Finding Specimens to Ship

If you want to individually select specimens to ship (as opposed to shipping a container from storage), there are a few ways to do it:

  • Use a text file containing a list of global specimen IDs

  • Use the search features on the Setup Shipment tab

  • Use the extended search feature on the Setup Shipment tab

  • Scan them with a barcode reader

Figure: Selecting individual specimens to ship. The Setup Shipment tab. The selected specimens are those that will be added to the shipping file. Specimens in red are marked as never store.



Finding specimens for shipment on the Setup Shipment tab

  1. Select Government if you want to ship specimens from a built-in government group or select Internal to ship specimens from an internal group at your laboratory.

    Note:

    You cannot ship government and custom-group specimens together in the same shipping file. If you need to ship both government and internal groups, you will need to create two separate shipping batches.

  2. Select a group from the Group drop-down list (simply selecting it adds it to the criteria to be searched; the group won't appear in the list of search criteria on the right though).

  3. Select a Type (i.e., field) and an ID (i.e., value), and then click the arrow button to the right to add it to the list of search criteria.

    Note: The Import Specimens button can be used to import lists of Global Specimen IDs, Specimen IDs, or Other Specimen IDs into LDMS.
  4. After adding all desired search criteria, click the button from the LDMS toolbar. This will bring up all the aliquots found that meet your criteria.

  5. Click individual aliquots to select them and add them to the shipment. Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys to select multiple aliquots.

Important:

If you change the search criteria to something more narrow and then click the button again, you'll notice that aliquots that don't meet your new criteria are still displayed. This is because the search results are concatenated together. What you need to do is click the button, which will clear your previous search results, and then click the button again. Don't click the button on the LDMS toolbar; that will actually clear your search and all the criteria, taking you back to the beginning.

If you need more refined searching (such as using AND/OR logic) you can use the Extended Search feature, which is accessed by clicking the button on the LDMS toolbar. This works the same way as it does in LDMS Specimen Management .

Marking Items for Shipping: What's the Point?

You can mark items for shipment in Specimen Management, setting the intended shipment date and destination. This allows you to specify the intent to ship while entering a specimen.

You might think that the button on the LDMS toolbar works the same way when no search criteria is specified in LDMS Shipping that it does in LDMS Assays—that is, it finds all specimens that have been marked for shipping. This is not the case; if no search criteria is specified, LDMS Shipping will show you every specimen available at your laboratory.

Marking an aliquot for shipment is still very useful, you just need to know where to search. The table below shows how the fields on the Details screen in Specimen Management correspond to fields that can be searched in LDMS Shipping .

Table 1. Fields to search for finding marked specimens
Field in Specimen Management Field (i.e., Type) to Search in Shipping
Shipping Category MARKED SHIPMENTS
Intended Shipping Date INTENDED SHIP DATE
Intended Receiving Lab INTENDED REC LAB

While LDMS does not enforce the usage of these fields, you will receive a warning if you attempt to ship an aliquot to a destination other than the Intended Receiving Lab.

If you establish a good workflow at your laboratory, marking specimens for shipment can be a very useful, time-saving tool.