Welcome to the first volume of our 2024 product release notes! We’ve been working hard to bring you performance improvements that add value to your work. Read on to learn about the product enhancements and bug fixes released in January 2024.
Notebook
Benchling Notebook helps users log their experiments, create protocols, and capture results against their samples.
Updates to table refresh [2024.1.N.1]
When refreshing a table, submitted rows are replaced with the object data that already exists in the backend.
For example, if a user registers Plasmid 123 in a Registration table and clicks Refresh, the row containing data for Plasmid 123 is cleared and replaced with the data in the Registry for Plasmid 123.
Frozen chips [2024.1.N.2]
Users can now freeze entry chips so they no longer live fetch updates made to entities referenced in an entry after the entry is locked in the In review and Accepted review stages.
INTERCEPT() table function [2024.1.N.3]
Users can now use the INTERCEPT function in the notebook. To view this function’s syntax, visit Microsoft’s help center.
SLOPE() table function [2024.1.N.4]
Users can use the SLOPE function in the notebook. To view the function’s syntax, visit Microsoft’s help center.
Molecular Biology
Benchling’s Molecular Biology is a cutting-edge in silico design tool that supports the latest scientific workflows.
New organism supported in codon optimization [2024.1MB.1]
Plasmodium falciparum codon usage table now available for use in codon optimization.
New RNA sequences match-bases and search-bases endpoints [2024.1.MB.2]
Users can now use 2 new RNA sequences list endpoints: match-bases and search-bases.
In Vivo
Manage in vivo studies with modern software designed for data capture, collaboration, and insights.
Study design cloning [2024.1.IV.1]
Users can now reuse previous study designs to streamline the design of new studies. Cloning a study populates the relevant sections of a draft form for your next study. Users can then make required changes before submitting for approval.
Add study metadata after a study is created [2024.1.IV.2]
Users with Write permissions to a study can now add new metadata fields from the study settings.
Edit animal details from study [2024.1.IV.3]
Users can now edit animal details, including sex, DOB, species, strain and metadata, in a tabular interface from the study animals table.
Registry and Inventory
The Registry and Inventory combine to form an extremely powerful solution for life sciences R&D samples. The Registry can be used to model and log any biological entities while the Inventory provides an interactive digital window into the physical storage system of your lab.
Enable selecting and deselecting samples for inventory shortcuts in workflows [2024.1.RI.1]
Users can now select or deselect containers in the table to take an action on. Previously, users had to take an action on all containers in a workflow task table.
Audit label printing with Zebra printing [2024.1.RI.2]
Users can now view when labels are printed with Zebra Print in audit logs. Previously, when printing labels for container, box, and plate barcodes using Zebra Browser Print, these events weren’t tracked in audit logs.
Support selecting and deselecting samples when conducting an action via workflow shortcuts [2024.1.RI.3]
Users can now deselect containers within inventory shortcuts from a workflow task table and not commit an action on deselected containers.
Insights
Insights enables users to query, visualize, and share high-quality, structured data that resides in Benchling.
Renamed "Datasets" to "Analysis Tables" in the UI [2024.1.IN.1]
"Datasets" was renamed to "Analysis Tables" but functionality didn’t change.
Updated Insights dashboard axes scientific notation behavior [2024.1.IN.2]
Users can now view the raw value of a data point in non-scientific notation in the tooltip that displays when hovering over a tooltip. The y-axis now only starts converting numbers to scientific notation at 1e-3.
Updated PersistedDataFrame to "data frame" in audit logs [2024.1.IN.3]
"PersistedDataFrame" in audit logs have been updated to "data frame". Audit logs have been backfilled to display the updated naming.
Published JMP Add-in version 1.2 [2024.1.IN.4]
Updates include:
- Include file and filename for file POST requests
- Migrate to /data-frames endpoints
- Efficiency improvements for data uploads
Benchling Connect
Benchling Connect, formerly Lab Automation, enables seamless integration of Benchling to liquid handlers, plate readers, imaging instruments, and more.
Update to Molecular Devices, SoftMax Pro adapter [2024.1.BC.1]
Processing data exported from Molecular Devices SoftMax Pro (SMP) plate reader software is now supported, which contains either measurements from multiple plates or "group data" from experimental groups as specified in SMP.
Release of Chemometec, NucleoView adapter [2024.1.BC.2]
Processing data exported from Chemometec NucleoView cell counter software is now supported, which includes handling of data from cell counter models such as the NC-200.
