Open Microscopy Environment

Greetings,

We are using OMERO in a tissue culture class and would like to use the experiment feature. However the workflow that we have so far is not adequate for student use.

We have all the students split into groups of 3 which each have their own project under a single shared user account. As far as we can tell the correct usage is to create a protocol, save it to the server. Once the protocol is in place on the server students should be able access it from attachments to start an experiment. All of this works well. However once a student has opened the protocol with the editor it seems very easy for them to save the experiment over the protocol. Is there a way to "initiate" an experiment from a protocol without the risk of overwriting the server side copy of the protocol?

Thanks,
John Wallach

Hi John,
Glad to hear that you are finding the Editor useful (potentially). The workflow you describe is exactly what we envisioned.

I agree that there is nothing much to stop someone saving an Experiment over it's Protocol. I hope you are at least getting the dialog that says "Are you sure you want to save Protocol over Experiment"? But you want something that enforces this a bit more?

The "proper" solution to your problem will be provided by the new "Permissions" functionality in the next release of OMERO (4.2 - due out mid May). http://www.openmicroscopy.org.uk/site/support/omero4/server/permissions/

This will allow you to set up a read-only group where the members of the group could read a Protocol from the "teacher" but not save it. This would force them to "Save As" to their own accounts.

Please let us know if you have any more feedback, particularly on the Editor. We currently do not have much feedback for the Editor so it's hard to know which features to keep / remove / improve in future.

Many thanks,

Will.