Release notes Lab Management 1.5 (September 14, 2021)

General

FastFinder Workflow 1.4 adds support for front-end order interfaces with LIMS systems. This will enable your laboratory to direct samples across your different workflows efficiently. Furthermore, workflows with varying PCR plate layouts can now be tracked by Workflow. FastFinder Analysis 4.5 and Lab management 1.5 bring automated quality control features that allow you to scale up QC across your assays. In addition, features are introduced to manage your analyses efficiently by assigning, labeling and discarding analyses. We’re bringing key laboratory metrics, team metrics & workflow metrics inside FastFinder. With this release, Insights will be available right where all your laboratory work happens.

As always, it is feedback from you that informs our roadmap, and allows us to keep improving FastFinder, so we want to thank you for your continued suggestions. Don’t hesitate to let us know how we can improve FastFinder even further.

For the specific release notes for Analysis 4.5/WorkFlow 1.4, see (link)

Lab management 1.5.3 (July 12, 2021)

Bug fix

Lab management 1.5.2 (July 2, 2021)

New features

With the addition of automated quality control evaluation within an analysis, you can now access settings to configure your Westgard rules. Changes in these settings are audit logged and can only be made by users having the Admin role.

The Quality Control module itself is extended to reflect the confirmed Westgard violations in Levey-Jennings charts. In addition, you can now configure your QC tracking per instrument or per instrument type. The Analysis results export can also be extended to output new fields related to the quality control evaluation, see (link).

A new Analysis results CSV configurator is also available in the Settings. You now have control over which fields should be exported and in which order, and when an analysis is authorized. By default, new fields are disabled so that the Analysis results CSV remains unaltered after a FastFinder platform update. Changes in these settings are audit logged and can only be made by users having the Admin role.

The new Orders module enables connecting with the lab’s LIMS to import order information in FastFinder (see link to specific page). The imported Order information is used by FastFinder to drive the assays executed on the samples that enter the lab.

To support the assignment of orders to specific workflows, it is now possible to configure the compatible sample type and assay combinations for workflows with dynamic assay assignment.

Improvements

• Dashboard shows open analyses that are assigned to you, as well the applicable labels
• Levey-Jennings charts visualize metric values on the y-axis
• Changes in automatic authorization settings are audit logged
• When there are multiple cyclers in the PCR tab of Assays, the active ones are shown first
• Graph improvements:
• For amplification graphs, it is now possible to color the curves according to target
• an autoscale button is available for the selected curves or points
• When zooming in, the x-axis is fixed for amplification graphs
• Cq values can be visualized in the amplification graphs (see Graph settings icon)
• Plate improvements: the plate selection toolbox is extended to easily select rows, columns and quadrants on a plate 
• When configuring the PCR setup step, controls and samples can only be assigned to valid positions as configured in the workflow
• The workflow setup shows for each workflow step the used instrument and fixed control positions 
• Maximum of 3 workflows are shown in the FastFinder dashboard