Configuration Tabs

Farm setup lives in two places:

• Configuration (under Admin in the sidebar): one tab per area, such as stages, item types, locations and fulfillment.
• Settings (the Farm Settings page): stages and transitions, units, grading, lot tracking and Optional features.

Some things, such as active stages and transitions, can be changed in either place. Both save to the same farm settings.

Who can do it

Managers and Owners open both pages and can change everything on them. Workers and Viewers see Settings and Configuration in the sidebar with a lock and can’t open them.

Changes apply to the whole farm as soon as they are saved. Everyone on the team sees the new words, stages and choices the next time a page loads.

The Configuration page

Open Configuration in the sidebar. The bar at the top shows which tabs are filled in. A number beside a tab name is how many entries it holds.

The buttons at the top:

• Export Config downloads your farm’s setup as a file.
• Download Blank Template downloads an empty file to fill in.
• Import Config loads a filled-in file.

Most tabs have their own Save button. A tab doesn’t save what another tab changed.

Export, edit, import back

You can export your setup, add rows to the file, and import it back. Rows you did not touch are left alone and counted as unchanged, even when your farm has two locations, recipes or bag types with the same name, or a lab list code longer than a new code is allowed to be. Only the rows you added are created. If you add another copy of a name your farm already has, the import tells you which row it repeats so you can rename or delete it. Changing a location, recipe, bag type or list value that is already on your farm in the file does not change it on the farm; make that change on its tab instead.

Farm Profile

• Organization: Organization Name and Timezone.
• Measurement Units: Weight Unit, Temperature Unit and Delivery Price Unit. These set how weights, temperatures and delivery prices are entered and shown everywhere. Each order line can still use another price unit.

Click Save Profile.

Lifecycle

Active Stages are the stages your blocks move through. Tick the stages your farm uses. Type in the box beside a stage to give it your own name (up to 30 characters); everyone then sees that name. New batches start in sets the first stage of a new batch.

Stage Transitions sets where a block can go from each stage. Click a stage under From: … to allow or stop that move. Turning a stage off removes it from every transition.

If a working stage has no next step for a healthy block, a warning names it, and the save is refused until you add one.

Changing the stages, transitions or first stage asks What changed and why (kept in Activity). Fill it in and click Save Lifecycle. Reset puts back what is saved.

The Lifecycle tab also has these cards, each with its own Save:

• Contamination: what happens when someone flags contamination, set separately for Blocks and for Lab items (plates, cultures, liquid cultures). Discard right away ends the item in the same step. Keep it and monitor keeps it where it is with a contamination flag until someone discards it. Click Save Contamination Policy.
• Quality: what recording a failed sterilization run does. Discard the failed units throws them out with the reason Sterilization fail. Record the result only keeps the result in the history and leaves the units where they are. Click Save Quality Policy.
• Lab rules: Flag an LC low at (a liquid culture at or below this many units shows Low), G1 bags per LC unit (making G1s from a counted liquid culture takes one unit per this many bags), and Follow each type’s next stages. Leave a box empty to turn it off. Click Save Lab Rules.
• Counts: turns counts by scan on, and sets whether new counts start blind. See Counts by Scan.

Enumerables

The pick lists the forms offer, such as Species, Substrates, Containers, Contamination Types, and the lab lists (Culture sources, Storage methods, Agar media, Agar vessels, Liquid culture vessels, Liquid culture media and Plate scores). Add, edit or remove entries here, and the forms offer your list.

Item types

Each form your farm tracks (a kind of culture, plate, liquid culture, grain spawn or substrate block), with its own stages, discard reasons, media and places. Click New Item Type or the pencil next to one.

For each stage you can set:

• a planned length (Plan in days or hours, with least and most), and whether leaving early needs a reason. See Stage Schedules and Due Today.
• Hold: not usable yet and Released by a Manager. See Hold and release in Lots and Spawn.
• a QC checklist (one question per line), and whether it is Required to leave. See QC Checkpoints and Release.

Until you save a type of your own, the forms use the built-in types. Once you save one for a kind, the forms offer only the types you saved for that kind, so add each form your lab uses.

Recipes

The same recipes as the Recipes page, with New Recipe, edit and delete. See Recipes and Planning a NOC Day.

Bag Types

The bags your substrate goes into: Name, Volume, Material, Filter Patch (µm), Thickness (mil), and optionally Supplier and Lot Number. Recipes pick a bag type. Click New Bag Type.

Type Volume the way you would say it, like 5 lb, 2.5 L or just 5. Sporeline understands lb, oz, kg, g, L, mL, gal and qt, and shows the unit wherever the bag type appears. When you add a bag type during first setup you can leave volume blank and fill it in here later.

