Researcher Quickstart
This guide walks through the core researcher workflow: registering an account, creating a sequencing order, adding samples, and tracking status.
The order form is fully configurable by your facility admin. The fields and steps described below reflect the default configuration — your instance may look different depending on what your admin has enabled.
Register your account
Navigate to /register and fill in the registration form:
- First name and last name
- Email — must be unique across the system
- Department — select from the list your admin has configured
- Researcher role — PI, Postdoc, PhD Student, Master Student, Technician, or Other
- Institution — optional, but useful for contact purposes
- Password — minimum 8 characters
After registering, log in at /login with your email and password.
Create a new order
From the Orders page, click the button to create a new order. The order wizard walks you through a series of steps. Each step collects a group of related fields — the exact steps depend on how your facility has configured the form.
Default wizard steps
By default, the wizard includes these steps:
1. Order Details
- Order Name — optional descriptive name (an order number is auto-generated)
- Number of Samples — pre-fills the sample table with the right number of rows
2. Sequencing Parameters
- Sequencing Platform — Illumina, Oxford Nanopore, PacBio, Ion Torrent, BGI
- Instrument Model — specific instrument if known
- Library Strategy — WGS, RNA-Seq, AMPLICON, Bisulfite-Seq, ChIP-Seq, ATAC-seq, etc.
- Library Source — Genomic, Metagenomic, Transcriptomic, etc.
- Library Selection — Random, PCR, size fractionation, cDNA, PolyA, etc.
Your admin may have added additional steps or fields (e.g. billing information, funding details, or a sequencing technology selector). Some facilities also enable MIxS metadata selection, which adds a step for choosing an environment checklist.
Add samples
The Samples step always appears in the wizard. It presents an editable table where you fill in per-sample information.
Default per-sample fields:
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Organism | Yes | NCBI taxonomy lookup — start typing and select from results |
| Sample Title | Yes | Short descriptive title for the sample |
| Sample Alias | No | Optional unique identifier (auto-generated if empty) |
Your admin may have configured additional per-sample columns (e.g. sample volume, concentration, barcodes, or custom metadata fields).
You can also import sample data from Excel using the toolbar above the table, or manually add and remove rows.
Review and submit
The final step is always a Review page that summarizes:
- Your contact information
- All order-level fields you filled in
- Sample details
Review the summary, then submit. Your order is assigned a unique number in the
format ORD-YYYYMMDD-XXXX and the status changes from DRAFT to
SUBMITTED, signaling the facility that your samples are ready for
sequencing.
Track progress
Check the order detail page for status updates:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
DRAFT | Order is being prepared — editable |
SUBMITTED | Sent to facility — awaiting processing |
COMPLETED | Sequencing finished — data available |
Facility admins may add status notes visible to you on the order detail page.
What’s Next
Once your order is completed and sequencing files are available, your facility admin can:
- Assign sequencing files to your samples
- Create a study grouping your samples for analysis
- Run bioinformatics pipelines on your data
- Submit results to ENA (European Nucleotide Archive)