Version: 9.36.0
2024-12-01

We have made important changes to the way addresses are managed in LabOrders.
Please read the following content carefully and do get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions.

⚠ It is particularly important that you take your time to Review your new addresses.

Finding your addresses

If your institution allows editing of addresses at the requester level, you can access the relevant content by going to Menu Orders > Addresses.  
If you don't see this option it means that your institution service users are controlling the addresses and you can probably skip the rest of this content.

Two type of addresses

In the previous structure, addresses often included both the physical destination of the goods (used by the vendor to ship the items to you) and a mix of other information relevant only for internal purposes (the name of the requester or your lab details). This caused a number of challenges on delivery and made the centralized management of institutional addresses difficult.    

To help improve on that situation,  addresses are now split in two different types:

- Shipping addresses specify the physical location where the shipment will be delivered. The purpose of the shipping address is to ensure the carrier or courier knows where to drop the package. Typically this address is external to the organization or corresponds to a central receiving location. 

-Internal addresses specify the individual, group, or internal location within the organization that is intended to receive the shipment. Their purpose is to ensure the item is delivered to the correct person, team or internal department after the shipment has arrived at the Shipping address. 

⚠ Note: If your institution was previously using the Lab contacts functionality, this has now been replaced by Internal addresses. 

Institutional shipping addresses

As part of the preparation for the current changes, we contacted your institution and they have identified a number of Institutional addresses that will now be available for you to select for your orders.

With these changes you are encouraged to use these Institutional addresses as the shipping address for your Orders, instead of editing them.  

To add details like your name or lab contact you should use the Internal address (see the next section).

If you do need to include a physical shipping address not yet available, you can still create it, by clicking the Add shipping address button and identifying the PI the address should be associated with.

If your institution is using addresses approvals, new shipping addresses that you create will show up with the Tag "Pending approval" in order to help your institution services better identify and validate them.

You can also select one Shipping address to be the default shipping address used in your Orders, by clicking Actions > Set default address in the target address line. 

Internal addresses

You will need create a new internal address or review the existing ones. 

To create a new address click the Add internal address button and fill the requested information.

You can set an Internal address as the default internal address for your Orders by clicking the Actions > Set default address. 

Selecting the address for a requisition

In your requisitions, you may choose any combination of a Shipping and Internal address.

The combination of these addresses will be associated with your Order and depending on your institution settings they may both show up in the Purchase Order, order emails or other internal documents.

Please review your new addresses

We had to make changes to existing addresses, in order to map the fields available in LabOrders with the standardly used fields. In particular, some fields had to be concatenated into a single field (eg: "Department", "Institution"). For that reason we ask you to review your addresses carefully.

If you see a new field "Internal address", then your institution has been upgraded to use "Institutional addresses". This means that your previously existing addresses were disabled as you are encouraged to use the "Institutional addresses" suggested by your institution's central services. If you do not see this field, your institution has not upgraded yet or opted not to.

In any case, we encourage you to read the information above carefully to understand the difference between the new "Internal address" and "Shipping address".

Other questions and suggestions

Please get in touch with our helpdesk@laborders.com if you have any questions or suggestions about these changes.