Benchling is excited to introduce two releases designed to further enhance your compliance posture and data integrity. First, our Enhanced Review Records now generate clearer, more robust e-signature exports, providing auditors with key signature metadata, and providing a clear delineation between review details and scientific content. Additionally, a new safeguard called Irreversible Versions has been introduced to protect against broken data lineages by making notebook versions irreversible after data has been submitted, ensuring that results always trace back to their origin. Both features are designed to make critical data, from formal sign-offs to results data, more robust and easier to trace. Please note: these features are opt-in; please reach out to Benchling Support to enable these features on your tenants.
Introducing: Enhanced Review Records
We are excited to announce Enhanced Review Records, a new feature that significantly improves the formatting and metadata of review exports and histories in Benchling. These enhancements are designed to align our review documentation with the rigorous expectations of our enterprise customers operating in validated and regulated environments.
This is an opt-in feature. Please contact your Benchling representative or Benchling Support to have it enabled for your tenant.
Key Improvements
This feature addresses critical customer feedback to help you generate clear, complete, and traceable review records for GxP and other work.
Structured, point-in-time reviewer metadata: At the moment of review or electronic signature, the system now captures additional reviewer details, such as user name and e-mail. This creates a more robust and traceable record that allows auditors to confirm exactly who signed what and when.
Improved review history layout: We have updated the visual layout to clearly separate review signatures and history from the scientific content of the document. This distinction makes it evident that a formal e-signature event has occurred, aligning with regulatory expectations and improving the user experience.
How It Works
To ensure record consistency and prevent audit confusion, the Enhanced Review Records feature is applied based on when a review is initiated in relation to feature enablement.
New Reviews: Only entries and worksheets that have reviews initiated after this feature is enabled will use the new enhanced format.
In-Progress Reviews: Entries that are already in the review process when the feature is enabled will continue to use the historical export format, even if the review is completed or exported after the feature is turned on.
Historical Records: Benchling will not retroactively alter or backfill any historical review records that were completed before this feature was enabled. This preserves the integrity of your existing records.
Who Benefits From This Feature?
QA and Compliance Reviewers: Gain confidence in the integrity and traceability of signed review records.
Regulatory Auditors: Can easily find formal e-signature records presented separately from the editable scientific content, meeting their expectations for formal record-keeping.
Introducing: Irreversible Entry Versions
To enhance data integrity and ensure a robust traceability across the platform, we have released a new feature in Benchling called Irreversible Versions. This feature is intentionally designed as a safeguard to protect the critical link between your submitted data and its source document.
This is an opt-in feature. Please contact your Benchling representative or Benchling Support to have it enabled for your tenant.
Key Improvements
Previously, users were able to revert entries to versions before data submission events causing traceability issues between the data created, and notebook entries where the data originated. This feature was released to eliminate this "orphaned data," enhancing data traceability and compliance posture.
How It Works
Going forward, when you submit data from structured tables (e.g. Results, Registration, or Inventory tables) within a Notebook entry, all versions of that entry prior to the submission will become irreversible. In the version history panel, you will see that the option to "Revert" is disabled for these protected versions, ensuring the historical record of the submission remains intact.
Managing Your Data Within an Entry
This new safeguard protects the entry's version history but does not limit your ability to manage the data within the tables themselves. You retain full control to perform necessary actions on the most current version of your entry, including:
Deleting individual rows within a structured table.
Archiving individual rows within a structured table.
We believe this feature is a significant step in safeguarding your critical data. If you have any questions about this enhancement, please do not hesitate to reach out to Benchling Support.