It's so accessible that I used it in an airport on my way to a meeting.

“We never used to be so well-planned - even though we do tend to be organized, Labguru forced us to think a bit more, regarding the organizational and communicative side of the projects!”

Improved Organization

“The 'tag' function is excellent. Not only do we find stuff this way in our knowledge base, but it also makes us think a few more seconds as to which tags fit each element that we upload (protocol, paper, image). We found a few times that this sort of illuminated a dark corner that we didn't think about before, such as the relevance of an item to several projects at once.”

“If I read a relevant paper, I simply append it to the project and don't have to think about how best to keep it alongside the experiments without excessive filing and file names. We never used to be so well-planned - even though we do tend to be organized, Labguru forced us to think a bit more, regarding the organizational and communicative side of the projects!”

Enhanced Collaboration

"Perfect way to pin-down spontaneous ideas"

“As a group, our lab enjoys ping-ponging ideas and comments through the 'comment' function that is linked to any element that we upload. This is very good especially for images such as gels, and also for new articles. We can even vote on a decision this way, without leaving the computers.”

“As lab manager I really like the 'add task'. The person who gets a task from me through Labguru sees the task very clearly and well-defined, it makes me phrase the task well so it's more clear, I can throw a task anytime I work on the web from anywhere, and it has a built-in deadline that I choose. Then the fellow’s name gets lit-up under lab tasks and can't ignore it until it's done!”

“[When] I had an idea for someone’s project, I just went to Labguru, clicked his member account and pinned a message that was directly linked to the project that was relevant...Much better than finding a place on the table to leave a sticky note! In fact, not only was it a message that I left, I also uploaded my iPhone camera shot of the layout I drew on paper just the minute before, and pinned that to the same message as well!”

Save Money

“We have a bunch of expensive kits that we all use. We actually save money by having everyone see all the time how many of the kits are left and what’s their expiration dates without going into the cold room! Also, we can even see who plans to use them and when.”

Managing People

“As a lab manager who's positioned mostly in his office or airports...my sneak peaks at the lab can be misleading when I try to get an impression of who works hard and who sits on his/her hands. With Labguru, especially the weekly digest of activities that I automatically get to my e-mail, I can really tell who's working hard by [looking at] the updated projects. It does justice to the ones less noticeable when I come in the lab!”

“I particularly like when a new fellow arrives to the lab, and we plan the project with milestones and time-line, including absent days and other factors, and it all gets embedded in the member's profile for both of us to see and edit.”

“The program makes it easy to send a message to everyone, including with email notification. It only takes a second. It’s very convenient to coordinate with everybody since they all can see the notifications and post a response by following the thread. If for example I want the freezers cleaned in two days, I just drop a message to ‘all team’ in the calendar and they all see my plans and plan their work-plan around them.”

Reliable and Always Accessible

“When my computer crashed (and with it our lab's calendar that I use to tell people what's going on during the week), it was very easy to use Labguru calendar. [It] even had a few benefits (like who gets to see each [event] and also e-mail alerts).”

“We made a small [image] bank of thank-you lab images that each one can pull for his/her presentation. It's so accessible that I used it to add stored results to my slideshow in an airport on my way to a meeting at hours in which none of the lab fellows was even awake!”

“The support in Labguru is fantastic. I feel free to press ‘help’ and post a concern or suggestion, and I get a personal reply within a day or two, fully detailed and fit to my topic.”