ULab help - service orders

Service orders offer a means of uploading 'offline' equipment usage/bookings into ULab so you can have complete overview of all your equipment usage.  For example if using the standard booking calendar does not fit in to your normal workflow, but the instrument you are using generates user/usage data in a csv or Excel format, this can then be bulk uploaded into ULab.

Service orders are part of the Finance module, so you must have this module on your licence to use this feature.

To turn on service orders, edit your lab and set the service orders option to yes*:

edit equipment

*if you have set up individual service orders you may see other options than yes/no. Speak to ULab support for details.

From the lab page, you will now see a service orders button

SO button

Clicking this button allows you to access the service orders page for the lab.

 so choice

1. Individual service orders

Individual service orders allows you to manually enter details of equipment usage.

individual SO

  • select the service order/equipment from the drop down (1)
  • confirm the project code and quantity/usage (2)
  • click purchase
  • the service order will be saved

 

2. Bulk import service orders

The bulk import allows you to add multiple data entries, typically from .csv or Excel data generated from your equipment.

In order to use the bulk import your equipment must generate data that includes:

  • the username/email of the user
  • the duration of usage (in hours)

optionally, it can include

  • project code
  • date of usage

example import data

if a date is not included, ULab will generate the date/time of usage incrementally based on the last date available, or from the 1st of the month selected in step 2, below.

 
bulk import step 1-3

To bulk upload data

  • select the equipment in the lab that the data applies to (1)
  • select the month and year the data applies to (2)
  • gather your data for a particular month of usage and load it into Excel or another spreadsheet
  • copy the data from Excel
  • paste the data into the form (3)
  • click the upload service data button

 

Clicking upload will refresh the screen with the data to allow you to check/modify project codes:

SO bulk step 2

If a user is linked to multiple project codes, it selects their default code (see below) but still allows you to change it via the dropdown. If they have no default code, it just uses the first in their list:

SO bulk step 3

If a user is linked to only one code it uses that code.  If a code was included in the upload/paste, then it uses that instead. If no code is entered, it allows you to put in your 'own':

SO bulk step 4

If this is left blank, then it will use the TMP-Unknown code.

Once you are happy with the list, you click the confirm service order button, and the data will be added to the system, and the screen will refresh to show the data imported:

 SO bulk step 5

 This data is stored in the booking calendar for the equipment, so if needed can be edited like any other booking:

SO bulk import in calendar

As the data is in the main booking calender, it will appear in all the normal charging reports and BIF data.

Default project codes

Users can have multiple project codes, so the system lets you set which is used by default from the project code tool.

From the project code tool, select a particular project code.

setting default project code

 Simply tick the box next to the user and their default code will be set to the current project.