Plate Chain of Custody

Overview
Benchling’s Plate Chain of Custody (CoC) Report is designed to enhance traceability and accountability for customers performing sample management at the plate level. Previously, Chain of Custody capabilities were limited to containers, but with this update, we've extended these capabilities to plates, providing enhanced visibility into the actions and operations performed on wells within a plate.

Product Details
The Plate CoC Report allows you to monitor a range of activities at the plate level. This includes tracking well transfers between plates, plate stamping, and viewing detailed sample information within the wells. The report provides a full audit history for entities placed inside wells, with improved readability. You can also track plate workflow events and other high-level operations.

Key Benefits
The Plate CoC Report delivers several key benefits:

• Enhanced Monitoring: Track plate events such as well transfers, field changes, barcode updates, and parent location changes
• Improved Traceability: Utilize detailed audit trails to verify plate integrity and trace operations from start to finish
• Comprehensive Sample Information: Access detailed insights into sample data within wells, including entity information, updates, and user actions

Feature Details
The Plate CoC Report provides a full history of audit events for entities placed inside the wells of a plate, with improved readability This feature is particularly valuable for sample management users, scientists performing bioanalytical work, and anyone conducting plate-level operations. The Plate CoC Report includes:

• Full audit events for entities, including creation, registration, naming updates, and archival
• Collapsed creation events for wells
• Detailed tracking of transfers and quantities in and out of wells
• Parent location tracking and activity logs
• Hyperlinks for easy navigation of transfers between plates or containers
• Comprehensive logging of workflow events associated with plates and wells

Configuring and Using
The Plate CoC Report is auto-enabled for all CI/CD customers. To generate the report:

1. Navigate to the metadata tab on a plate page
2. Select the export menu option and choose “Export chain of custody - plate history.”

    3. The report will be generated in PDF format by default, with a CSV option available:

A Plate History Report will generate. See example report below:

Report Layout
The report includes the following columns:

• Timestamp (UTC): The time the activity occurred.
• User: The user who performed the action.
• Activity Description: The specific action taken.
• Item: The object on which the action was performed.
• Old Value/New Value: Changes in item values due to the action.
• Inventory Location: The inventory path for the container.
• Document Context: Entry details if the action was performed in a registration table.
• Reason Code/Comment: The rationale and notes associated with data modifications.

Grouping of Events
For all well events, when an entity is transferred into a group of wells within a fixed plate, the actions will be grouped into one line item within the report if the Action, Old Value, and New Value are the same. This grouping applies to any events that occur within the same transaction.
In the "Item(s)" column, the well group will be displayed as a list of grid positions, along with the total number of affected wells.
Example:

Appendix and Hyperlinks
The appendix will contain hyperlinks for transfers into and out of the plate, based on the following logic:

• For transfers out of the plate: The appendix will include the entity description and a hyperlink to the location where the entity was transferred.
• For transfers into the plate: The appendix will provide a hyperlink to the location from which the entity was transferred.

Permissions and Caveats

• Report visibility is based on user permissions. If a user lacks permissions for the item, and the event doesn’t reference the plate or its containers, the message “Some rows have been redacted based on user permissions” will appear. Additionally, if a user lacks ‘Read’ permissions for containers, events referencing the plate or container will display Permission not granted for bfi_123 (i.e. the API ID will be displayed instead of the object name)
• The Inventory Location column is populated only for events where plates or containers are currently on the plate. N/A will be listed for other events.
• API IDs are included in the report if the relevant configuration is set to true.
• Below is a comparison of the Plate Audit Log and Plate CoC Report: