Welcome to the 4th 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 April and May 2024.
Notebook
Benchling Notebook helps users log their experiments, create protocols, and capture results against their samples.
Enhanced table mapping sources [2024.4.N.1]
Users can now use Lookup tables as a source for table mapping. If a table is designated as a source, a Submit button displays.
Lockable tables in templates [2024.4.N.2]
Users can now lock tables in templates to prevent row additions in entries. Users can still populate existing rows using all existing methods, like adding from structured tables, copy/pasting, etc.
Molecular Biology
Benchling’s Molecular Biology is a cutting-edge in silico design tool that supports the latest scientific workflows.
Auto-rotation in DNA alignments [2024.4.MB.1]
Users no longer need to manually reindex plasmid templates. Alignments now automatically rotate reads and templates when aligning against circular DNA sequences.
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.
Scan to move containers into a box or plate [2024.4.RI.1]
Users can now scan containers into their next position within a box or matrix plate grid. After submitting, containers move from their previous destination to their new destination position within the grid.
Access Management
Access Management is the way customers control who is able to access which resources, and includes things like project permissions, access policies, and admin roles.
Updated access policies [2024.4.AM.1]
Users can now manage collaborators and edit project settings separately. The access policy "Edit project settings & manage collaborators" has been divided into two new access policies: "Manage collaborators" and "Edit project settings." Existing access levels from the original access policy are preserved in both new access policies.
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.
Per-user opt-out preferences for emails [2024.4.AC.1]
Individual users can now choose to opt out of organization membership event emails, Workflows task assignment and status change emails, and Study event emails.
Removed placeholder warnings for empty fields or spaces in config migration [2024.4.AC.2]
Users can now proceed with configuration migrations without warnings displaying for seemingly empty fields, as placeholder warnings have been removed.
Added Connection schemas and Request schemas to Tenant Migration report [2024.4.AC.3]
Users can now find Connection schemas and Request schemas in the Tenant Migration report, providing full visibility post-migration.
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.
Maximum connection limits for warehouse [2024.4.DP.1]
A maximum connection limit is now set for the warehouse to ensure availability for all users. This prevents a single user from consuming all connections.
Bug Fixes
Workflows
1. Fixed a bug preventing users from sending an entry for review when the outputs table was empty and tasks were in terminal states.
2. Fixed a bug preventing users from editing the status of tasks in the output submission confirmation modal.
3. Fixed a bug where live updates might not update the UI for every change when mapping a large number of tasks from one node to another.
4. Fixed a bug where icons were getting cut off in flowcharts.
5. Fixed a bug where users could not update the task group's folder via API.
In Vivo
6. Fixed a bug where the incorrect number of animals was displayed for conditional tasks based on the tracking date.
7. Fixed a bug when cloning studies using treatments with dose units that were not mg/kg.
App Ecosystem
8. Fixed a bug where users could not upload an app manifest that contained secure text.
Registry
9. Fixed a bug where updating the registry ID of an entity returned an error due to a bad entity state. The alias, name, and registry ID all shared the same name, causing the error.
Data Interfaces
10. Fixed an issue where the Warehouse sync process for Workflows would not trigger when organizations were updated, leaving the Warehouse out of sync until integrity checks updated the tables.
Search
11. Fixed an issue where the type filter submenu would not close upon clicking, as expected.
Application Core
12. Closed a config migration auditing gap for updating workflows names, warehouse names, and flowchart configurations.
13. Closed a config migration auditing gap for schemas related to updating the name, prefix, icon, warehouse name, container name template, embedded SQL dashboards, and the "allow insert run from inbox" setting.
14. Closed a config migration auditing gap for templates and sub-templates related to their creation, template collection updates, and name updates.
15. Fixed a config migration bug caused by a race condition during upload.
Access Management
16. Fixed an issue where the owner access level of schema collaborators could not be changed.
17. Removed "handle" from Teams API documentation since it was never part of the actual API.
Data Input
18. Fixed an issue where using formulas to pass values from a custom column of date/time to a schema field of date/time resulted in a data type mismatch error.
19. Fixed an issue where the "Add from structured table" feature did not support the Source Well column in inventory tables.
20. Fixed a bug where users could quickly click "Submit" on a result table twice, creating duplicate results.
21. Fixed an issue where "Paste Special" was not working for merged cells.