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As a builder, you build templates for your team to fill out.

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Seal Types

Everything in Seal is a Type. Types are self contained blobs of JSON data that conform to our schema. The different Types in Seal enables a wide range of templates to be built.

Types in Seal:

• Charts

• Documents

• File

• Record

• Row

• Script

• Workflow

• Custom

All types can have associated metadata fields, with each type potentially differing in page content and following a unique lifecycle.

See table for the different Type configurations.

Types	Content Type	Life Cycle*	Create From
Charts	Data	Continuous	Type
Documents	Page Content	Continuous	TypeTemplate
File	File	Continuous	Type
Record	Page Content	Completable	Template
Row	Data	Continuous	TypeTemplate
Script	Data	Continuous	Type
Workflow	Page Content	Completable	Template

*What defines the Lifecycle of a Type?

All Types have a top level status field. There are two types of entity lifecycle that define the possible status values - continuous and completable. Different Types may follow distinct lifecycles based on their purpose and workflow.

Completable

Completable lifecycles represent a discrete piece of work carried out at a specific time, and therefore are usually not modified once they've been finished. If mistakes are identified, you can make a new revision of the completable entity. The stages are:

Active → Done → In Revision → Revised Continuous

Continuous lifecycles are designed to be reused and improved over time. Continuous entities have numbered versions - the version number increases every time you publish a new version. The stages are:

Version 1 → Draft → In review → Version 2

Fields

Fields are stored as an object called fields, keyed by the unique field names. Every field object has the following fields:

• id - a unique UUID given to every field, so it can be referenced. When a Data Record is created from a Data Step, it will have the same fields with matching ids

• the field's type

• the field's dataType (usually the same as the type, but multiple field types may use the same underlying data type). type is how it appears in the UI, dataType refers to the underlying data type

• value - the actual data. All field values are nullable - they are usually null in Data Steps (unless you want a default value for produced Records), and then populated in Data Records when a lab technician is doing data entry, for example.

• config - certain field have additional config, for example specifying a number display format, or whether the field can contain multiple values.

For example:

  "fields": {
    "CSV file": {
      "id": "f1714b77-d081-4a1e-bfc4-427289fce204",
      "type": "REFERENCE",
      "value": [
        {
          "id": "e9a49732-49a0-4674-b683-c6991fac160a",
          "version": "12"
        }
      ],
      "config": {
        "allowMultiple": false
      },
      "dataType": "ENTITY"
    },
    "Group name": {
      "id": "0519bc74-7086-4ba2-b769-994b62a48945",
      "type": "STRING",
      "value": "A23-Z",
      "config": {},
      "dataType": "STRING"
    },
    "Sample weight": {
      "id": "70c33317-16ae-48b2-9907-fc5112677773",
      "type": "NUMBER",
      "value": 52.3,
      "config": {
        "format": "0.000"
      },
      "dataType": "NUMBER"
    }
  }

Field Types

Type: NUMBER

Description: Numeric value.

Value: A valid JSON number or null.

Config:

format // '0.X' | '0.00' | '0.000' | '0,0.00' | '0.0%' | '0.00%' | '0.0a' | 'SCI' | 'SCI3' | 'EU' | 'IND' | 'Rounded'

Type: STRING

Description: Text.

Value: A string or null. The string must be at least length 1 - to represent an empty value, use null.

Config: None

---

Type: BOOLEAN

Description: True/false.

Value: A JSON boolean or null.

Config: None

---

Type: DATE

Description: A date in ISO 8601 format.

Value: An ISO date string or null

Config: None

---

Type: DATETIME

Description: A datetime in ISO 8601 format, requiring a timezone.

Value: A timezone aware ISO datetime string or null

Config:

format // 'PPpp' | 'PPppp' | 'Pp' | "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH':'mm':'ssXXX" | 'dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss'

---

Type: SELECT

Description: An array of enum-like strings. Displayed in the UI as a dropdown/select field with multiple options.

Value: An array of strings.

Config:

selectOptions // array of strings specifying the enum options
allowMultiple // bool, whether multiple values are allowed

---

Type: REFERENCE

Description: An entity reference field for referencing other entities (of any kind), including File entities for referencing files.

Value: An array of {id, version} objects.

Config:

allowMultiple // bool