LabArchives provides powerful tools for managing and auditing research activity across your notebooks. Whether you're a manager, project lead, research integrity officer, or legal reviewer, LabArchives makes it easy to track user activity, ensure compliance, and maintain data integrity.
The following common scenarios outline how you can use these features to perform effective, organized, and reliable notebook audits.
Scenario 1: Checking Team Activity and Login Frequency
To monitor how often members are logging in and interacting with notebooks, LabArchives provides multiple tools:
Activity Feed
The Activity Feed shows a chronological list of actions taken in your account or notebooks you have access to. This includes logins, shares, edits, views, deletions, comments, and more. You can filter by user, notebook, activity type, or notification.
Access the Activity Feed from the bell icon or the triple-dot menu. If you manage several notebooks, you can view activity across all of them by selecting the “account” category.
Notebook Dashboard
The dashboard offers an overview of notebook data and recent activity. You’ll see notebook properties (like size and number of entries), entries modified or created recently, and member-specific entry activity.
Access it by clicking the notebook name at the top or from the triple-dot menu.
Advanced Search
Use Advanced Search to find entries by user, date range, content type, or keywords. You can search within a specific notebook, multiple notebooks, or your entire account. Filters allow you to see who last modified an entry or find work by former collaborators who no longer have access.
Scenario 2: Tracking Open vs. Closed Experiments
LabArchives supports workflows that distinguish between experiments in progress and those that are complete.
Page Signing and Witnessing
Signed pages are locked from further editing and signal that an experiment is finalized. You can also request witnessing—ideal for teams needing supervisory approval. Witnessing either accepts the signature (freezes the page) or rejects it (unlocks the page).
Naming Conventions
Encourage your team to follow consistent naming conventions—e.g., experiment number, initials, and dates—so a title like 101 JD 1.27–1.29 clearly identifies the experiment and its timeframe. You can search by page title in Advanced Search to quickly locate these entries.
Notebook Folder Structure
Organize folders to reflect the experiment status. For example, use folders like “Open Experiments,” “Under Review,” and “Completed.” Large teams might assign folders to individual researchers. As experiments move forward, simply drag and drop pages between folders. To search within a specific folder, right-click it and select Search From here.
Scenario 3: Check Structure & Naming Compliance
Maintaining consistency in notebook organization is key to successful audits.
Establishing Notebook Policies
Set clear policies for structure and naming conventions at the team or organization level. This ensures everyone follows the same guidelines, making it easier to locate entries during reviews.
Audit Scheduling
Create a regular schedule for notebook checks. Frequent reviews, especially early in your LabArchives rollout, help catch and correct issues before they multiply.
Review and Communication Tools
Manually browse the folder and page structure to confirm compliance. If you spot issues, you can share a direct link to the specific page or folder. Right-click any section to copy its Share URL, or use the Comments feature to ask questions or provide feedback to your team.
Scenario 4: Investigating Changes to Pages or Entries
When questions arise about who modified a page or entry, LabArchives provides detailed insight.
Revision History
Both entries and pages have a complete revision history. You can view every edit, revert to earlier versions, and recover deleted content. This log shows what was changed, when, and by whom.
Trash Recovery
Deleted folders or pages are not lost forever. Check the trash can icon at the bottom of the Notebook Navigator to review or restore deleted content.
Audit Trail Clarity
Use the Revision History alongside the Activity Feed to understand who contributed what to a particular section of the notebook. This combined view gives you full transparency into your team’s activity.