Signals Notebook: First steps to activate a material library

The material registration process is a key process widely used by different users, as Signals allows the registration of chemical and non-chemical materials. This allows to easily handle different materials used daily in a research center, university, etc. 

In this article, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to activate your libraries in Signals Notebook.
 

First step: Activate the library

It is necessary to perform the initial configuration of a library, in this step we will create the Sequence ID of the library to be used, and we will perform the activation of the library. To exemplify this first step, we will configure a native library of Signals Notebook, the library “compounds”.

Steps to follow for this activation:

1. Access the Signals configuration menu and select the “Materials” option.

2. In the left side menu select the library you want to configure. For this example, we will select the library “Compounds”.
   

3. The ID sequence section will open directly, in this section we must place a sequence, which will allow the creation of materials with the same code. It is recommended that this sequence be short and related to the material to be used. Below you can see an example of this configuration.

4. In the left side menu select the option "Material Management".
   

5. Find the recently activated material, in this case “Compounds,” and activate the toggle button until it turns green. If the activation is correct, it should look like the following screenshot.
   

Second step: Provide the appropriate permissions in user roles
 

Permissions within the “User roles” section will define what the different user roles can and cannot do, this will allow System administrators to define which users can have access to the materials and what actions they can perform over the materials.

Steps to follow for this activation:

1. Access the Signals configuration menu and select the “User roles” option.
2. Click on the “Materials” tab.
   
3. The system administrator must define which user roles should have access to the materials and define which privileges this user roles will have over the materials.

Third step: Activate the libraries in the security policy

This step is not for a specific library, but it is necessary to perform this activation or it could lead to errors.

Steps to follow for this activation:

1. Access  to the Signals configuration menu and select the “Security policy” option.

2. For general access, activate the rules “Grants access to all users to all Material Type Libraries” and “Grants read access to all Materials (assets)”. These come by default inside Signals Notebook; however, these rules can be modified according to the needs of each institution.

Once this process is complete, you will have successfully configured access to your materials library in Signals Notebook.