Skip to content

Collections Overview

What is Collections?

Collections is a centralized, structured environment where you can submit, view, and manage forms for research samples, processes, and workflows. Each form is built on a standardized schema, which means your data is:

  • Organized consistently across projects
  • Searchable and easy to analyze later
  • Re-usable for your future self and your collaborators

A Step Toward Laboratory Automation

If your lab is working toward automation, Collections is one of the first steps.
Structured, machine-readable data is the foundation for automated systems to work—whether it’s triggering a synthesis step, launching an analysis pipeline, or feeding a machine learning model. By capturing high-quality data from the start, you're setting the stage for future automation and digital integration.

How It Helps You

By using Collections:

  • You stop losing track of sample information in random notebooks, spreadsheets, or chat threads
  • You spend less time hunting down details later when you need to write a report, publish a paper, or submit to a data repository
  • Your data becomes interoperable, making it easier to integrate with simulations, AI/ML workflows, or shared databases

How It Helps the Team

  • Principal investigators and advisors can see the big picture across all experiments
  • Technicians and collaborators can follow your steps and replicate your methods
  • Future students or teammates can build on your work instead of starting from scratch

Map of Collections

Collections Overview

Collections in Excel

Collections in Excel is a Microsoft Excel add-in that lets you submit and update Collections forms directly from a spreadsheet. It is built for users who already work with large batches of structured data in Excel — you select a project and schema, generate a templated worksheet, fill in your rows, and submit them as Collections forms without leaving Excel.

It supports the same data as the Collections web app: dropdowns for enumerated fields, foreign-key links to other forms, array fields, conditional fields, and client-side validation before submission. Use it when you have many similar samples to log, or when your existing workflow is already spreadsheet-based.

See Collections in Excel: A Step-by-Step Guide to get started.