NUcore

**NUcore**
Original author(s)	Feinberg Research Office, Northwestern University Office for Research, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center
Developer(s)	Table XI
Initial release	March 7, 2011
Written in	Ruby, Haml
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Type	Resource booking software
License(s)	MIT License
Website	https://github.com/tablexi/nucore-open

NUcore (Northwestern University Core Facility Management Software) is a free open-source core facility management application that allows order management and tracking, billing, and resource scheduling for laboratories.^[1]

Product history

With a 2008 reorganization of Northwestern University's core facility program came a need for a software platform able to standardize order management, billing, instrument scheduling, and reporting for its more than 50 core facilities, which are "centralized technology-based laboratories that maintain and support sophisticated equipment for use by their host institution's researchers and ... external customers."^[2]^[4] Coding of the system, NUcore, commenced in 2010, designed to be "a basic system that could be iteratively expanded as cores enrolled and provided feedback on their needs."^[2] The first fruits of this labor made their way to GitHub in early March 2011^[3], at the behest of Feinberg School of Medicine's Office of General Counsel and technology transfer office.^[2] Testing and enrollment into the system began in 2011 at Northwestern University, with third-party developer Table XI maintaining the software over GitHub going forward.

As of October 2023^[update], the software continues to receive updates, though it has no formal version numbers.

Features

Base features include^[1]^[2]:

purchase items
request services
schedule instruments
order status checks
billing management
role-based security
journal management
NETID authentication
reporting
data visualization
training management
email support
interactive dashboards

Installing optional modules allows the user to also^[5]:

accept credit card and purchase orders
split billed charges across different accounts
connect to Dataprobe Power Relays
manage projects
manage sequencing and well plates
authenticate against an LDAP server
authenticate with SSO via SAML

Hardware/software requirements

Docker and Docker Compose are required to install the software. However, the software can also be installed locally; for more about installation, see the start page for NUcore.