1. General System Navigation
Core LIMS Training:
General System Navigation
Welcome to CORE LIMS Training. This is the first in a series of eLearning courses designed to provide self-paced training on the CORE LIMS product. You will be prompted to click the screen when the training is ready to continue - you also have the ability to click directly on any screen at any time to advance a topic at your own pace.
If you are ready to begin, lets proceed on to become familiarized with the CORE LIMS System and Navigating within it.

2. Logging In
You will receive a web address to access your system from an internet browser – be sure to bookmark the site in your favorites list
An initial username and password may either be set up by your system administrator or Core may be integrated with your LDAP database that contains your corporate username and password
When you first launch the hyperlink provided to you by your administrator you will be directed to a log in page. It is recommended that you bookmark this page in your browser so that you can easily return here whenever you need to.
Type in the username and password that your administrator supplies to you. Your password will automatically enter as encrypted text. This is to secure your login. Your administrator may have chosen to integrate the username and password with your corporate password system or you can use the LIMS to manage its own account passwords. Click on the Login button when you are done.
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3. System Home Page
To return to this system home page from any page, select the Core icon
From the home page, there will be tiles representing all the applications you have access to
Click on any tile to go to that application home page
You can reorder the tiles on this page if you want
Once your credentials are verified, you will be taken to the main system home page. You can always return to this page by clicking on the Core icon in the upper left corner from any page in the system.
Your administrator may have given you access to one or more applications. You can transfer between these applications from the colored tiles in the main window or by selecting them from the application pull down menu in the upper left corner underneath the 3 x 3 grid icon. As you navigate to each application you will notice that each application has its own separate home page with different menu items containing different functionality. You may also have gadgets on those application home pages, which may direct you to other pages within the system with key functionality that you need.
You can also rearrange the order of how these application tiles are laid out. Click on the orange edit icon in the upper right. The upper left corners of each tile will be highlighted white. You can then drag and drop the tiles where you like on the page. Click the Orange save button to lock the new positions. This home page is the only page that you will have permission to create your own personal view of a dashboard.
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4. Common Navigation Elements
Application Menu
Application-Specific Menus – will change depending on which application you are currently in
User Menu
Help Menu
System Home Page Icon
Location Menu
Page Title – Indicates where you are in the system
Quick Find
Center Pane – where records and dashboards will be displayed
Before we move on, let's take a second to identify some of the common navigation elements on the home page as well as most other pages in the system.
The Application Menu icon is in the upper left corner and looks like a 3 by 3 grid. It provides the user with a drop down list of those Applications that the user has access to.
Depending on the Application selected, the appropriate Application specific menus will display on the page accordingly.
The System Home Page Icon will be on all pages and you can click on the icon to return to the Main System Home Page from anywhere in the system.
The Quick Find Tool provides the user with a quick way to locate any record within CORE.
The Location Menu icon will open up a Hierarchical list of Locations to view. We will explore this more in our inventory management lessons.
The User Menu dropdown list provides the user with the ability to Logout, access their own employee details page, and if they are an administrator, they will have access to the main admin panel via this drop down menu.
The Help Menu dropdown list provides various forms of help to the user and will be explained in greater detail shortly.
The Center Pane is the area of the page that is dedicated to displaying records and dashboards
And finally, the Page Title helps to identify the page that is currently being displayed.
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5. System Home Page Panels
The Updates tab shows the activities of any user that you are following
The Favorites tab shows any records that a user has “liked”
Recent Items displays a list of items visited within the last two weeks
On the main System Home Page, to the right side of the page, there are three tabs each opening an individual panel.
The first is the "Updates" tab, which is like an RSS feed of the activities of any user you are following. Any user can follow a colleague by navigating to their user record and clicking on the Follow icon. Then when the followed user creates new records, publishes experiments, or makes announcements in the Share box at the top of this panel, the follower will see those activities in their updates panel. You can easily click on the hyperlinked records in this panel to jump to the exact record and view the details. This is a nice way to see right away what colleagues who are on your team are working on. Don’t worry, no-one will see any records that they don’t have permissions to view!
The second tab is the "Favorites" panel. This will show all of the User Favorites. Favorites are those items, within CORE, that the user 'Likes'. As you will see shortly, Core allows a user to "like" certain items within the LIMS. Those items get added to this Favorites Panel for easy access in the future. This is a convenient way to bookmark key records that you need to navigate to frequently.
The third tab is the "Recent Items" tab. This Panel shows all records that the logged in user has visited in the last 2 weeks. This again provides another nice shortcut for the user to quickly find pages that they have been recently working with.
