lock sequence table for autosampler non-controled by Clarity

[michaellessing]

Hello,

I have done several installations of Clarity at our customer site and I am very happy with the software. There are still some points to discuss:
I am working with the HT400E Autosampler from HTA (for automated SPE sample preparation and injection) that is controlled by another software (SPE-Prep), Clarity only receives a START IN Signal and processes data. With this configuration it is not Clarity which decides about which sample comes after another (sample order) but the way I fill my tray positions one after another, so when my customer (in routine) moves by accident a sample line in the sequence table to another place, he gets in serious problems of confusing samples. Is there a possibility of locking the sequence completely before or when it is running or at least locking the sequence to 20 sample lines (for my tray) and locking some columns like SV and IV?

[Ivan Vins]

For non controlled samplers the sequence must be entered on the autosampler keyboard or controlling program and the same to the Clarity sequence table. There is no link between them and any mistake could result in big confusion.

I will suggest to uncheck the user privileges to edit sequence in the User accounts. He will be able to create new sequence and edit it, but he will not be able to edit any sequence he opens. Thus, he could create the sequence using the new command, copy or import the sample data and close it. After he will open it again, it will be locked for editing. He could just use the controls to start it.

[michaellessing]

thanks for your answer. But this possibility would be too inflexible for our customer. The best way would be to have the possibility to lock certain columns after having set up the sequence table (before running it), eg. to lock the sv column (eg. going from 1 to 20 because our autosampler supports only 20 samples) and i/v as well as sample id column and sample order, but not the sample nor the run column in order to remain flexible but to prevent the user from accidentally copying one sample line at another place in the sequence table and to prevent errors when he adds new sample lines when the sequence is already running. Would this be possible to do?

Best regards

Michael

[Daniel Mentlik]

Dear Michael,
I fear that the proposed behavior will not be realized anytime soon, as it is quite difficult to implement with a gain for only a small number of users. As much as we try to create Clarity as fool-proof, this kind of protection still does not ensure the data will be correct (you may accidentally switch the vials themselves, switch the lines in the other software etc.) and with the amount of added code, things would probably just complicate.

In fact, the procedure you suggest goes against the needs of most users, who want, with the samplers controlled, be able to put some priority samples to the middle of the sequence. If it would be possible to lock the selected lines, it would also have to be possible to unlock them for such cases, so you would face a similar problem, only complicated with one more click needed for unlocking the line. The best way would be to follow the advice given by Ivan Vins, in which case the sequence table would be un-editable completely once saved/closed/opened. That should prevent any mistakes in the line's order on the side of Clarity.

[Ivan Vins]

In fact, a foolproof solution will be to pass the actual sample info from the HTA HT400E control program to Clarity - from Clarity side it could be achieved using a command line parameters. We have already suggested this to HTA.