Case Studies

SharePoint Electronic Lab Notebook

Posted in Digital Workplace Solutions, Medical and Pharmaceutical, SharePoint

Summary

DMC's consulting services team developed a custom SharePoint solution for Celsis, a scientific research firm, to streamline their document and project management processes. The solution included digitizing of project documents, creating an organizational structure for project data storage, and initiating a workflow to manage the review of time-sensitive and secure experiment documentation.

Solution

As scientific researchers, the organization of project documentation and timeliness of intellectual property submission is imperative for Celsis. DMC was asked to architect a solution for transferring Celsis’ organizational structure from manually written and scanned notes to a digital system. The SharePoint solution indicated a time-saving paradigm shift for Celsis’ project process.

In order to enhance organization for the client’s many projects and experiments, DMC introduced a SharePoint projects directory. This enables employees to consolidate experiment documentation, vendor information, and any pertinent communications in a central location specific to an experiment or project. The projects directory also provides the ability to create any number of subsidiary child projects containing any amount of experiments within.   In addition, future projects can now reference data from similar experiments rather than having recreate the experiment due to a lack of knowledge to where to find the data.

A significant component of Celsis’ project and intellectual property submission processes includes “witnessing,” the review, sealing, and archival of completed experiment documentation. DMC created a SharePoint workflow to indicate what experiments need witnessing and to update the SharePoint homepage as well as all project contributors in round robin fashion. Once witnessed, the top-level site is updated to indicate project completion and the project is marked as read-only. DMC obtained the API from Surety to utilize its AbsoluteProof product for triggering the sealing of documents automatically through a workflow - the first such use of its kind. The completed project is then sealed using “Absolute Seal,” a digital wax seal, providing assurance of a secure and timely project review process.

Customer Benefits

  • Managers can rapidly locate digital experiment data in SharePoint, rather than in manually written files
  • A SharePoint workflow automatically updates management and project contributors of status updates, as opposed to passing files around manually
  • Digital witnessing and sealing of documents quickly prepares them for patent submission, strengthening intellectual property claims

Technologies

  • Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Foundation
  • Surety AbsoluteProof for Microsoft SharePoint
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Custom Workflow Actions
  • SharePoint Designer Workflows
  • ASP.NET Custom Web Parts
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition