Setting up the Shipping Container

If you're shipping a marked storage container, LDMS already knows how your shipping container is organized (the same way it is organized in LDMS Storage ) . If you selected individual aliquots to ship, however, you'll need to tell LDMS about the container that you'll put them in for shipping.

This can be a little confusing because the settings for shipping containers are found on different tabs in LDMS Shipping .

Table 1. Shipping container settings
Setting Tab to find setting
Container size Shipment Destination
Using letters or numbers for coordinates Shipment Destination
Use position numbers instead of coordinates Shipment Destination
How specimens will be put into the container Shipment Destination
Specify how specimens are organized to put into the container View Shipment
See a visual representation of the container Shipment QA/QC

To view and change settings for the container, go to the Shipment Destination tab; to set how the specimens are ordered before filling them into the container, go to the View Shipment tab, and to see the container itself, go to the Shipment QA/QC tab.

Options available on the Shipment Destination tab for containers

Reverse Row

Reverse the number of columns so that they start at the bottom instead of the top. This is often applicable when your fill order is bottom-to-top.

Shipping Container Fill Order

How specimens will be put into the container. For example, Left to Right, Bottom to Top will put the first aliquot into the bottom-left corner, fill out the bottom row right to left, then move up towards the top until all aliquots are in the container.

Label Method

Set whether columns and rows are numbers or letters, or a combination of the two.

Rows & Columns

Set the height (rows) and width (columns) of the container. The default is 9x9.

Figure: Normal vs Reverse Rows. This illustrates how the Reverse Row option affects a container. Essentially, it moves (1,1) from the top-left corner to bottom-left. There is no equivalent option for reversing column numbering.



Fill order (on the Shipment Destination tab) is not the same as the sort order (on the View Shipment tab). Fill order is where the specimens are placed into a shipping container; sort order is how the specimens themselves are organized. The sort order is found on the bottom of the View Shipment Tab. The sort order will affect both how aliquots are placed in a container and the order they appear on the manifest report.

Figure: Shipping container sort order on the View Shipment tab

A Primary Sort Order is required; the Secondary Sort Order is only required if the primary sort order is Prot[ocol]/ID2.