Locations

Your buildings, rooms, tents, racks and shelves, as a tree. Click New Location, or Add many at once. A location can hold other locations. A room can show its environment readings with View room environment.

Custom Fields

Extra fields on Block Fields, Event Fields and Batch Fields. Click Add Field and give it a Label, Field Name (key) and Field Type. Batch fields can also be a pick list, with a Unit, target min and max, and the stage the reading is taken at. Click Save Custom Fields. The fields then appear on those forms for everyone.

An AI assistant connected to your farm can fill in a batch’s readings for you with batch_readings_record. It can only use the batch fields set up here for that batch’s type, the same as the batch page, and it shows you each field’s value before and after, then saves them once you say yes. Workers and up can ask for it.

Readings over time. A lot’s page shows every value entered for its number fields in a Readings over time card, under Custom fields. Each field gets its own small table, newest first, with when it was entered (on your farm’s clock), the value, the stage the lot moved into when the reading was taken at a stage change, and who entered it. An entry that was outside the field’s target when it was entered says “outside target when entered” beside it. That mark is what was true at the time, judged against the target of that day, so changing a target later does not clear it; today’s target is shown beside the field’s name. A field you have since removed still shows its old values under its key, without a target. Text, yes/no, date and pick-list fields are not shown here. Download CSV saves the same readings for a spreadsheet, one row per reading, with both the farm time and the UTC time, and two marks: whether the entry was outside its target when entered (for all the readings it holds together), and whether this one reading is outside today’s target. Until you press Show older in the lot’s History, the card covers only the history loaded so far and says so. A lot with no readings yet shows “No readings yet.” Only lot-tracked batches keep each reading; a batch tracked block by block shows its latest values on the fields card.

Stations

Setup for scan stations: Station profiles, Action cards, Operator badges and Location labels. Click Save Stations. See Scanning on the Floor.

Fulfillment

How orders are priced, packed and shipped:

• Quantity pricing: products in a price group bill at a lower price per unit once an order has enough of the group in total, across every line. Changing a group doesn’t re-price orders already entered.
• Packing matrix: how many units go in a box and how many boxes make a pallet. Packing lists print a pack plan from these rules.
• Products: what you sell, with SKU, name, species, unit weight, units per case and price.
• Order and pallet rules: order number and pallet code prefixes, how blocks are allocated, the stage a shipped block moves to, sales tax, pallet weight, the site you ship from, and the order options below. Click Save fulfillment settings.

If saving a product, price group or packing rule shows “The save was refused before it reached Sporeline, so nothing changed”, the request was stopped on its way in, before Sporeline saw it. The editor stays open with what you typed. This can happen when a description or name contains text that looks like web page code. Change or shorten that text and save again. If it keeps happening, contact support and say which product you were saving.

See Orders and Packing Slips.

The Farm Settings page

Open Settings in the sidebar.

• Active Stages and Stage Transitions: the same as on Configuration > Lifecycle.
• Unit Preferences: Weight and Temperature.
• Grading Scheme: the grades used when recording harvests. Type a grade and click Add; click the x on a grade to remove it. See Harvest Workflow.

Click Save Settings at the top for these. Reset puts back what is saved.

If someone else on the farm is saving at the very same moment, Sporeline tries your save again a few times on its own. If it still can’t get through, you’ll see “Someone else was saving to this farm at the same moment, so your settings were not saved.” Nothing from that save was kept, so click Save Settings again and it will go through.

Two cards below have their own Save:

• Lot tracking: turns lot tracking on and sets the lot code format and numbering. Click Save lot tracking. See Lots and Spawn.
• Optional features: see below.

Optional features

Optional features are extra steps that only suit some farms. Each is off until your farm turns it on. They are all switched on and off in one place: Settings > Optional features. See Optional Features for what each one does.

Some of them can also be set from a Configuration tab:

Notification rules is only on the Optional features card.

Everything else on these pages is part of every farm’s setup, not an optional feature.

When something goes wrong

• Settings or Configuration shows a lock in the sidebar — your role can’t open it. Ask a Manager or Owner.
• “At least one stage must be active.” — tick at least one stage before saving.
• A stage is named as having no next step — add a transition from it to where a healthy block goes next, then save.
• Save Lifecycle stays greyed out — fill in What changed and why (kept in Activity).
• “Couldn’t load your settings.” — click Retry.
• “These settings were changed since you opened this page. Reload to see the changes, then make yours again.” — someone else saved first. Reload the page and make your change again.
• Save Profile stays greyed out — nothing has changed yet.
• “The save was refused before it reached Sporeline, so nothing changed.” (Fulfillment) — the save was stopped before Sporeline saw it. Try a smaller change, such as shorter text in a description. If it keeps happening, contact support.