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FacultyHub User Guide

Everything you can do in FacultyHub — booking equipment, completing safety inductions, running a lab's day-to-day operations, and everything in between.

For researchers & students For lab managers

Getting started

FacultyHub is organised around labs — each research lab or facility (Biotron, Genomics, Plant Sciences, and so on) has its own space in the platform, with its own equipment, bookings, and safety requirements. You'll spend most of your time inside one lab at a time.

Creating an account

  • Sign-up is open — go to the site and click Sign up. You'll give your name, email, and a password (institution/department and phone are optional). No approval is needed to create an account; every new account starts as a Researcher.
  • If your institution uses Moodle, you can sign in with that instead — it links to your account automatically by email.
  • You don't strictly need an account to submit an equipment fault report, a booking, or a lab enquiry — do any of these while signed out and the system quietly sets up an account for you, then emails you a link to set a password so you can come back and track it.

Becoming a lab manager

You can't grant yourself manager access — a superadmin assigns it. Once you're made a Manager of a specific lab, a new Staff section appears in your sidebar for that lab, with approval queues and management tools. Being a Lab Manager for one lab doesn't give you any special access in a different lab unless you're assigned there too.

First time in a lab? Open the lab's page and look for an "I want to…" list near the top — it's a shortcut to the most common actions: booking equipment, starting an induction, reporting a fault.

Key concepts

A handful of ideas come up throughout FacultyHub. Understanding them up front will save you some head-scratching later.

Global vs. lab view
Most features exist in two places: a global version ("all my bookings, in any lab") and a lab-scoped version ("bookings in this lab only"). The sidebar switches between them depending on whether you currently have a lab "in view," shown as a strip near the top of the sidebar with a Switch lab link.
Modules
Each lab can turn features on or off — Bookings, Inductions, Helpdesk, Chemical Inventory, and so on are all individually switchable per lab by a superadmin. If a feature is missing from a lab's sidebar, it's most likely simply switched off for that lab, not something wrong with your account.
Booking vs. Booking Application
A Booking is a specific date/time reservation of one piece of equipment. A Booking Application is a longer, reviewed request for permission to run a project in a lab (used only for equipment that requires formal application — see Bookings). An approved application lets you then make bookings under it.
Induction vs. Certification
An induction is a safety quiz you complete inside the app for a specific lab or piece of equipment. A certification is an external credential (like a First Aid certificate) — you upload evidence of it and a manager reviews it. They expire independently of each other.

Bookings

Everyone

Reserve equipment and lab space, or apply for longer-term project access.

What you can do

  • Browse the Equipment Directory, open an item, and check its live calendar — your own approved bookings show in green, others' in blue, pending ones in amber.
  • Book equipment directly from its page: pick dates and quantity, state your purpose, and submit. Some equipment has extra custom fields built in by the lab — fill those in too.
  • Manage bookings from My Bookings — cancel a pending or approved booking, add other people as participants by email, and see any inductions a manager has attached to that specific booking.
  • For equipment that requires a formal application, fill out a Booking Application instead (project details, PI, dates, and — for some labs — tables of the plants, microorganisms, or invertebrates involved). You can save it as a draft and come back to it before submitting.
  • Plan a Visit — a simpler form for one-off group or school visits: lab, contact details, date, group size, and purpose.

What managers can also do

  • Approvals queue — approve or reject pending bookings, with a reason if you reject. Missing inductions for the booker show up as a warning, but the decision is yours.
  • Application Queue — review submitted applications. Quick-approve to create the booking immediately, or send back specific requirements (particular inductions and/or forms the applicant must complete first) — this opens a message thread with them automatically.
  • Visit Request Queue — approve or reject visit requests with reviewer notes.
  • Attach a specific induction requirement to one booking, separate from whatever the equipment normally requires.
  • Switch a piece of equipment's booking mode (see below) directly from its page.

How booking works, by equipment mode

Every piece of equipment has one of five modes — check it on the equipment page before you try to book.

Mode What happens when you book
OpenSubmit the form — approved instantly.
Requires staff approvalSubmit the form — status is Pending until a manager approves or rejects it.
Requires formal applicationYou must submit and get an approved Booking Application first, then raise bookings under it.
Contact staff to arrangeNo online form — the directory shows contact details only.
Not currently availableHidden from booking entirely.

Walkthrough: booking equipment that requires formal application

  1. 1

    Submit the application

    Fill out the project details, dates, and any lab-specific fields. Save as draft if you need to come back later, then submit when ready.

  2. 2

    A manager reviews it

    They can approve it straight away, or send back specific inductions or forms you need to complete first — you'll get a message about it.

  3. 3

    Complete any requirements

    Finish the listed inductions/forms, then click Confirm Booking on the application.

  4. 4

    Booking created

    Once everything's satisfied, your booking is created automatically and appears in My Bookings.

Inductions

Everyone

Safety and competency quizzes required before you can use certain labs or equipment.

What you can do

  • My Inductions lists every induction relevant to you, with your status: not started, valid, expiring soon, or expired.
  • Start an induction to work through its sections and questions — checkboxes, true/false, multiple choice, and short-answer. You need to answer everything before you can submit.
  • Once completed, you can view your answers again any time, and download a PDF certificate of that completion.

