Alpha Tracker - Tips & Tricks - Webinar #15

Dan 

Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to our Alpha Tracker tips and tricks webinar. That's always tricky to get out. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Dan. And today I'm joined with Kim. And we're going to be running through sample tracking in Alpha Tracker today. So we've got barcode samples and also manually tracking your samples as well. So it should be quite an interesting webinar. So just a bit of housekeeping before we jump in. We've got the Q&A window. Please feel free to ask any questions at any point. Kim and I will try and answer them live in the webinar. If we don't get chance or we accidentally miss your question, we'll pick those up after the webinar and we'll be sure to get all of those answered. So I think that's everything.

So let's get started. So go over into Alpha Tracker here on our demo system. And as I mentioned, we're going to be running through sample tracking. So what is sample tracking? Basically, it's a way of tracking where samples are at in their particular life essentially. So starting from when a sample was taken onsite by a surveyor all the way to being in storage once you've done your analysis and that sort of stuff. And it basically gives you the visibility to see where a sample is at any point in its life. So you can see the samples with the surveyor or it's possibly booked into the lab. And it just gives you that traceability to see where things are at. 

Kim 

Some people might know it as sample traceability or chain of custody, something like that. 

Dan 

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Kim. Yeah, there are a few names for it, different terminology, but that's essentially what we're going to be running through today. And in particular, the one we're going to be doing is barcodes and using barcodes to track the samples. We do have a way of tracking samples manually as well. That's in the latest release, release 41, I think Kim, is that right?

Kim 

Yes, that's right. 

Dan 

Great. So that's in there, but today we're going to be focusing on the barcode side of things.

So how do you get started? The first thing you need to do is generate some barcodes. So we have got a sample tracking section in the resources menu. And if we scroll down, we've got sample tracking, and this is where everything you need to know about sample tracking is. And we've got a barcodes option. And what this does, it essentially shows you a list of all of the barcodes you've generated, and if they are associated with a particular project or sample and whether that's been analyzed or not. But from this screen, you can actually go ahead and generate some new barcodes. So at the point of generating them, they don't link to anything, they're not associated with anything, they're just blank barcodes ready to go. And they're really easy to generate, you can just click Generate Labels, you choose how many, and I think 40 is the default, is it Kim?

Kim 

I think it's a good default because it's a standard number that you can print on the standard sheets of labels that you can get. So yeah, depends on what labels you're using. 

Dan 

Absolutely, and you can generate as many or as little of these as you want. So we'll just go for the 40 and we'll go ahead and generate those. And what that'll do is generate 40 unique serial numbers along with the barcode on here. So you can see this has generated our report here so we can then go ahead and print this off.

We've got a couple of different label sizes as well. So I'm gonna say no, I haven't printed these. We've got 10 by three labels and we've also got the seven by three and these are the Avery standards. So depending on what label printers you've got or what label paper you can print out to those and you can just generate those by tapping on that and then printing those out. So nice and simple. I've got an example one printed off here as well which we'll be using in a minute. 

Kim 

So you'd just be printing those out, ready to be used, ready to issue to your surveyors.

Dan 

Exactly. Yeah, so you might give one of your surveyors a batch of 100 labels, for example, and they can just keep them in the van and take them with them when they go to do various surveys. And yeah, you can just generate as many as you want, whenever you want, basically. It's really, really simple, nice and easy.

So that's how we set up barcodes. And before we jump into anything else, I'm just going to explain the process of how this will work. So we've generated the barcodes, we've given the labels to the surveyors, and now a surveyor has gone out on site. So they'll have taken a sample. And at that point, what they'll do is put the sample in the sample bag and then use one of the labels. And you'll write the project number and sample number on there and stick it onto the bag. And at that point, you've got the barcode on the sample bag, and then within Alpha, within Tracker Mobile, sorry, so on the actual handset, there's an option to scan the barcode. 

Kim 

Right, so that's something that we have to add if you haven't got it on there, isn't it? We have to put it in to Tracker Mobile so that when you're capturing a sample, you get that field.

Dan 

Yep, absolutely. 

Kim 

And you tap in that field and it uses your camera. 

Dan 

Yep, that's it. 

Kim 

With your tablet and you scan it, you scan the code. 

Dan 

That's it. And then what that'll do is read the barcode, associate that with the sample that you've just taken. And then when you send in the data, those two get joined together. And that barcode is married up with that particular sample. Hope that makes sense. Sounds okay so far Kim?

