project level custom variables

[KRANTHI THEJ]

Dear all,

I hope this email finds you well.

I am writing to inquire about the possibility of adding custom variables to our projects. As you may know, custom variables are a great way to add more information about subjects and sessions. However, in our institute, we have a lot of additional information that we would like to include about each project, such as study information, demographics, medical, biological, chemical, and imaging-related data.

By adding custom variables to our projects, we would be able to easily track and organize this information in a more efficient manner. It would also allow us to more accurately analyze and interpret our data, as we would have a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of each subject and project.

I would appreciate any information or guidance on how we can implement this solution. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,

kk

[Will Horton]

At this point, there is not a means of defining custom variable sets at the project level. However, Custom Forms -- slated to be released with XNAT 1.8.8 -- does offer that functionality. 

One caveat on usage that I might offer is that, even with Custom Forms, custom metadata defined at the project level isn't easily searchable. If, for example, you wanted to cross-reference "study information" when building a search on image sessions, you might be better served to create a project-level experiment datatype so that those values show up as columns when building an advanced search. Or, it may make sense to add these fields as subject-level custom variables, even if that means replicating values across all subjects in a project. This depends on your workflow for analyzing and interpreting data, however. 

[Will Horton]

I should amend my comment by saying that project attributes -- including custom forms attributes -- are searchable by using the Projects quick search tab on the XNAT home page. Now that custom attributes at the project level are going to be supported, we may look into making these attributes more accessible to other search interfaces as well. 

[KRANTHI THEJ]

Thank you so much Will for your time and explanation.

Hope we will have some documentation about the new features, and Is there any tentative date for the realease of V1.8.8.

regards

kk

[Will Horton]

I can't give you an exact date on 1.8.8, but we aim for quarterly releases and XNAT 1.8.7 is due to be announced fairly shortly. So roughly within the next three months is my estimate. 

[KRANTHI THEJ]

Hi Will,

The new update (1.8.8) with custom forms is truly amazing. I have upgraded to new version and tried to add custom form (project level). It is really very simple and clean the way you implemented the functionality.

just have one question (may be I missed reading some documentation) How can I search the projects based on the new form variables.

for example, I have institution name: unito, I would like to search institution name with "unito" and get all the projects have institution name as unito.

awaiting your reply.

[Will Horton]

I have good news and bad on this topic ... 

The good news is that it is possible to generate table listings of projects, but it is only accessible from the site home page. Go to the quick search tabs on the home page, ensure that the "Projects" tab is selected, and simply click "Submit". 

This will generate a typical XNAT search results page, and you can use "Edit Columns" to add fields from your custom forms to this table. For example, I've created a custom form with an attribute called "Project Type", which I can use to distinguish single-site projects from "umbrella" aggregation projects. 

Now for the bad news... Because this project listing table has not been commonly used, we failed to notice that these columns are not filterable in the way that normal search result columns are. If they were, it would be easy to filter on the value you were looking for. 

We have filed a bug report (XNAT-7749) and should be able to remedy this in an upcoming release. 

[KRANTHI THEJ]

Hi Will,

Thank you so much for the clarification.

Hope to see the "searching data" based on custom forms soon.

Regards

KK 

[Charlie Moore]

Hi there,

Thanks for your early interest in the feature. It's a reassuring sign to see the enthusiasm for it :).

Just to clarify, which will hopefully come as good news if it wasn't clear, we expect that search/filtering on custom form data should work in general; it's only for forms associated to xnat:projectData where this problem would present itself.

Thanks,

Charlie Moore

[Simon Doran]

Hi Charlie, Will et al.,

  Can I clarify something here. Is the lack of ability to search on custom forms attached to projects just a UI thing (i.e., that bit hasn't been built yet), or is there some fundamental reason why searching on those forms presents a problem?

  One of my use cases will rely on being able to use searches via the REST API to retrieve projects based on the contents of project-level forms.

  Best wishes,

Simon

[Will Horton]

Simon, just want to confirm that this is a very simple and fixable bug. I looked into it and the functionality seems to have been deliberately removed from project listings, but with no clear indication of why. In my initial testing, adding filters to project listings doesn't seem to have any adverse effects. I have a commit in the works to address it. 

Regards,

Will   

[Simon Doran]

Hi Will,

  Thanks for confirming this. That's great news!

  Best wishes,

Simon