Bika Open Source LIMS/LIS / News: Recent posts

Bika Open Source LIMS is hitting it off at educational institutions around the globe, partnering UWC SANBI in biobanking and proud to announce first customisations for the University of Washington Department of Environmental Health & Occupational Health Sciences included in next LIMS 3 release. CAF at SUN has joined the fray with three implementations and requirements analysis for more.

UW's DEOHS sponsors enhancements in analysis batching and sample preparation which are welcome additions for many other disciplines, e.g. Fire Assay. Functions funded by SANBI compliment those of the DEOHS neatly and first deliveries are included in the upcoming 3.1.6 release, targeted for 14 November - or when it is ready;-)... read more

Bika LIMS 2.1 Inkosi 'The Chief' is the next major public release of the professionally supported open source LIMS by Cape Town company Bika Lab Systems and was released 26 May on a general public license, free to download, install and use.
Popular first release of Bika - pronounced bheeka and meaning 'to report' in isiZulu - has been downloaded more than 12 500 times world wide and established Bika as leading open source LIMS.
Feature rich LIMS 2 promises to become true Inkosi to the global Bika community of users and developers. It is now in production locally and being piloted in Canada, Nigeria and Costa Rica.
Also in May, Bika hosted a fellow from CICA with the aim of further customisation and implementations in pesticide residue laboratories in Latin America. The scientific exchange was sponsored by the IAEA. A Spanish translation is nearing completion... read more

The unique and ingenuous web based inter-laboratory proficiency testing system designed and sponsored by the South African Wine Laboratory Association (SAWLA) and developed locally in open source technologies by Bika Lab Systems, went into production February 2007 and proved very successful, eliminating the 3 week turn around experienced with the spread sheet based system it replaced

Effective proficiency testing is one of the tools employed by SAWLA towards its goal to improve the quality of wine laboratories in SA, standardise methodology and provide a forum for communication and access to information... read more

The upgrade enhances performance and a few smaller bugs were fixed - the corresponding issues were closed in the trackers at SourceForge.net. Please see Bika LIMS 1.2.5 release details (http://www.bikalabs.com/softwarecenter/bika/releases/1.2.5)

The Bika LIMS 1.2 demo (http://demo.bikalabs.com/)was also updated with this release. To try it, please send us a Demo Request (demorequest@bikalabs.com)... read more

Programming on Bika LIMS 2.0's Worksheet templates and QC module starts 1 March. It would be great to refine these designs with feedback from lab specialists wanting to contribute. Summarised designs have been uploaded to the LIMS 2 project page and the users' mailing list posted. You are invited to comment. Specifically challenging would be to design a Worksheet 'Template Engine' for lab managers to create and maintain worksheet templates in the simplest possible way... read more

Open sourced Bika LIMS 1.2 has been released and is now available for download from Sourceforge (https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=145464).

Bika LIMS 1.2 is the latest release of Bika's generic LIMS trunk and is ISO 17025 ready - BBK laboratory, Worcester, South Africa, has already been accredited using Bika Wine 1.2.

Up to version 1.1, Bika LIMS still carried many inherited references to Bika Wine, the branch Bika started out as. These have all been removed and the LIMS can now be customised to any lab discipline with even greater ease.... read more

The Bika on-line demonstration installation has been upgraded to version 1.1.3 and Plone 2.1.2

The demo is set up for a variety of sample types - not the way it is normally utilised, but to illustrate that Bika can be used in any industry. Sample attributes can be customised to requirement in the Bika Schema editor or included in implementation services offered by Bika Lab Systems

In the code, Bika 1.1 still carries references to the LIMS for wine laboratories it was customised for at first, but does not effect its appearance or behaviour - in next releases these too will be replaced by generic attributes... read more

The Bika 1.1 Laboratory Manual and Schema Editor How To released
Bika Laboratory Manual version 1.01 for laboratory personnel (http://www.bikalabs.com/manual/BikaLabUserManual.pdf/view)

Bika Schema Editor How To. Updated version 1.02 How to use version 1.1's Schema Editor to customise the Bika LIMS for any product or sample type
(http://www.bikalabs.com/manual/bikalimsschemaeditorhowto.pdf/view)... read more

Whereas sample specification in Bika 1.0 LIMS was wine laboratory specific and only customisable in the source code, a through-the-web schema editor in Bika 1.1 enables the creation of custom sample types to meet cross industry requirements. Schema editors, accessible from Bika's management panel, were also added for order attributes and client and contact configuration.

A 'How to use the Bika schema editor' has been published at www.bikalabs.com to assist laboratories in using it.... read more

A Bika Portuguese translation has been completed by Nuno R. Pinhão of the Physics & Nuclear Protection and Safety Departments at the Portuguese Nuclear and Technological Institute and the dictionary made available for download
A 'How to' describing in 8 easy steps how to create and run Bika dictionaries of LIMS phrases, was published on the Bika SourceForge community site earlier and Dutch, Italian and Spanish translations added to the original Afrikaans and English... read more

After publication of the 'How to' translate Bika at the Bika SourceForge community site, a Spanish translation has been completed by Luis Diego Espinoza of the Laboratorio Nacional de Materiales y Modelos Estructurales - Universidad de Costa Rica and the dictionary made available for download.

The 'How to' describes in 8 easy steps how to create and run Bika dictionaries of LIMS phrases in the language of your choice. Dutch and Italian have been added earlier to the original Afrikaans and English translations... read more

With the help of first members of the embryonic Bika open source community, Dutch and Italian have been added to original Afrikaans and default English Bika languages.

A 'How to' customise Bika languages page was published on the Bika community site at SourceForge.net and was responded to briskly. It describes in 8 easy steps how to create and run Bika dictionaries of LIMS words and phrases in the language of one's choice.... read more

This is a bugfix release that makes BIKA compatible with Plone 2.0.5 and
Zope 2.7.5 and above. It remains backwards compatible with previous
Plone and Zope versions it already worked with.

Changes in this version include:
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- Updated 'skins/bika/date_components_support.py' with latest
version of script in Plone 2.0.5

- Modified access to transitions in workflow scripts, normal
attribute access seems to guarded since Zope 2.7.5.... read more

We have uploaded the manual in the Sourceforge.net repository, if you would like to access it, please visit:

https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=29918&group_id=145464

Please take note that some screenshots are missing due to SF.net's hosting constraints.

If you would like to download the PDF version, please visit:

http://www.bikalabs.com/manual/

The Bika Team

The Bika Laboratory Manual has been published on our website (http://www.bikalabs.com) and is available in PDF format. At a later stage we will also upload an html or txt version on Sourceforge, but in the mean time you can download it form here:

http://bikalabs.com/manual/BIKA_LIMS_Manual.pdf

The Bika Team

The first version of Bika LIMS has been released. Check the project page for details or alternatively go to http://www.bikalabs.com