Kim 

Yeah, sounds good to me. 

Dan 

Okay, great. So I've got a few samples here, which I've done earlier in typical Blue Peter fashion. So we've got samples number one, two, and three associated with these barcodes. So what I did earlier, I went around the office, took a couple of fake samples, allocated them to barcodes and then sent them in. So this is how they look in the system so far.

And we can already start to see our chain of custody, our history for the barcode. And you can see this serial number is currently with the surveyor. And then this was me this morning, going around the office and recording those samples. So now what would happen next? The surveyor would come back to the office typically, and you'd probably check them in to reception, I would say. You'd probably check them in for reception. 

Kim 

Could be reception. 

Dan 

What you can actually do is set up all of the different locations that your samples will be going through in our locations option here. So that's down. 

Kim 

So those would be the ones where the sample would be going, so it could be that the surveyor brings it into reception and then reception moves them into the lab and they then get moved into the lab and then once they've done their analysis it gets moved on to storage. But it's whatever you use, it could just be lab. 

Dan 

It could just be lab. Yeah, it could just be lab, but yeah, it's completely up to you how you want to track this and what locations you'd have set up.

So we've got the three set up just as a nice example. So the surveyor brings in the samples, we're going to check these into reception now. So I'm going to pretend I'm in reception, I'm checking in the sample. So I've got my barcode scanner here. And what I'm going to do is go over to the sample checking screen. And again, that's over in the sample tracking here or in your favourites if you've got it favourited. And then what we can start doing is literally scanning the serial. So got my paper, I'm going to scan this here. And you can see what that's done is added the barcode into the list below. It's pulled through the additional information about that particular barcode. So we know it was on this project. We know what sample number it was. And we know the site that it was there. 

Kim 

So you could be checking that, couldn't you? Looking at the value, just checking it's correct. 

Dan 

Absolutely. Just making sure it's okay. And what we've got as well, which is really nice, is we've got the say project and say sample check boxes. And what this does is when you scan a particular barcode, it will read out the project number and sample number. So if you've got speakers on your PC or your laptop, it'll actually read those out. So you don't even need to look up at the screen. You can just be scanning the bags and listening and saying, yeah, that's sample number two, number three, et cetera.

Kim

So that's a really nice feature, isn't it?

Dan

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I personally like scanning stuff on the barcode, so I'm gonna scan another one. And this is how I would go ahead and scan all of these. But we do have an option to actually scan things in bulk. So if you've got a big survey, I don't know, you've taken 20, 50, 100 samples, the bulk scan feature will be very much useful in that situation.

So what you can do is tap the bulk scan, and all you need to do is choose where you're moving that sample, so where you're checking into. So we're checking it into the reception, and you only have to scan one serial number. So you can scan the first sample in the bag. So again, I'll scan one here. And what this is gonna do is look up the project. It's gonna say how many samples we're expecting. It'll give the site and the dates of the survey, and then show all of the samples down here. 

Kim 

So that's based on the survey data, isn't it? I'm saying there are three samples in survey data, they're all expecting to check in three samples. 

Dan 

Three samples exactly exactly and in this case we've got the three sample bags all good so you can pick all of your samples confirm this and say yes we want to update that. 

Kim 

Or it could just be a subset, couldn't it? 

Dan 

Or it could be a subset absolutely yeah if you've only got five of the eight samples for example you can just select which five they are. So that has now updated the locations on the barcodes and if we go back over to here on our barcodes list and search you can see the location is now in reception for these three so that's updated those and then if we go to our chain of custody you'll see we've now got a new record reception I was the one that checked it in and we did it at 11 minutes past 12.

Kim 

So you could be using this screen, couldn't you, to be sort of saying, oh, where are my samples? Look for this job number, see where they all are, see where they are, and see the history of their locations as well. 

Dan 

Exactly, exactly. And then that way you can see, oh, okay, they're in the, they're in the in tray in reception and they're sat in there or other surveyor hasn't been back to the office yet to bring them in. They probably still got them in the van or something like that. So you can see exactly where things are at, at any given stage. It's really, really useful there.

And also speaking of being able to see where they are, you can see where they are from the fibre analysis screen as well, which is really good. So I'm just going to jump over to. 

Kim 

Fibre analysis record, yes. 

