As an institution composed of many different laboratories, the information collected is held only by the laboratory concerned. However, it may be necessary to share some data for a better operation. Each laboratory has its own database and therefore its own LIMS LabCollector instance. Choose now to share data between several laboratories and therefore between several LabCollector instances thanks to the new Lab Cross Search tool!
Discover now this LabCollector search engine!
What is Lab Cross Search?
Lab Cross Search acts like a regular search engine. Simply type in your query and get the results that can be found in all the target instances. This tool allows you to:
- Search simultaneously in all LabCollector instances connected to it.
- Search any record from default or custom modules.
- Search across instances hosted on the same or different servers.
How it works?
Lab Cross Search offers the ability to manage multiple data privacy options through its Admin portal. Users have access to a specific user portal.
It is also possible to integrate Lab Cross Search directly into a website.
Admin portal
Admin portalThe administration portal allows you to manage instances, users and to define the privacy of the data of the modules or fields.
In this administration portal you can:
- Perform searches: the search bar is directly accessible from the portal home page.
- Manage users: in the settings section you can manage the users who will be Admin. These users will be able to access the administration portal and manage other settings.
- Instances: in this section you can connect all the instances you need. Once an instance is connected, you can choose which module and field will be searchable and visible to others.
Alternatively, you can hide specific records directly from the instance by creating a custom field “hide_from_cross_search” in the module of interest and activate it by setting YES or NO.
User portal
On this portal, only the search bar is available and allows users to search for their requests in all instances that are connected.
How to search?
Searches are performed by typing the text you want to search, and the following search rules are applied:
- Searches are only possible for plain text and not for selective fields such as checkboxes or multiple choices present in the target instance.
- The searched text can be included in another text (e.g. the search for “TEXT” can return a record containing “theTEXToftheexample”).
- Searching by adding different words (e.g. “my search text”) will take into account the spaces between the search words and will search for the exact phrase.
- Additional spaces before and after your search text will not be taken into account.
- Searching for two words (e.g. “test,text”) separated by a comma will search for the first word OR the second word (test OR text) in the records.
- Combining words and phrases separated by commas is possible.
- The search result will display all records containing your search, sorted by instance and module.
Integrate Lab Cross Search into your website
To make Lab Cross Search easier to use for all users, you can integrate the search interface directly into your website.
The integration requires adding a code directly into the HTML code of your page (read our Manual).
Once integrated, all the people visiting this page can search for data just like with a simple search engine.
Enjoy the LabCollector search engine for multiple instances
Lab Cross Search is the new search engine for LabCollector! Easily share information between different labs and instances. But keep important data inaccessible to others directly from the Lab Cross Search platform or from the LabCollector instance.
