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The Worklist is the drug-testing bench queue, and it reads drug-testing orders only. A lab running standard clinical work will find it empty — and that is correct, not a fault. Clinical requests are worked from Test requests and the Lab Reports table.
The Worklist puts every regulated specimen in one oldest-first list so the bench can see what is ageing, and lets you clear a run of negative oral-fluid screens in a single action.

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What you’re looking at

The heading is Worklist and the subtitle states the job: “The bench queue, oldest first. Filter, select a batch, and mark received oral-fluid screens negative in one pass — urine and non-negatives go through the per-specimen forms.” Along the top, the status chips double as filters and each carries a live count in brackets — All, Lab intake, Collected, In transit, Received, Screening, Confirmed. Beside them are a search box (Specimen ID, LAN or donor…), a specimen-type select offering All specimen types, Oral fluid and Urine, the List | Rack view toggle, and a refresh button with no label on it. The list columns are Specimen, LAN, Donor, Type, Panel (shown as {n} analytes), Status and Received, with a tick box on each row. The empty state. When nothing matches you get Nothing in the queue for these filters. — widen the filters before you assume something is lost. A lab that runs no regulated collections sees that message on every filter, permanently.

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Switch between list and rack

Rack view lays the current filter out FIFO and colours each well by status, so an ageing specimen is visible from across the bench. A columns select appears next to the toggle in this view only, offering 5 / row, 6 / row, 8 / row, 10 / row and 12 / row. The caption is the thing to remember: “FIFO layout of the current filter — positions are a bench aid, not stored assignments. Click a well to select it for a batch action; double-click to open the specimen.” Nothing about a well is saved. Move the physical rack and the screen does not follow.

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Screen a batch negative

1

Filter to received oral fluid

Select the Received chip and set the specimen-type select to Oral fluid. Batch screening only ever applies to received oral-fluid specimens.
2

Select the specimens

Tick the rows, or click the wells in rack view. The action bar reads {n} selected, and adds · {n} eligible for batch screen (received oral-fluid only) whenever your selection contains something that is not eligible. Clear drops the selection.
3

Open the batch action

Select Mark batch negative ({n}). The dialog opens as Mark {n} screens negative? and explains what it will do: “Records an all-negative initial immunoassay screen for every selected received oral-fluid specimen and finalizes each as a negative result.”
4

Name the technician

Enter the Screening technician — the field prompts for the “Name as it should appear on the chain of custody”. This is the name that will be read back in a challenge, so enter the person who ran the specimens. The submit button stays disabled until you do.
5

Record the screens

Select Record {n} negative screens. It reads Recording… while it runs, then the toast reads {n} specimens screened negative and the specimens move on. Anything that failed is named individually so you can work it by hand.
The dialog’s own words are a compliance instruction, not a formality: “Only do this after the bench run confirmed every one of these specimens screened negative — any specimen with a non-negative must go through its own screen form instead.” A batch attests to a negative screen for every specimen in it, under your named technician.
At most 100 specimens go in one batch — a larger selection returns Batch too large — select at most 100 specimens.

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Why urine is excluded

Batch negative is limited to oral fluid on purpose. Urine needs per-specimen validity testing — temperature, creatinine, pH, adulterants — and there is no honest way to attest to that in bulk, so urine is left out of the batch action by design. Work urine through the per-specimen screen form. See Screening and confirmation.

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Open a single specimen

Selecting a row opens the order workflow sheet with Workflow and Chain of Custody tabs. The Workflow tab shows whichever form the current status calls for — accession, screen, confirmation — so you never have to know which step is next. See Accession an incoming specimen.

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Who can do this

Role decides whether Worklist opens. Permission decides what you may do on the specimens in it. The two access tiers that matter here are Own bench, which grants result entry only, and Whole lab or All sites, which add verification. A Lab Manager does not hold verify by default — authorising a result is a scientist’s clinical act, and it arrives with the access tier, not the administrative role. Accessioning is the exception on this page: it is governed by job-title role, not by a permission. The two specimen toggles that implied otherwise were removed in August 2026, having never been read. See Accession an incoming specimen. A phlebotomist reaches test requests, the intake queue and patients, and nothing else in the lab. A lab scientist reaches the whole bench but is denied Executive, Lab Analytics and Referral Commissions. Two behaviours surprise people:
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. Somebody never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing” — from then on they can only do what is switched on there.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. Where a figure is not yours to see it renders hidden or as a dash, never as a zero.
See Permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The specimens you batched have left the Received filter and the Screening count has moved by the same number.
  • Each one’s Chain of Custody tab shows an Initial Immunoassay Screen event naming the technician you entered.
  • The counts on the status chips add up to the All count.

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Common issues

Expected, if you do not run drug testing. Regulated collections populate this queue; clinical requests live in Test requests.
Your selection contains something other than a received oral-fluid specimen. Filter to Received and Oral fluid first, then reselect — the bar tells you how many of your selection qualify.
A batch is capped at 100. Split the run and record it in two passes.
Each failure is toasted with its specimen ID and reason, and the rest still went through. The usual cause is a specimen whose status moved while you were selecting. Open those on their own.
Take it out of the batch and open it on its own. A non-negative goes to confirmation, never through the batch action — see Screening and confirmation.
You are at a collection centre, which shows This site is a collection center — register specimens and dispatch them to your laboratory. Accessioning, screening and reporting are done at the full lab and are disabled here.
Ask a Lab Manager. The name is written to the chain of custody, so it is corrected deliberately and the correction is itself recorded — see Audit log.

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FAQ

Because it lists drug-testing orders and nothing else. It is not a fault, a filter problem or a permission problem — a lab doing only clinical chemistry will never see a row here. Work those from Test requests.
No, and they are not meant to. Rack view is a FIFO drawing of the current filter — “positions are a bench aid, not stored assignments” — so nothing you do on screen moves a tube, and nothing you do at the bench moves a well.
No. The action only ever accepts received oral-fluid specimens, by design. Urine goes through the per-specimen screen form so the validity results are recorded against the specimen they belong to.
It records an all-negative initial immunoassay screen and finalises each one as a negative result, so those specimens leave the bench. Anything non-negative is untouched by it and still needs confirmation before any analyte can be called Positive.
Order capture goes offline; the bench does not. Accessioning, screening, confirmation, result entry and verification are status-guarded steps whose conflicts need a person at the bench, so they stay online — see Working offline.