Click to expand Entity Type
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6. Application Menu
Depending on the license and any custom applications that you might later make, Core LIMS is divided into several applications which have toolbars with functionality related to those applications
Applications can be accessed from the application menu located in the upper left corner of every page
Customized to each user - will only display all the applications available to you
Can be used to navigate between applications directly (without having to go through system home page tiles)
Changing applications will automatically change the Application-Specific menus on the top of the page
LIMS administrators can set your default application by editing your Employee Details record
Admins can also configure their own custom applications
Let’s take a more detailed look at some of the navigation elements we introduced earlier.
Core LIMS is divided into many applications. An application is a logical unit of objects and functions grouped together by a set of menus and a dashboard home page. You may have applications that were created by Core Informatics or your administrator can also configure applications that are customized to your business workflows. Your administrator can control which applications you can view to make it easier for you to find the pages you need to enter and view your data.
In the upper left corner of every page, you will find a 3 by 3 grid icon. If you click on it, you will see the Application Menu drop down list. This list contains all of those applications that the logged in user has access to. Clicking on any menu item will take the user directly to that application's Home Page as well as update the application-specific menus along the top of page next to the Core icon. This drop down list acts as a shortcut for navigation between applications so you don’t have to navigate to the System Home page to switch between applications using the tiles.
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7. Quick Find
1) Scan/type the barcode OR enter the record name (case sensitive)
2) Click on the Magnifying Glass to start the search
3) The desired record will be opened in the center pane
The Quick Find tool is located in the upper right screen of all pages within the LIMS. The easiest way to use it is to type or scan a barcode of a record into the text box and click on the magnifying glass icon to initiate the search! Since the search should only find one match, it will automatically take the user directly to the record. If your record has a different name than the barcode, you can also use that name to find the record. Please be aware that a name search is case sensitive by default.
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8. Help Menu Browse the Table of Contents
Tip: Use the Search to find help content
Located in the far upper right corner of every page
Access to Online Documentation and submitting support tickets (for LIMS administrators)
The Help Menus are next.
There is a Help question mark icon located in the upper right corner of every page. If you open the pull down menu underneath the icon, there is a link to the Online documentation. Within the documentation you can search for a specific character string, or you can browse for a topic using the Table of Contents.
On some pages there may be alternative ways to access the online documentation. There may be gadgets that contain links to key documentation or supporting tutorials in a dashboard page. Some pages also contain orange question marks that can be clicked on to take you directly into the help documentation for additional help with the activity currently being performed.
The Help menu also contains a link to the online support login, allowing Administrators to log into the Customer Support help Center to submit a support issue. New customers will get access to this system after their initial development phase of the project.
The third Help menu item will provide specific information in regards to the version and build of CORE that the user is running. If you are in a multi-tenant environment, the name of the account is specified here.
Orange question mark icons on pages also open documentation
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9. User Menu
Located in the upper right corner of every page near Help menu
Can logout here or close your Web Browser
Access to My Account page – this is your Employee Details page, but has some features of interest to you
Admins only will have shortcut to Main Administration Panel page
The User Menu is located just to the left of the Help Menu, underneath the Headshot icon.
The user menu contains a menu to Logout. If you close your web browser, the system will eventually automatically log you out, but you will be logged out faster if you specifically click on the logout menu. This is most important to customers who are using a concurrent license model and want to free up the license for the next user sooner.
The My Account menu option provides the user with access to their own user record, so they can make changes to their employee record if needed. Don’t worry – users can’t change their permissions, but they can change their password here. We will look at this page in greater detail shortly.
If the user is an Administrator, the User menu will also contain a link to the Main Admin Panel. The Main Admin Panel is where much of the LIMS Configuration is done, and is therefore restricted to Administrators only.
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10. My Account Page Shows Page Elements
Title tells you where you are in the system
Main tool bar
Record identifiers
Barcode
Links to related pages or reports are customizable
Data for the record
General attributes (common to all records) are in the top Details section
Attributes (data fields) that are specific to a record type are listed in below
Clicking on the My Account link from the User Menu will bring the user to their user record which is called an Employee Details page. This page will allow the user to change their password (unless passwords are set up to be managed by an external LDAP system). Users will not be allowed to edit their own user permissions.
This page also is a good example record that demonstrates the basic features of most pages within CORE. It includes the page title and a main tool bar where the user can perform common operations on the record. We will look at the tool bar in more detail in a minute.
Fields that are common to all records will be in the top Details section. Every record in the LIMS will have a unique name and a unique barcode. Often the name and the barcode are the same, but they can be different. You can edit the name after a record is created, but you can’t edit a barcode later. You can use your own external barcodes if needed. All records will be assigned 1 or more projects.
Data fields that are specific to that record type will be listed below in the Attributes section. These fields can be configured by your administrator.
