Tip #210: Empower User Question: Reporting Custom Field Values in Empower

Welcome back to Get Empowered! In the last Empower tip-of-the-week blog for Empower Chromatography Data System, we featured a special Empower Tip 4^th Anniversary recap of 2020 (Tip #209).

In this week’s tip, we will answer another Empower user question regarding Custom Field values.

Q: I have an Intersample Peak Custom Field with a summary function which works as expected. The result of that Custom Field is then used in a second Peak Custom Field which works as expected. The result of the second Custom Field is then used in a third Intersample Peak Custom Field with a summary function. The result of that Custom Field increments until the last injection. At the last injection the proper value is reported. How can I get Empower to report the final value without reporting incremental values?

Great question. Let’s get started.

Step 1

Custom Field 1 is a simple Intersample Peak Field calculating the average area for the peaks using all injections (figure 1).

Figure 1

Step 2

Custom Field 2 is a Simple Peak Field which takes the average area, minus the area for an individual peak, divided by the average area, times 100 (figure 2).

Figure 2

Step 3

Custom Field 3 is a simple Intersample Peak Field calculating the average value for Custom Field 2 (figure 3).

Figure 3

Step 4

Custom Fields 1 and 2 are calculated properly. Custom Field 3 increments, meaning the average for injection 1 of peak 1 is simply the value of Custom Field 2. The average for injection 2 of peak 1 is the average value of Custom Field 2 for the first 2 injections. Finally, the average for injection 3 of peak 1 is the true average value for all 3 injections (figure 4).

Figure 4

Step 5

The solution is to include the full calculation for Custom Field 2 in Custom Field 3 (figure 5).

Figure 5

Step 6

Now the average value reported is the same for all injections and the proper values are reported (figure 6).

Figure 6

It’s that easy!

Final Note: You can use either the Pro or QuickStart interface for this tip.

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Next week in Empower Tip #211 – We will revisit our VLOG series showcasing Empower as an important tool to implement Method Lifecycle Management (MLCM) and discuss the MVM option in Empower.

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