Getting Started with Conspecta
Conspecta holds the whole of a research project in one place: the samples in the freezer, the notes and protocols, the microscopy and cytometry, the sequences, the numbers, and the figures they turn into. This page takes you from a new account to a project you can work in.
What You Need
Conspecta runs in your browser. There's nothing to install, and an internet connection is required.
Any current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari works, on macOS, Windows, Linux, or ChromeOS. Your operating system doesn't change what you get, because the whole app is the web page.
Image-heavy work is the main driver of memory usage. As a rule of thumb, plan for at least twice as much RAM as the size of the files you typically open, so a 4 GB LIF file is comfortable on a machine with 8 GB or more. Analysis that runs in the browser goes faster with a dedicated graphics card, but a GPU is not required.
On a narrow screen, such as a phone, Conspecta rearranges into a home screen with scanning and bench tools built for standing at the bench. See Conspecta at the bench.
Creating Your Account
- Go to
conspecta.bioand click Sign up - Enter your email, choose a password, then tick the box to accept the terms
- Check your inbox for a 6-digit verification code and type it in
- You'll see Email confirmed, and you're in
Sign-up rejects disposable and throwaway email domains, so use the address you'll keep. If you arrived from an invitation link, that link survives sign-up and verification, so you land back on the invitation once your account exists. Two-factor authentication is set up later, from Settings → Account.
Your First Screen
A new account opens on a welcome screen headed Let's get started, with two ways forward.
Joining a team? Click View your invites to open your inbox. If someone has already invited you, the button says how many invitations are waiting. The screen keeps checking while you sit on it, so an invitation sent a minute after you signed up shows up without a refresh.
Exploring on your own? Click Start my project to set yourself up from scratch. This is the right choice when nobody has invited you, including when you're the first person in your lab to use Conspecta.
Setting Yourself Up
Start my project walks through three steps.
Introduce yourself asks for your name, an optional role, and an optional photo, and shows a live preview of the profile card your collaborators will see. The role comes with suggestions such as Principal Investigator, Senior Scientist, and Lab Manager, and Other lets you type your own. None of it is required. Skip for now goes straight to the next step, and you can set your name and photo later on your own profile, which opens from View Profile in the user menu at the foot of the sidebar.
Set up your team is the one step you have to complete, because it creates both your team and your first project. Your team is who you work with, and a project is what you work on. Team name arrives prefilled as your last name followed by "Lab", and First project is yours to name. You can rename both later. Click Create my team.
The last step confirms your team is ready and lists the workspaces waiting inside your first project. Every tile is a link, so you can open the one you came for straight away, or press the button carrying your project's name to go to the project itself.
Tip: A lab of one is still a team. Every project belongs to a team, so a solo scientist is a team with one member. You don't have to decide anything about collaboration now, and adding people later changes nothing about the work already in the project.
Teams and Projects
Two ideas carry most of the weight in Conspecta.
A team is your research group, lab, or institution. It owns what a lab shares no matter who is working on what: the freezers and instruments in Facility, the vendors in Suppliers, the templates everyone reuses, and the subscription.
A project lives inside a team and holds the actual work, and each one is independent: its own samples, notebook, analysis, and figures. A project is a focused line of work, such as an aim from a grant, a study, or a program.
Being on the team makes you eligible for a project, and being added to that project is what lets you see it. You can belong to as many teams as you're invited to, and you switch between their projects from the picker at the top of the sidebar. Roles and access are covered in Manage your team.
What's Inside a Project
Every project has the same workspaces, grouped in the sidebar the way a project tends to run:
| Group | Workspaces |
|---|---|
| Plans & Documents | Planner for tasks and scheduling, Notebook for notes and protocols |
| Research | Samples, Imaging, Cytometry, Genetics |
| Results & Reports | Data Tables, Figures |
| Operations | Facility for storage and instruments, Inventory for items, orders, and suppliers |
Facility and Suppliers belong to the team rather than to one project, so the same freezer and the same vendor list appear in every project the lab runs. Everything else is scoped to the project you're in.
You don't have to use all of them. Hide the ones you don't need under Settings → General and they leave the sidebar until you turn them back on.
Getting Your Data In
Most workspaces take existing files without any setup:
- Samples imports a CSV or TSV, and recognizes header names exported from other tools
- Notebook imports Markdown, PDF, and Word documents
- Imaging takes TIFF, PNG, JPEG, BMP, and LIF (Leica Image File) files
- Cytometry takes FCS files, versions 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2
- Genetics takes FASTA and GenBank files, or fetches a record from an accession number
- Data Tables imports CSV, TSV, and Excel, keeping the spreadsheet's formulas
In every case you can drag files straight onto the empty workspace to import them.
Research Use Only: Conspecta is built for research, exploration, and education. It is not certified for clinical diagnostics, patient care, or other regulated medical use. Don't upload protected health information (PHI) or other patient-identifiable data.
Your First Steps
Start with the workspace closest to your day-to-day work rather than setting everything up first. A useful order for a new project:
- Register what you have. Import your samples, or add the reagents you're low on.
- Write down what you're doing. A protocol in the Notebook is worth more than a plan in your head, and you can run it step by step later.
- Bring your data in. Upload a plate of images or a set of FCS files and run one analysis end to end.
- Invite your collaborators, assign a couple of tasks in the Planner, and ask for a sign-off for the protocol.
Tip: Press Cmd/Ctrl + K anywhere to search across
every project you can reach, and Ctrl plus a number to jump to a
workspace by its position in the sidebar.