Signing experiments with Touch ID

Thursday, 5 March 2015 in Hivebench by Vincent Tourraine

There’s a new version of Hivebench for iPhone and iPad available on the App Store, and it will change the way you sign your experimental results.

No one likes passwords, but signatures on Hivebench are critical for intellectual property rights, and so the application needs to make sure that you are the author. Starting with the iPhone 5s and last year iPads, Apple introduced a better solution for your mobile devices: fingerprint recognition, a.k.a. “Touch ID”.

Millions of people already enjoy this technology to secure their personal data, you can now use it to secure your lab results too.

Hivebench with Touch ID

So how does it work?

One of the great things about this new feature is that there’s no dedicated button, it simply presents itself when you need it.

First, you will need to have Touch ID configured on your device (iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3).
Using the new version of Hivebench, you won’t notice any change the first time you’ll sign or countersign an experiment. You will have to enter you password… one last time!
From this point on, every time you’ll select the “Sign” or “Countersign” action for an experiment, the Touch ID dialog will be presented. Simply put your finger on the Home button, and voilà: your experiment will be digitally signed.

Signing with Touch ID

You can still switch back to the classic password workflow if you want to, by tapping “Enter Password” on the Touch ID dialog. When signing experiments, this option will also let you select colleagues to send them an email notification.

Available now

In addition, this new version brings a faster way to duplicate an experiment (using the swipe gesture on an existing record), as well as several minor improvements and bug fixes.

Download or update the app from the App Store for free now, and enjoy spending less time on your lab notebook.