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Labs

BugSeq strives to empower labs with many users to collaborate, share and aggregate data across members and analyses.

Some of the features we offer for labs:

  • Sharing analyses with some or all members of a lab (labs can be set up to automatically share all analyses)
  • Aggregating outbreak information from all analyses submitted within a lab - see outbreak analysis
  • Querying for genomes seen by other members of the lab, and tying those back to specific samples (coming soon)
  • Stay tuned for more features!

Creating a Lab

One user must create the lab. They will be the designated lab manager.

  1. Head over to the Labs section on the left navigation bar:

    Labs Nav

  2. Enter a name for the lab, select a role and click Create

    Labs Create

    Note

    For more about roles, see the roles documentation.

Inviting Members

Once you have a lab set up, you can invite your lab members.

  1. On the Labs page, there will be a section to Invite New Members:

    Labs Invite

  2. Fill in an email address, select a role and click Invite

    Note

    For more about roles, see the roles documentation.

    Note

    The invited user does not yet need to have a BugSeq account, and the email entered does not need to match the email that they use for their BugSeq account.

  3. An email will be sent to the user with instructions to join the lab. If they have not yet registered for BugSeq, it will guide them through that flow and then add them to the lab.

Lab Settings

Data sharing can be configured within a lab to meet the privacy requirements of the lab.

Sharing

Note the setting to automatically share analyses with lab members:

Lab Settings

For labs with this setting enabled, when an analysis completes that was submitted by a member of the lab, all members will be able to access the analysis. Members that have not opted out of emails (see individual settings) will also receive an email notification with a link to access results.

When to use

This configuration is great for labs that work tightly together, where all members should be notified of activity.

If the setting is not enabled, analyses can still be shared. On the analysis results page, you will find the option to manually share the analysis with the entire lab or individual lab members. This mechanism shares a single analysis at a time.

When looking at an analysis, scrolling down will reveal sharing options:

Analysis Sharing

When to use

This configuration is great for labs that analyse high volumes of data and want to flag specific analyses to epidemiologists or lab directors.

Individual Settings

Users can set individual settings for each lab that they are a member of.

Individual Settings

When “Receive an Email When an Analysis is Shared with the Entire Lab” is checked, you will be notified when an analysis is shared with the entire lab. The notification will occur when an analysis completes if “Automatically Share Analyses with Lab Members” is enabled, or if the analysis owner manually shares it with the entire lab on the results page.

You will be notified if a lab member directly shares an analysis with you (instead of, or in addition to sharing with the entire lab). This is not configurable.

Roles

A lab member’s role controls the options and data that are available to them.

A lab member’s role is determined when they are invited to the lab.

All lab members will show up as part of a lab. If the lab has automated sharing enabled, all members will gain access to new analyses as they complete. An analysis owner can also manually choose to share analyses with any lab member of any lab the analysis owner is a member of.

The two main roles are:

  1. Submitter

    A Submitter can submit data for analysis. This is an ideal role for most members of most labs.

    Note that if a user is a Submitter in multiple labs, they will need to select which lab’s data repository to use when submitting data:

    Lab Selection

    This informs BugSeq of which data repository to use for outbreak analysis, wastewater analysis, and other types of analysis that aggregate data across analyses from the same lab.

    Tip: Members should be a submitter of only one lab

    We recommend that most users only be a Submitter in one lab. Being a Submitter in one lab means that the member does not need to choose which lab to submit data under when submitting data for analysis. This reduces complexity and possibility of error.

  2. Reviewer

    A Reviewer can access shared analysis data but cannot submit data for analysis. This is an ideal role for supervisors, epidemiologists and other members that need broad read-only access.


Last update: October 31, 2023