What happened?

Benchling recently identified a product limitation that may have affected customers reporting of data within Tables of Notebook Entries. Floating point values computed via spreadsheet formula could have been rounded and reported as 0 when the value was ~±10⁹ or below. After the value was  calculated and stored within the table, the rounded-down value would persist throughout Benchling.

Additional Context

Benchling has traditionally displayed rounded or truncated values defined by the organization admin settings within the Benchling tables. The display and storage of data has been improved in a recent product update in February of 2023 to store the entire value even if precision is not required. The recent updates improved display and storage of the complete values, adhering to the configured precision. Before the update, Benchling observed the behavior of rounding to 0 when a value was ~±10⁹ or below. This issue could only be observed under the following circumstances; 

• The data must be in table cells and the table type must support spreadsheet formulas.
• The data must be the output of a formula (not entered directly) and the formula must have at least one arithmetic operation.
• The leftmost numerical operand of the formula must be formatted in decimal notation.
• The output value must be less than ±1e-10 to be truncated to zero.

As of February 6, 2023 Benchling has proactively implemented product update which prevents this issue from occurring  Any data input prior to the product update that met all the conditions above  could have been impacted and rounded to 0. 

How to contact Benchling?

If you have any questions or need additional information about this notice please contact Benchling at support@benchling.com or reach out directly to your designated Customer Success Representative.

Thank you for your continued support!