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HeFDI Data ELN – Electronic Lab Notebooks

Source: Colourbox

Lab notebooks are a fundamental component in life and natural sciences, and currently the demand for permanent services to electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) or tools for structured data acquisition is increasing significantly. Accordingly, three HeFDI universities (TU Darmstadt, Goethe University, Philipps University) are preparing such ELN services in a satellite project "HeFDI-ELN", funded by the Hessian Ministry for Sciences and the Arts (HMWK). Until 2024, these ELN services will be tested and prepared for permanent regular operation. Depending on the location and maturity of the service, you can already use tools such as eLabFTW and RedCap.

Current status of services/offers

Information and resources

General introductions:

Important links:

Tutorials and training videos:

Training courses on eLabFTW:

Important information

  • Login in eLabFTW

    After authentication, you can select an existing team. Select the team you would like to join. The team admins will receive your request and can approve you. If you only want to have a look around, please select the “Test team”.

  • Your own team in eLabFTW

    A separate team is requested via the support team. We need the following for this:
    A team name. Recommended team names are AG, Forschungslabor or Lab XYZ
    After we have set up the team, you will receive a notification from us.
    Your (team) admin can then register. As soon as we have activated your team admin, you can take over the user administration.
    It is a prerequisite that there is at least one admin per team. Admins can make team-specific settings and grant new users access to the team.
    (Team) admins can also designate other users in the team as (team) admins.
    According to the current version of the software, only users can select a team when registering for the first time. Users who already have an account can be added to their own team by (team) admins.

  • Users without an HRZ account

    As a rule, all researchers, staff and students at Philipps University should have an HRZ account. However, it is possible for (external) employees to apply for an HRZ account. You can find more information on the HRZ website.

FAQ

1. Basic functions and operation

2. Data management and security

  • How do I export my data from eLabFTW?

    To export your data from eLabFTW, the desired experiment, protocol or project can be opened and exported in formats such as PDF, CSV, JSON, eln-archiv etc. using the export option in the menu. This allows data to be saved locally or transferred to other systems. All experiments can be exported at once under “My profile>Export”.

  • How can I ensure that my data remains unchanged in eLabFTW?

    It is possible, if required, to lock each entry and thus prevent editing. In addition, eLabFTW offers an audit trail function that logs every change to the entries. You can view these logs to ensure that no unauthorized changes have been made and that the integrity of the entries is guaranteed.

  • What are the exit strategies when a user leaves a team in eLabFTW?

    In eLabFTW, there are currently various options for dealing with the data of users who are to leave a team. Here are four exit strategies that can be considered:
    1. Archiving users and entries
     If a person is only a member of a team, they can be archived. You can decide whether the associated entries should also be blocked and archived. This method ensures a clean separation, but is only suitable if the person only belongs to one team. If the person is active in several teams, archiving would also archive them in the other teams, which is not usually desirable.
    2. Adjusting the rights for visibility and write permissions
     Another exit strategy is to define the visibility and write permissions of the entries explicitly for the team that is to be left. To ensure that the entries remain visible to the team even after the person has left, the corresponding rights must be adjusted for all entries. This can be done by a team admin as a collective action via the admin control center. In this way, access to the experiments and entries remains guaranteed for the team without the person themselves still being part of the team.
    3. Transferring ownership or duplicating entries
    Another option is to transfer ownership of the entries to another person in the team. Alternatively, relevant entries can be duplicated before the person is removed from the team. Once a person has been removed from the team, their entries are no longer visible to the team, which means that it is no longer possible to see who the entries originally belonged to. To avoid this, the name of the original creator can be stored in the title of the entry or as a tag to make the origin of the data more visible.
    4. Restricting the visibility of entries
     Instead of removing the person from the team, they can be left in the team while the visibility of their entries is restricted. Rights management can be used to specify that only the original owner and admins have access to certain entries. This prevents the person who is to leave the team from accessing information that is not relevant to them while they remain in the team.

3. Search and organization tools

4. Integration and compatibility

5. Admin Control Center

  • Where can I see the join requests in my team?

    If users want to join your team, they can submit a request to your team - this is only possible when they first register in eLabFTW. You will see the request as a notification in the system. The small bell at the top right of the bar is usually highlighted in blue/turquoise. However, you can also see open requests directly in the Admin Control Center, which you can access via the small figure in the top right of the bar. You can see the requests directly on the first page of the admin control center and can also confirm them.

  • How do I add users to my team who already have an account?

    As users can currently only select a team when they register for the first time, existing accounts are added via the Admin Control Center. In the “Users” tab, you can search for the user you want to add to your team. Once you have found the account, click on the three dots on the far right and then on “Add to team”.

  • How can I appoint another admin?

    In the admin control center in the “Users” tab, you can view all users in your team. Once you have found the account that should be given admin rights, click on the three dots on the far right and then on “Upgrade to administrator”.

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