Organize Spaces

The Facility workspace maps your physical space: buildings, rooms, freezers, shelves, boxes, fields, greenhouses. Once locations are set up, every sample and inventory item can be assigned to one, so anyone on the team can find what they need without asking.

Creating a Location

Click New Location. Each location needs:

• A name (e.g., "Building A − Room 204", "Freezer −80°C #2", "Greenhouse 1")
• A type that matches what it is (see Location types below)
• A parent location for where this space sits within (e.g., a shelf inside a freezer inside a room)
• A description, icon, and any notes you'd like

Location Types

Conspecta knows about a fixed set of location types and enforces sensible nesting rules:

Top-level spaces

• Building
• Floor
• Room
• Field (outdoor research plots)
• Greenhouse
• Other (generic)

Equipment that holds samples

• Fridge (4°C-style)
• Freezer (−20°C, −80°C, liquid nitrogen, and so on)
• Incubator
• Cabinet

Sub-units within equipment

• Shelf
• Drawer
• Box (with row/column coordinates for tracking individual positions inside)

You can place rooms inside buildings, equipment inside rooms, and shelves or drawers inside equipment. Boxes can sit inside shelves or directly inside equipment. The form prevents you from creating impossible hierarchies (a building inside a freezer, for example).

Hierarchical Organization

Locations form a tree that mirrors your physical layout:

Biology Department          (building)
  └─ Room 204               (room)
       ├─ Freezer −80°C     (freezer)
       │    ├─ Shelf 1      (shelf)
       │    │    └─ Sample Box A1   (box)
       │    └─ Shelf 2
       ├─ Fridge 4°C        (fridge)
       └─ Chemical Cabinet  (cabinet)

Navigate the tree from the workspace landing page. Open any location to see its profile.

Location Profiles

Each location has a profile showing:

• Details including name, type, parent, description, and icon
• Child locations that sit inside
• Inventory items stored here, populated automatically from the Inventory workspace
• Samples stored here, populated automatically from the Samples workspace

You assign items and samples from their own workspaces; the location profile is a read-only reverse view.

Tracked Boxes

For boxes, the profile renders a grid of cells matching the box's row/column dimensions. Samples and inventory items stored in tracked positions show up in the correct cell, so you can scan a freezer box at a glance instead of opening every sample.

Next Steps

• Manage reagents and equipment to populate locations with inventory items
• Track your samples to assign samples to storage locations
• Work with suppliers to track where your inventory came from