Document Management & Version Control in Bika LIMS

Ideal for accreditation administration, SOP and Method development. In private project teams in edit, review, reiterate, publish workflows

Use Case

In this tutorial we'll set up the folder structure required for accreditation, manage a document and link it to records in the LIMS

Overview

Controlled documents like SOPs, policies, plans, reviews etc. are managed in the DMS

Analytical Records results, QC, environmental conditions, are dynamically managed in the LIMS

DMS pages link into the LIMS where applicable, and data are never duplicated

In this tutorial, we'll look at Environmental Condition Records as example in the Facilities and Environment section of the Quality Management System

There are more ways to to manage the DMS, we only to demonstrate the core principles here

Manual, Document Management System

Folder Structure

Any good AI search engine will produce a top level folder schema for ISO 17025 accreditation, e.g from Grok:

── 0 Quality Management System

│ ├── Quality Manual

│ ├── Quality Policy and Objectives

│ ├── Organization Chart and Responsibilities

│ ├── Scope of Accreditation

│ └── Master Document List

│

├── 1 Management Requirements

│ ├── Document Control

│ ├── Record Control and Retention

│ ├── ...

More... the full schema

Setting up the folder structure

Assuming that we start with an empty site, we create the folder structure for our documents first

First will be the main accreditation folder, ISO 17025 Quality Management System, to be created in the root of the site.

Logged in as admin navigate to the frontpage of the site and click Add new... -> Folder

On the subsequent form, capture the page title and description

Press [Save]

The folder is created and added to the top level menu. It is rendered in rCreated as it is still in Private state

Create the Subfolders in the same fashion

Create a Page

Next we'll create a folder front Page, where we'll have a page more friendly than the default folder view at right here

In the Facilities and Environment folder where the page must reside, click Add new... -> Page

Plone offers a full array of through the web editing tool. It does not do colour, striving for neat and lean looking sites

Lay your page out with the desired text and format them to your liking. Here we highlight the Refrigerator Temperature item as we are going to link that to the corresponding control chart in the LIMS

Folder Front Page

The folder will eventually contain all types of content, but we want the page we created to be the front page of the Facilities and Environment folder

Click Edit in the lefthand menu while parked on the page, the open its Settings page

Capture index.html as its short name and [Save]. Plone will recognise this page o be the folder front page

This page will now be displayed when the user navigates to the folder

Linking to LIMS pages

For the tutorial we will link the refrigerator temperature text to the corresponding chart in the LIMS

Highlight the text and click the link icon

Because it is an external link, we capture it on the corresponding tab

When the page is saved the link will clickable in view mode

If the URL was captured correctly, it'll lead the user to the control chart in the LIMS

Page workflow

Once the author is happy with the page, they submit it for publication

The screenshot was taken while logged in as admin, not all users get the Publish option shown here too

The page then goes into a Pending Preview state and its colour changes to yellow

The reviewer may Publish the page or Send it back. It is good to have discussion enabled on the pages for the reviewer to write up some comment on how the page canebe improved

When Published, the page is visible to non members. Normally labs keep the DMS on their intranet

Audit Trail

To see the page's change log click on the clock icon while parked on the page

The next page displays the page's audit trail, the user responsible and their actions are tabled in the first column

The click Compare to have the system produce a page with the edits annotated, in the example below the short name change of the page earlier was recorded