Here are at ResearchSpace, despite the enticement of the Scottish summer, our developers are working hard on the next RSpace release, due at the end of July. This month we have some significant new features that we hope will open more possibilities and make your experience with RSpace more productive.

First of all, we’re expanding our API to enable upload of files, and programmatic creation and editing of documents. We’ll provide lots of documentation on our Github site, but this will enable you, for example to automatically add files collected from instruments to your research record, and also create documents with metadata about the experiment and links to the files. There are many possibilities, but we think this will really help to connect RSpace to the rest of your lab data workflow.

Secondly, some users have asked for export of tabular data to be easier. In 1.45 (and 1.44.5, if you’re using our free Community site) you’ll be able to download text content of a table as a CSV file:

Thirdly, we’ve made some improvements to the Gallery. Currently, if you search for items in the Workspace, and then click on a media file search hit, you are taken to the Gallery folder containing that item, but it can be hard to locate it in the folder. Now, it will open the folder, but just showing your selected search hit. Also, you’ll also be able to see at a glance what documents are linked to a Gallery file:

Many users have also asked for a visual indication that documents have been signed, which  is now done

Finally, for those of you who have to manage groups and create /add new users, there will be several new actions to make this easier, including the ability to change the PI of a lab group.

So overall, we hope you like these new features, and of course please let us know what you think!