobs; New job is for the odd thing. They start unassigned: a technician takes one by starting it, and the hood they signed on at is recorded on it for traceability. A manager can assign a job to a person when it matters. Finishing a job writes the records and offers the labels.

Orders and customers

An order has lines with a species, a quantity and a due date, and cultures are linked to the lines that they fill, so the order shows what is ready.

Working at the bench

Everything a technician does fits a phone in one hand.

Labels and scanning

Every record can carry a label with its code as a QR code. The phone camera reads it from the Scan page and opens the record with its actions. Keyboard scanners work in the search box at the top of every page: scan, and the record opens. Printing goes through the browser to any printer; the lab chooses its default label size and fields in Settings, Printing.

Lists

Every list is a table with the code first. The tabs above it are saved views (Active, Due, Overdue, Contaminated and so on). Select rows to move them, change their status, print their labels or export them. Split shows the record beside the list; the pencil on a row edits it in a panel without leaving the list.

Records

A record page shows its code, status and actions on one line, its key facts underneath, and its related records as tables: subcultures, observations, contamination, media, labels and the activity log.

Settings and what each one affects

Settings are set once by an admin and every screen follows them.

Lab

  • General: the lab’s name, logo and units on every screen and label.
  • Terminology: what you call each kind of record; the navigation, headings, buttons and messages change with it, and the page shows a live preview.
  • Stages: your stages in order, each with a colour and the days until the next subculture.
  • Codes: the numbering format for each kind of record and the next code it will give.
  • Features: which parts of the product the lab uses.
  • Printing: the default label format and fields per kind of record, and whether a label is offered after creating one.

Data

  • Option lists: the choices in every dropdown, with how many records use each; values in use are deactivated, never deleted.
  • Fields: which fields show on forms and lists, and your own extra fields on the main records.
  • Scheduling: how due dates are calculated and shown.

People

  • Team: who can sign in and their role. Owner and admin may change settings and members; a technician records work; a viewer reads and nothing else, in the interface and in the database.
  • Roles and home: where each role lands after signing in and what Home shows.
  • Account: your own password, email and home page.

Billing, export and delete

The plan and its invoices; a CSV of any list or a ZIP of the whole lab at any time; and deleting the lab.

Getting a lab in

About a day for a small lab, and we do it with you.

The order of setup

  • Set terminology, stages and codes (about an hour).
  • Add the rooms, shelves and stations.
  • Import mother plants, cultures, recipes, locations and customers from a spreadsheet (Setup, Import), or send us the workbook.
  • Print labels for everything already on the shelf (Work, Print labels, or the Unlabelled view on the cultures list).
  • Invite the team, and run the first week beside the old sheet.

Something missing? Ask us and we will add it here.