What managers can also do

  • Compliance view — a grid of every user against every induction you manage, so you can see gaps at a glance.
  • Export completions to CSV for an audit.
  • Build and edit induction templates — add sections and questions of various types, reorder them by drag-and-drop, and set which answers are marked correct where that applies.
Expired vs. stale. "Expired" means the time limit on your completion has passed. "Stale" means the induction itself has been edited since you completed it — even if it hasn't technically expired, a manager may ask you to redo it.

Certifications

Everyone

External credentials — like a First Aid certificate — that you hold evidence for and a manager verifies.

What you can do

  • My Certifications shows every certification type your labs use, and the status of your latest submission for each.
  • Upload a file as evidence (plus any notes) to submit or resubmit for a given certification type.

What managers can also do

  • Certification queue, filterable by status — approve or reject a submission with a note. Approving sets its expiry date.

Equipment directory

Everyone

Browse what's available and check details before you book.

What you can do

  • Search and filter equipment by name, category, status, or lab.
  • Open an item to see its description, specs, location, access hours, photos, live booking calendar, hazards, required PPE, and any documents attached — plus your own completion status for any required inductions, shown right there.
  • Equipment detail pages are visible even if you're not signed in, so you can check something out before creating an account.

What managers can also do

  • Add, edit, or remove equipment — name, category, location, access hours, booking mode, quantity, internal/external pricing, and an optional custom booking form.
  • Manage photos.
  • Log maintenance records (service, calibration, repair, inspection) — set a "next due" date and it creates a personal reminder for you automatically.
  • Log or remove hazards, with severity and required PPE.
  • A quick control to change just the booking mode, without opening full editing.

Floor plans

Everyone

An interactive map of a lab's physical space.

What you can do

  • View a lab's floor plan — clickable zones over an uploaded image, each linked to a piece of equipment where relevant. A zone's colour reflects that equipment's live status, and refreshes automatically every few minutes.

What managers can also do

  • Use the Floor Plan Editor to draw and reshape zones on the image, name them, link each to a piece of equipment, and set its colour.

Helpdesk

Everyone

Report a problem or ask for help — including anonymously.

What you can do

  • Submit a ticket — pick a type (including "Equipment Fault"), write a subject and description, set a priority, and optionally link a specific piece of equipment.
  • You can submit without being signed in — you'll just give a name and email, and get a confirmation page instead of a trackable ticket.
  • My Tickets lists what you've submitted; open one to reply in the thread and see its status history.

What managers can also do

  • Ticket Queue, filterable by status, for the labs you manage.
  • Assign a ticket to yourself or a colleague (moves it from New to Open automatically).
  • Change its status — New, Open, Stalled, Resolved, Closed — with an optional note.
  • Post internal notes visible only to staff, not the person who submitted the ticket.
Reporting a fault automatically flags the equipment. If you're signed in and report an Equipment Fault against a specific item, it's immediately marked "Under Maintenance." Resolving the ticket restores it to Available. Anonymous fault reports don't do this automatically — a staff member confirms it first.

Messages

Everyone

Direct one-to-one conversations with another person on the platform.

  • Inbox lists every conversation you're part of.
  • Compose a new message to any active user — it starts a new thread, or reuses one you already have with them.
  • Opening a thread marks the other person's messages as read, and you'll get a notification whenever someone replies.

Hub

Everyone

Announcements, staff contacts, and shared documents.

  • Hub home — pinned and recent announcements.
  • Staff Directory — contact details for staff who've chosen to be listed.
  • Document Library — policy documents grouped by category (Health & Safety, Policy, Guides/SOPs, and so on).
  • Emergency contacts for a lab, where set, appear in a strip near the top of the page rather than as a separate section.
Content here — announcements, documents, staff entries — is written by superadmins from the admin panel, not by lab managers directly.

Chemical inventory

Lab managers only

Tracking chemical stock, safety data, and usage. Not visible to researchers — this section doesn't appear in your sidebar and can't be reached by anyone other than a lab manager or superadmin, regardless of how a lab's other modules are configured.

How the storage hierarchy works

  • Building — an optional top-level grouping, e.g. by campus site.
  • Storage Lab — a chemical storage area within a lab, e.g. "Biotron's CHEM-301 room."
  • Storage Location — the room/cabinet/shelf/fridge/freezer within that, which can be restricted to specific hazard classes (a flammables cabinet won't accept an incompatible chemical).
  • Substance — the chemical itself: name, CAS number, formula, hazard classes.
  • Container — one physical bottle or drum, with its own barcode and QR code.

