It’s impossible to pick a filename that describes everything you need to track about a sample – that’s why we make it easy to add metadata. Simply click the pencil icon to fill out the metadata associated with that sample. At the bottom of this window, you can add additional metadata fields (field name on the left) and the associated value for that sample (on the right), as well as selecting the type of value.

You can also add tags, which can be used to label similar groups of samples (e.g., control, stool, arthritis), by clicking the tag icon . You can write in any short identifying word, or search through a set of commonly used tags provided by the platform.

To add or change metadata or tags for a large group of samples, simply switch to the list view and then click the "Edit" menu. This will allow you to tag a large selection of samples at once.

To change the metadata for a large batch of samples, switch to the "list" view, select a group of samples, click on the "Download Selected" button, and select "Sample Sheet".

This will download a CSV or Excel spreadsheet containing the metadata for that batch of samples. To add multiple tags in the sample sheet, simply separate the tags using a comma within the "Tags" column. To add new metadata fields, simply add new columns to the sample sheet, with the metadata field name as the column name (i.e. row 1), and the sample-specific values for that metadata field in the subsequent sample rows.

If you enter your own metadata into that spreadsheet and upload it back to One Codex (using the "Upload Sample Sheet" button), the values in the spreadsheet will be used to update and change the metadata for each of those samples.