Mausoleum

Service group

Depending on the institute where you are using the Mausoleum, mouse work can be organized in different ways. In one institute the individual groups are doing all the necessary work by themselves whereas in other institutes the mouse work is performed by a specialized service unit. In the first mode every group has its own data and no member from another group can see or manipulate them. But if you are using shared resources as in the second mode the individual groups have to share to some extent informations about rooms, racks, cages and mice.

To meet these requirements there is a special group in Mausoleum called “service”. This group will be automatically created. The service group contains the information of shared resources. These resources are rooms and racks which are shared between individual groups.

If two groups share a rack it is necessary for them to know which spots are occupied from the other group. They do not need to know what is in the cages but they must not put their cage at a spot where already a cage from the group sits. To achieve this, the shared rack has to be under the control of the service unit.

The next figure tries to illustrate the way how this is organized in Mausoleum. We have our two groups called “Group A” and “Group B”. They share a Rack called “Rack 1” which sits in a room called “Room A”.

You see that that both groups have an object for the rack and the room. Because they want to share this rack, it is also defined in the service group. In addition there is a established between the racks what makes it possible to bring together the necessary data. What is in these racks is not contained in the service group. All the cages, mice, lines, strains etc. is private property of the groups. For the service group the only important thing is that it can correlate the information contained in the group’s data with its rack and room objects. After a rack is under control of the service group its attributes (like name or the room where it is located) cannot be altered. It also cannot be deleted from the group’s guru. All that is possible only for a user with the role HEAD OF SERVICE in the service group.

Another point here is that caretakers of the service group must handle all cages within a room regardless of the group to which they belong. For them all cages and mice within this room are visible. The next table shows what the rack display looks like in a rack which is shared between Group A and Group B in the different groups.

Group A	Group B	Service Group

Logged in as a user of either Group A or Group B you can see only the cages from your group. But via the mentioned above Mausoleum knows that other groups are also using this rack and can determine where cages from other groups are placed. These occupied spots in the rack are shown as dark shaded empty spots. You cannot see which cage from another group is sitting there nor do you have access to the content of these cages. On the other hand if you are logged in as a caretaker of the service group you can see all the cages within that rack and you can see all the mice and their attributes and can – within the limits of your privileges – modify them.

These features are only usable if the respective rack is maintained by the service group. If a group has additional racks which are not under the supervision of the service unit, only members of this group have access to these racks and to the data of the contained objects. Being logged in as a member of a normal group you can easily detect whether a given rack is under the supervision of the service group. These racks are shown with an “[S]” as prefix whereas the racks which are not included in the service unit don’t show any prefix. In the situation shown here

Rack1 is a rack which only belongs to this group whereas Rack2 is controlled by the service group and therefore is shown as “[S] Rack2”. This nomenclature is also used for the shared rooms where the racks of the service group are located.

Users categories of the service group

In this group there only two possible kinds of users:

HEAD OF SERVICE: This user is the main user of the service unit. This user can create new racks and rooms and is responsible for the distribution of these objects to the groups. In addition this user can create reports for the groups and for the whole service unit.

SERVICE CARETAKER: This user is the one working with the mice and cages within one room. He or she can see and modify the attributes of all the mice within the room regardless of the group to which they belong.