The page also will contain functions. Functions can be configured by your administrator and will change depending upon what type of record it is. Typically functions are links to reports or pages with specific functionality. These can be configured as a drop down list as shown on this page. "My Experiments" "My Assays" or "My Samples" are functions specific for employee records. Functions may also be configured to be buttons instead of menus.
When you first navigate to a page it will be in a read only view and you cannot modify the data. A user can go into an edit mode at any time to edit the data that they have permission to edit using the Edit icon on the main tool bar.
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11. More Common Page Elements
Associations are links to other existing records
Each association can be expanded to view the data from the linked records
Sliding to the bottom of the Employee Details Page, you will find the Associations section. This is a very common page element of many pages within CORE. Associations are links to other common records in the system. Associated records will be grouped together by record type in panels that can be collapsed or expanded using the arrows at the right of the panel. You can view a summary of the data of the linked record in the table or you can click on a hyperlink to view the linked record directly.
At the bottom of every record is the Events section. When expanded, this will show the user a historic list of activities on that specific record: this is typically the date it was created, and then any edits from that day forward. Other key events such as when an experiment is published or unpublished or when objects are moved are also displayed here. The user who performed the action and the time it happened is also recorded. This is a great way to view the history of a record.
Record history in Events section
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12. Main Tool Bar
Edit – will unlock the editable fields for editing (if you have permission)
Search – will open a search page with fields that are relevant to the type of object you are viewing
Files – view or attach any type of electronic document related to the record; it will be colored red and list a number if there are currently files attached to the record
ELN – links record to an electronic laboratory notebook
Copy – quick way to pre-populate a new record with similar data to reduce data entry effort (not supported for all record types)
Locate – shows the location history of the record; most useful for record types that you want to track the location for (like containers)
Moving our focus back to the top of the page, let’s take a look at the specific functions within the main tool bar. The main tool bar allows the user to perform basic activities on a record.
The left and right arrow icons allow the user to browse to the next or previous active records of that record type.
The pencil icon is an Edit button that switches the record from a view only mode into an editable form so the user can update the data.
The magnifying glass icon is a Search button will open a search page with query fields that are relevant to the type of object you are viewing.
The paper clip icon is a Files button that will allow you to view or attach any type of document that might be relevant to that record. If there are any files attached, an Orange number will display the number of files currently attached to that record at that time.
The page icon represents the Electronic Notebook button and allows the user to link the record to an electronic laboratory notebook.
The Copy button provides a quick way to pre-populate a newly created record with similar data. This operation is not supported for all record types, but it will be grayed out if you cannot use it on the current record.
The locate button will show the location history of the record; which is most useful for tracking things like containers. Note that although it has the same icon as the Location menu in the Quick Find Tool, it has a different function when it is called from the main tool bar.
The speech bubble icon is a Comments button. You can click on this button to view all current comments and add new ones. The adjacent number indicates the number of comments currently attached to this record.
The eye icon is the Follow icon. This icon is only on Employee records and allows any user to follow that employee so that they can view the activities of that employee in the Updates tab on their system home page as we saw earlier in the lesson. To follow an employee, click on the button and the number will increment by one to show the total number of users following this employee. Click on the follow button again to turn it off.
On every other record type beside employee records, there is a heart icon in this position in the main tool bar. This is the “like” button where users can bookmark records that they want to see displayed in their Favorites tab on the System Home page. Click on the button to turn it on and click a second time to remove the bookmark.
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13. Smart Table is Powerfully Interactive
The Smart Table is a common element used in many places in the system:
List All Menus
Returns from queries
Associations in Details pages
Reports
Columns can be reordered by dragging and dropping or hidden entirely
Data can be filtered on the fly to focus on key records
Use control or shift keys to highlight rows that can be sent to List Functions pages so that you can perform actions on a set of records
There is one last important common navigation element to identify. This is the Smart Table. A Smart Table is a common element used on many pages in the system where the system needs to return a list of items to the user. Smart tables are used to display data whenever a "List All" menu is selected or a query is returned. We saw an example of a Smart table in the associations section of an employee details page. Smart tables are also common in reports. Smart Tables are very powerful as they allow the user to dynamically sort the table, filter the table, hide columns, move columns and select specific rows from the table to pass on to other functions in CORE. These pages will be a major focus in upcoming chapters and will be discussed in great detail later.
This concludes a brief tutorial introducing you to the basic system navigation and properties of the CORE LIMS system. Completion of this lesson should get you started navigating comfortably around the LIMS on your own. More tutorials are available on many specific topics should you be interested in a specific CORE feature. Please feel free to go back through any of the information within this tutorial if you feel you are not comfortable with this lesson, otherwise please take the time to look at some additional tutorials available.
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