To enable this feature, contact a Benchling representative.
Release of Unchained Labs, Lunatic adapter [2024.1.BC.3]
Processing data exported from Unchained Labs Luntic & Stunner Analysis software is now supported for results generated with the Lunatic plate reader. Processing results from Stunner instruments aret not supported at this time.
To enable this feature, contact a Benchling representative.
Add to Analysis button on Result tables embedded in runs [2024.1.BC.4]
Users can now use the Add to Analysis button in Result tables embedded in runs.
To enable this feature, contact a Benchling representative.
Application Core
To create a seamless Benchling experience, our platform must be consistent, compliant and predictable. The Application Core provides the central capabilities platform to create a smoother user experience.
Owner added as an optional filter in global search secondary filters [2024.1.AC.1]
Users can now filter certain types, like projects or template collections, by the owner of those types. Secondary filtering by owner is not supported for every type.
Compliance Controls
With Compliance Controls, gathering required information for compliance is simple, intuitive, and performant. The team’s primary focus is on our auditing platform but we also own exporting and archiving.
Notebook entry context for audit trails [2024.1.CC.1]
The "Parent Item X" column in structured table audit trails now displays notebook entry context whenever a storable item, like a plate or container, gets created via a structured table within a notebook entry. This is to help provide traceability into the audit logs of the originating entry source of storable data.
Developer Platform
Our developer platform is fundamental to centralizing and standardizing all your R&D data. Benchling’s APIs and Events are built to match the flexibility and speed of modern life science R&D.
Enable app manifest upload without webhook URL [2024.1.DP.1]
Uploading a Benchling App manifest now no longer requires a webhook URL to be present in the manifest file. Instead, a warning displays when an app does not have a URL specified.
New column in user export file for “API Key Created” [2024.1.DP.2]
API key creation and rotation time are now available to the users export in the admin console. This enables customer admins to more easily inspect all users for stale keys that should be rotated.
Added createdAt and modifiedAt timestamps to Workflows APIs [2024.1.DP.3]
Users can now use createdAt and modifiedAt timestamps to all Workflows APIs.
Bug Fixes
Compliance Controls
1.The ability to export audit logs is now always enabled throughout the UI, regardless of previous configurations.
In Vivo
2. Fixed a bug where the user was unable to move more than one cage to another study at the same time.
3. Resolved an issue where incorrect validation was displayed when editing samples with select metadata fields.
4. Bug fixed where cages could be deleted while animals were still inside them.
Results
5. Legacy results tables can no longer be archived to prevent unintended changes to entries containing them.
Data Input
6. Users could edit archived rows of tables by dragging data down from the column above it, leaving incorrect data in the table without a way to correct it.
7. Fixed an issue where duplicative selectors were created when copying tables from entries to templates that had selectors.
8. Fixed an issue where table headers would cover the selected cell during certain interactions.
Inventory
9. Submitting invalid data in the "Fill plates" table now displays a helpful error message instead of breaking the entire entry.
Access Management
10. Updated the sign-in checkbox text to "Sign me out when browser is closed" to clarify its behavior.
Workflows
11. Fixed an issue where the output-samples API for legacy workflows was incorrectly returning input samples instead of output samples.
12. Fixed an issue where API endpoints for Workflow Tasks and Outputs were returning a blank web URL instead of the correct URL.
13. Tasks can now be properly archived from the Task Details page.
14. Fixed an issue where downstream nodes from a Router in the workflow graph were not required to connect to a merge point as expected.
Registry
15. Fixed a bug where the "Archive entities" button in the registration table failed to unregister entities.
Search
16. Fixed a bug where users were unable to export all rows when using the "group by" feature in search.
Application Core
17. Fixed an issue where config migration failed unexpectedly when updating a field that a computed field depends on.
18. Fixed a bug where templates were incorrectly default mapped in config migration.
19. Fixed a bug where execution templates displayed on the wrong page during config migration.
Molecular Biology
20. Fixed a bug where the bulk assembly sequence tree search errored if the search returned a new folder.
21. Fixed a bug where typing into an RNA alignment row did not support "U" characters.
22. Fixed a bug where sequences from the Addgene vector database could not be imported.
Connect
23. Fixed an issue with NovaBio Flex 2 where ASM resulting columns and schema columns did not align correctly.
24. Fixed a bug where the "Remove Extra Headers" and "Footers" run transforms were incorrectly interpreting 0 as FALSE.