Features Overview

DECTRIS D.LAB is designed to shorten the path from experiment to insight, with collaboration at its core. All features are accessed via the D.LAB web app, where you will find everything you need to navigate.

Data

Where all raw and processed data is stored and organized by project

Each project follows a pre-defined folder structure: raw, processed, metadata, auxiliary, and work. Data can be kept in hot storage for immediate access and analysis, or moved to cold storage for long term archiving.

Projects
See all of your projects in a single list, searchable by name, ID, or keyword, and filterable by start year, your role, and contributors. Click "New Project +" to create a new project and get started.

Each project has a single project owner, who can share the project with other D.LAB users or invite new users by email, giving them access to its contents. The project owner assigns roles to determine what each user can do within the project, and what they can share access to:

• Manager: full access to project data, and can add more members and viewers
• Member: can work with data and add more viewers
• Viewer: read-only access

Logbook
Every project comes with a logbook, a dedicated space for notes and insights from all contributors throughout the project.

Analysis

Where insight is gained

The analysis section provides users with a comprehensive view of their processing tasks and results. Users can analyze the data in their projects through sessions and analysis jobs, all configurable with a set list of cloud machine types:

• Sessions: Interactive compute resources, available as either a virtual machine or a Jupyter notebook, each built from a chosen environment. For each session, users can assign a name and choose a machine type, which determines disk size and CPU/GPU performance. Sessions can be stopped and restarted at the user's convenience, maintaining their preferred settings.
• Analysis jobs: Runs of a job template against project data, without requiring an interactive session. Jobs can be configured with a chosen machine type.

Library

Reusable building blocks for analysis

The Library contains two types of reusable resources: Environments and Job Templates. Both are available as private (visible only to you and those you share directly with) or public (shared with the wider D.LAB community) lists.

Environments
An environment is a pre-configured software setup containing the tools needed for a specific type of analysis. Browsed under My Environments or Public Environments, an environment defines what software is available, whether used to start a session or as the basis for a job template.

Job Templates
A job template is a predefined analysis script that can be run as an analysis job against project data. Browsed under My Templates or Public Templates, job templates launch re-runnable workflows, preserving the full analysis context, including software versioning and input parameters.

Cockpit

A shared team space

The Cockpit area of DECTRIS D.LAB contains a laboratory cockpit for each lab you're part of. A lab is a team of lab members who share projects, data, and a collaborative space. Every cockpit comes with a shared lab license, accessible to all members of the lab. External users added to projects within the lab also gain access to this license.

From the cockpit, lab members can configure the DECTRIS SYNC software uploader, including specifying its upload endpoint. It can also be connected directly to a beamline, microscope, or other measurement instrument, enabling direct upload to a D.LAB project during an experiment.