What you can do

  • Dashboard — expiring and low-stock alerts, totals by unit, top substances, storage and hazard breakdowns, and pending approval requests, filterable by building or storage lab.
  • Quick Receive — the fastest way to log a delivery: pick an existing substance (searchable) or define a new one — you can look it up on PubChem to auto-fill its CAS number and formula — then set quantity, location, lot, and expiry. Creates the container and its first usage log entry in one step, and takes you straight to print its barcode.
  • Containers — search, filter, view, edit, print a QR code, and log usage (used, transferred, disposed, or received) against any container.
  • Substances — browse alphabetically or by hazard class; each substance's page shows every container and document linked to it.
  • Usage Log — the full audit trail across every container, searchable and exportable to CSV.
  • Approval Requests — for substances flagged restricted, approve or reject usage requests.
  • Storage Setup — manage buildings, storage labs, and locations.
  • Documents — upload SDS/safe-method-of-use files; re-uploading a document keeps the previous version rather than overwriting it.
  • Reports — CSV exports for stock rollups, hazard breakdowns, expiry, low stock, and usage.
Weekly digest. Every Monday morning, each lab manager automatically gets an email listing anything expiring within two weeks or running low, scoped to the labs they manage. Nothing to report means no email — it won't nag you weekly regardless.

Sample tracking

Lab managers only

Tracks physical samples through a sequencing pipeline. Like Chemical Inventory, this is staff-only and won't appear for researcher accounts.

What you can do

  • Dashboard — counts by status, overdue samples, and recent activity.
  • Receive a sample — name, organism, sample type, received and expected-delivery dates, and notes.
  • Each sample moves through a fixed pipeline: Received → In Prep → Sequencing → Sequenced → Delivered, or Failed (which needs a reason and ends the pipeline). Every status change is recorded permanently — that history is the audit trail.
  • Attach result files (e.g. FASTQ files, reports) to a sample as they become available.
On the 1st of each month, every lab manager and superadmin automatically gets a CSV report of the previous month's status changes by email.

Analytics & reports

Lab managers only

Charts and exports summarising activity in your lab (or platform-wide, for superadmins).

  • Bookings by day and by status, ticket breakdown by type, form submission summary, user counts, and induction compliance — with CSV export for bookings and tickets over a chosen date range.
  • A separate, older Reports page also exists with booking counts by status, the top ten most-booked resources, and a six-month booking history export — kept alongside the newer Analytics section rather than replacing it.

Admin panel

Superadmins only

Platform-wide configuration. Note this is a step above ordinary lab manager access — even a Lab Manager can't reach this panel for their own lab. A lab manager's own tools are the Staff section of the sidebar covered throughout this guide, not this panel.

  • Dashboard — active user count, pending approvals across the platform, a list of labs with no manager assigned (worth checking periodically), and a recent audit log feed.
  • Users — create accounts, view a user's full activity in one place, change their platform role, activate or deactivate an account, and assign or remove which labs they belong to and in what capacity.
  • Site Settings — site name, logo, contact details, footer text, primary colour.
  • Content — write announcements and policy documents that appear in the Hub.
  • Form Builder — build the dynamic forms used both standalone and as custom booking-application fields.
  • Audit Log — a full history of tracked actions across the platform: approvals, rejections, role changes, and more.
  • Labs — create and edit labs, and toggle which modules (Bookings, Inductions, Chemical Inventory, and so on) are switched on for each one. A new lab starts with everything enabled.
  • Lab Members — assign or remove who belongs to a lab and as what (Member or Manager).
  • Integrations — Moodle and webhook/API configuration.

Walkthrough: onboarding a new lab manager

  1. 1

    Create the account

    Manage → Users → Create, with their name and email.

  2. 2

    Assign them to a lab as Manager

    Do this in the same form, or later from either their user page or that lab's Lab Members screen.

  3. 3

    They set a password

    An email goes out automatically with a link to do this.

  4. 4

    Staff tools appear

    Once they log in, the Staff section shows up in their sidebar for that lab.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't I see Chemical Inventory, Sample Tracking, Analytics, or the admin panel?
These are staff-only by design. A researcher account won't see them regardless of what's switched on for a lab.
Why is a piece of equipment greyed out or missing a Book button?
Check its booking mode — "Restricted" (contact staff) and "Not currently available" equipment never gets a self-service booking option.
A feature I expect isn't showing up in the sidebar at all — is my account broken?
Almost certainly not — it's more likely that module is simply switched off for the lab you're viewing. Ask your lab manager or a superadmin.
What's the difference between My Activity and each feature's own history page?
My Activity is a quick cross-app summary with a preview of each area. The full, detailed list for each still lives on its own page — My Bookings, My Applications, and so on.

Glossary

Lab
A research lab or facility using FacultyHub — its own equipment, people, and settings.
Lab membership
What actually makes you part of a specific lab, as a Member or a Manager — separate from your overall platform role.
Module
One feature area (Bookings, Inductions, Chemical Inventory, etc.) that a superadmin can switch on or off per lab.
Booking
A specific date/time reservation of a piece of equipment.
Booking Application
A longer, reviewed request for project access, required only for equipment set to "Requires formal application."
Induction
A safety/competency quiz you complete in the app, with an expiry date.
Certification
An externally-earned credential you upload evidence for, reviewed and approved by a manager.
Container (ChemTrack)
One physical bottle or drum of a chemical substance, with its own barcode.
Sample (Sample Tracking)
A physical specimen tracked through the sequencing pipeline from receipt to delivery.