Release Notes: Volume VIII, 2021

Aarthi
Aarthi
  • Updated

Welcome to the eighth volume of our 2021 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 July 2021 - August 2021.

Molecular Biology

Benchling’s Molecular Biology is a cutting edge in silico design tool that supports the latest scientific workflows

Modified oligos can be filtered by monomer

Users can refine modified oligo searches by applying a monomer filter.

Template alignments include per-row statistics

Users can now view per-row statistics (length, mismatches, and pairwise identity) on template alignments on the left side of the sequence.

Genbank file imports create translation groups from Coding Domain Sequence (CDS) annotations

Translation Groups from CDS annotations will now be extracted from Genbank file imports. This allows users to immediately create an AA sequence from the entire translation group, creating the protein sequence equivalent that the gene encodes for.

Notebook

Benchling Notebook allows users to log their experiments, create protocols, and capture results against their samples.

Fill-in templates

Admins can create fill-in templates, locked entries that allow for structured data entry.

In fill-in templates, users can:

  • Enter table data for unlocked columns

  • Check checkboxes

  • Upload a file

Outside of these actions, users can not add, modify, or delete information or data within the template.

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Column locking

Table columns can be locked within any template in the column header dropdown menu. This prevents edits or changes being made to them.

Red asterisk for required fields in structured tables

Column headers in structured tables now display red asterisks to indicate required fields.

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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.

Removed “container contents” search filter

Users will no longer be able to apply the “container contents” filter on their inventory searches. This functionality will be removed because it will not be compatible with upcoming, faster search infrastructure improvements. The currently available global search capability solves for this need. Users can use global search, then click the Inventory column to search for container contents. This functionality will be discontinued on September 7th, 2021.

 

Application Platform

Create a blank entry in the Create menu with one click

Users can now create a blank entry in the Create menu by clicking the Entry folder, instead of hovering over the Entry submenu and clicking Blank Entry.

New feature settings menu option

Users can now access Molecular Biology Settings and Feature Settings by clicking the options in the settings menu.

Project pagination

The project page will now be paginated with the default set to 25 projects per page. Users can adjust the number of projects set per page and apply two new filters (project ownership and project status).

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Copy links to projects and folders from settings

Users can now copy project and folder links in the settings dropdown menu to share these items.

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Schemas

New Interface for managing results schemas

The UI for the result schema editor is now in line with the entity schema editor. To access the new results schema UI, please contact support@benchling.com.

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Insights

Linear regressions

All users can now perform linear regression on scatter plot chart types. The equation and R^2 value display in the upper-right corner.

Lab Automation

Benchling for Lab Automation enables seamless integration of Benchling with liquid handlers, plate readers, imaging instruments, and more.

Hide archived results tables on runs

Archived results tables are now hidden on runs.

Process samples and results in one output step

Users can choose to add results to the registration and transformation transfer bulk adapters. This changes logic that assumes there are only output samples or results, but not both.

Audit logs for Lab Automation

Users can now export audit logs for runs (but not run config changes). Audit logs contain:

  • Action category

  • Action

  • Description

  • Item

  • Item type

  • Related item

  • Timestamp

  • User

Developer Platform

Mixtures APIs

Users can now access Mixtures APIs via the public API.

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DNA alignment API responses include the API ID of the reference sequence

API calls for DNA alignments now expose the API ID of the reference sequence for template or consensus sequence alignments.

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Additional descriptions on naming strategies in API docs

Benchling API docs now include a more detailed description on naming strategies.

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SchemaId added to filter on entry list endpoint

SchemaId is supported in the endpoint and is now documented.

Updating entity authors

Bulk update endpoints now support updating custom entity authors.

Display IDs filter for listing entries in the API

There is now a displayIds filter for listing entries in the API.

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API keys hidden on user settings page

API keys are now hidden on the user settings page to allow for screenshots and screen sharing without exposing sensitive information. Users can now also copy API keys to their clipboard and turn viewing on and off.

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API support for clearing input files on Lab Automation run

There is now external API/Capillary support to clear an automation input processor file from a run, mimicking the UI behavior of clicking the X symbol.

Bug Fixes

The following bugs were fixed in this release:

Notebook

  • Dropdown options with commas were not matching upon spreadsheet imports for structure tables. The string resolution for single select dropdown options with commas now allows for proper matching between the spreadsheet and the dropdown option found within structured tables.

  • Column width now defaults to include new data type icons

Lab Automation

  • The “generate” and “process” buttons will no longer be re-enabled when switching tabs while a lab auto run is processing.

Application Platform

  • When a user changed their name, it reverted back to the original version, so we now block users from changing their name.

  • Password reset links didn’t expire after a user updated their email address. Now when a user updates their email, all reset tokens are revoked. We also removed the username from the password reset copy.

  • Saved sort with relevance sort no longer overrides save search with a query.

  • There are now sorting arrows in column headers for Workflows.

Developer Platform

  • There is no longer 500 error when filtering via schema fields on custom entities.

  • Ids and barcodes filters with empty values no longer cause a 500 error.

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