Results publication. COA

The COAs of the bika.coa add-on

More about the COA formats

Multi Sample COA differentiation

Different ways clients have structured their COAs

Publishing Sample results

Once a Sample has been verified, it is ready for publication to the client contacts from whom it originated

Labmanagers or other users authorised to publish results, can publish COAs for individual Samples, or bulk from all Verified Sample lists, in a Project batch or specific Client's folder

NB Results are never published from worksheets, only form Sample lists or views

Unlike the critical results verification step, publishing can easily be done in batch from the lists. Select the Samples and click the [Publish]

Any number of Samples, for more that one Client, can be selected and the LIMS publishes them separately to the different Clients - they only get their own results

Multi sample COA templates use the sort order from the list the user is Publishing from, left to right or top down by default and can be manipulated on any of the sortable columns

The Client Contacts on the Samples, both primary and cc'd, receive their COAs as PDFs per email and the Samples transition to published  state

They may be re-published from here

Publishing individual Samples

Publishing Samples can also be carried out on individual verified Samples

Open the Sample and click its state drop-down menu, then click Publish

The Samples and its child Analyses advance to published state, the results COA mailed

The user is returned to the Published Sample's view

Publication Preview

The system brings up a preview panel first that renders the COAs for the template selected, and page size, orientation - these can be changed and the preview refreshed before going ahead

COA generated in bika.coa templates

Pushing Save, generates the PDF and saves it on the Published Results tab of the Samples and redirects the user to the Analysis Reports view of the client

The Sample remains in its current state. The Publication state is only obtained by  by sending the email

Pushing Email does the same but leads the user to an Email view

Email Preview

After pressing Email, the LIMS brings up an email template that can still be edited if required, before finally sending it off by pressing Send

Certificates of Analysis. COA

On publication, the system sends the results to the Client Contacts including Contacts configured to be cc'd

Earlier, Print, e-mail, fax, PDF or CSV email attachments, and SMS notifications were available as publication options. The latter, SMS, would see a notification of the published results texted to the Contact, not the results itself

These are slowly being brought back after initially dropped in the move to the new Senaite code base

With print selected, the LIMS will print the results on paper in the lab too. CSV results are delivered as spreadsheet attachments to emails which is handy for clients who wish to import the results into their own 'down stream' systems

The subject lines for results are by default using the LIMS' in-house numbering for Samples and Samples. Subject lines could optionally use the Clients' numbering. This is set up per Client

The results publications, or Certificates of Analysis (COA), resemble the Sample views on-line but often with multiple Samples on the same page. The department manager responsible for the results on the COA has his/her signature and contact details inserted at the bottom of the publication

Online COA. ID

More than one COA may be issued for the same Samples, say for provisional publication of early results and republication when all results are available. For this reason COA’s must have unique IDs to refer to them correctly

COA IDs are generated by including a sequential postfix to the Sample ID

Multiple Samples - As more than one Sample’s results are represented, the Sample ID cannot be used as the root for the COA ID. Though the Samples might belong to the same Batch, that is not always true, and using Batch ID will be wrong

The multi-sample COA gets a simple ID server driven sequential ID that can be configured in the ID server to e.g. a prefix COA followed by the year and sequence number

The COA ID is also used in the actual PDF and CSV's titles, e.g. COA21-0001.pdf, COA21-0001.csv, and also displayed in the Reports listings, per Sample and Client

COA lists

All COAs for an Sample are available to authorised users on its Published results page, in this case as both PDF and CSV

A Client's COAs are not only available from the individual Samples, but a full list of COAs are maintained from the Client's own Analysis Reports page

The COA's, if they were only saved earlier from their preview, can be emailed in bulk form this page (or published)

COA Information

Bi clicking the information icon for an COA in the Analysis Report list, all its relevant information is displayed in a pop-up, including its email log and copy of it

Configuring the COA PDF preferences

Enter the COA configuration page from the cog icon at top right

Select the default COA template to use, its page size  and orientation and footer text to apply

If you want only one email to be sent with all PDFs attached, disable Store PDFS individually else the recipients receives an avalanche of emails, 1 per Sample included in the Publication

Press Save

Publishing QC results

If configured, QC Reference results are included on Sample results reports

Provisional COAs for urgent results

Some analysis methods take longer than others, and it may be necessary for the lab to verify and publish some results on a Sample before others This is done from Sample lists or individual results views too

Results can be published to them provisionally by selecting Prepublish from the buttons on Sample list or state drop-down on their views

The Client receives a COA with the incomplete analyses indicated as due. The COA is clearly indicated as Provisional and each published COA gets a unique ID

Republishing

It sometimes happen that clients lose emailed results. They can then be republished from the list of published Samples or from the Sample itself

Electronic signatures

Title 21 CFR of the Code of Federal Regulations deals with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines on electronic records. Part 11 defines under which criteria electronic records and signatures are considered trustworthy, reliable and equivalent to paper records

ISO 17025 requires a signature but is vague and generally CFR guided practice maintains that users authenticated by secret password are accepted by accreditation bodies as electronically signed

User name and secret password per unique user and auto-logoff of inactive sessions are enough to prove proof of identity