Projects

Overview

Before any studies can be added to your organization, you must first create at least one Project. Projects are the top-level unit of work in your organization, under which you can register as many studies, assays, and notes as you like. You can scope projects any way you like.

Understanding Project Visibility and Membership

A project’s visibility determines who within your organization can view and contribute to it. Regardless of the assigned visibility, everyone who is assigned as a member of the project will have equal permissions to create and modify records associated with it. For organization members not assigned to the project, refer to the table below to understand how a project’s visibility affects people’s ability to interact with it.

Visibility	Permissions
Public	Anyone in your organization can view the project and contribute to it.
Protected	Anyone in your organization can view the project, but only project team members can contribute to it. Only project team members may be assigned to child records (eg. studies, notes, and tasks).
Private	Only assigned team members may view or contribute to the project, it will be hidden from all views and selections for non-members. Only project team members may be assigned to child records (eg. studies, notes, and tasks).

Creating a new Project

You can manage projects from the 'Projects' tab of the Admin Dashboard. Click the 'New Project' button on this page to enter the project creation form. Most of the fields on this form are important and required, so take a moment to consider them:

• Name: Your project must have a unique name. It should not be too long, but should be clear in its definition.

• Code: This should be a short alphanumeric string, preferably upper-case. It will be used as a prefix for generating study and assay codes.

• Description: Provide a brief description for your project, explaining its purpose and goal.

• Active: Unless this is a legacy project no longer in use, this value should be set to 'Active'.

Adding an Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN)

If you have configured integration with an ELN (such as Benchling), you can connect your project to an existing project in the application. Choose the project you would like to link your project to from the 'ELN Project' dropdown and all of the required fields will be populated from the ELN platform. It is possible to use the same ELN project for multiple Lab Atlas projects.

Be sure to create your ELN projects before adding projects to Lab Atlas. Benchling does not support remote creation of projects through their API. It is also important to make sure that the API account Lab Atlas is using to communicate with the ELN has write access to requested projects.

Adding File Storage

All projects require a file storage location to create their folder hierarchy for child studies and assays. Select a root folder from the 'Parent Folder' dropdown to use. A new folder named after your project will be created within this root folder and will be used as the default file storage location for all studies and assays created within it.

Adding Git Repository Group

You can optionally also create a group in any integrated Git server (eg. GitLab) to store Git repositories created for studies and assays within your project. Select the root Git Project Group from the dropdown and a subgroup for your project will be created within it.

Viewing Projects

After successful creation of your new project, you will be redirected to the Project Details page. From here, you can modify your project, browse all associated studies, and view all activity in the timeline. Links are also provided to the newly-created folders in your file storage and ELN systems.