Dan 

Fibre analysis record, yeah, that's it. So I've got a list of the three samples here and if I go to our chain of custody again I can see they're in the reception so I know that they haven't actually come into the lab yet so if I was to do the analysis today I can go off to the lab and get those and then check those in and again exactly the same process we'd open our sample check-in screen and again you can do it by the bulk scan or indeed you can scan each individual one and like I said I like playing with the barcode scanner so I'm going to scan these ones in and then we'll do those, um scanned one of the wrong ones there, there we go so we've got our three barcodes here and again you can pick which ones you want to do so accidentally scanned this one in by accident so I don't want to process that one nothing's happening to that okay you can then pick your location where you're going to check those in so we're going to bring those into the lab and then you can go ahead and confirm that you're going to move those three barcodes into the lab and we'll do that and now they've all been moved and if we jump back over to our fibre analysis record screen we can go to our chain of custody and see they were in reception they're in the lab and I checked them in two minutes ago lovely and I think I think that is the full process end to end so as you can see it's really easy to use you just need to generate your barcodes put off your labels you can then issue those to all of your surveyors and again you can do them in big batches you could do hundreds of labels at once you could do 50 completely depends on how you how you want to work really surveyors can keep those in the van and then when they're out doing their survey attach them to the sample bag scan it in tracker mobile that's a really key point that is the key isn't it Kim to make sure that they are actually associated

Kim 

Link those two things together. Yeah, definitely. 

Dan 

And it is really easy, like Kim said, you just tap on the barcode option in Tracker Mobile, that brings up your camera and you just scan that barcode. So that's really simple.

And then from that point, those two things are linked. And then you can start moving them around the office as you need to, whether it's checking into reception or whether it's indeed just going straight to the lab, you've always got visibility of where those samples are at. So yeah, that is the overview of the barcode sample tracking. Now I did mention at the beginning of the webinar, we do have a way of manually tracking these as well. We've currently got the demo system set up for barcodes, so I won't show you those, but we can talk about how that actually works and how that process works. It's quite a similar isn't it Kim, to be honest? 

Kim 

You've still got the locations exactly the same. Set up your locations so that we can add the reception, lab, storage, whatever they need to be. And you've got a sample check-in screen and you've got a sample screen. So with the check-in, you are simply listing something like the project number and it'll just tell you what it's expecting. 

Dan 

Yeah, great.

Kim 

And then you can nominate which ones you're going to be changing and just change the locations. So it's all about, again, setting what the new location is going to be and then just processing that.

Dan 

Fantastic. Nice and simple.

Kim 

And all the information appears under that same link icon, that chain of custody icon. So you'll be able to see it again on the five analysis records and you'd be able to see it on the samples screen that's on the sample tracking menu. 

Dan 

Fantastic, that's great. Brilliant. Thank you for that, Kim. One quick thing I didn't mention that I'd just like to say, these barcode scanners, if you don't have one, they're really cheap to buy. We just we just got this one from Amazon, I don't know, 10 quid or something like that. And you can pick them up really cheap. And you can get Bluetooth ones, or you can get ones that you plug in. So it's really cheap tech. It's not like you have to go out and buy a really fancy barcode scanner to use this, you can just use the really basic ones from Amazon. So yeah, just thought I'd let you know that you don't have to go out and buy the best of the best barcode scanners.

Anything, anything will work on there on that front. So I think that probably covers everything we wanted to run through. Let's have a look, see if we've got any questions. We don't have any questions. Okay, so that probably means we explained it really well, and everyone understands exactly what they need to be doing there. If you don't have this feature turned on, and you are interested in it, just contact the support desk, we can get that set up for you. And we can we can give you a bit more detail if needed. But it is yeah, really nice feature to use. And yeah, once people have started using it, they've really found the benefit of it. So I think that's everything from me and Kim. Just a reminder, we do have a recording of all of our webinars on our website. So alpha-tracker.co.uk. And then you can just go to the webinars menu over here. And we've got a list of all of the webinars up and coming. So the next one is on the 28th of November. God seems ages away, doesn't it? It'll fly by. Yeah, absolutely. And then we've got a list of all of our previous webinars on here. So if you haven't watched those, feel free to jump on and watch those. And yeah, look forward to seeing you next time. So that's a big thanks from me. Thanks from Kim,

Kim 

Thank you from me

Dan 

and see you on the next one.