Tip #94: Creating Custom Fields in Empower (Part 12)

Welcome back to Get Empowered! In the last Empower tip-of-the-week post for Empower Chromatography Data Software, we learned how to create an Intersample Custom Field (Tip #93).

This week we will continue with our series on Custom Fields and learn how to create an Intersample Custom Field with a summary function (Part 12).

Creating Custom Fields in Empower:

• #82: The basic steps on creating a Custom Field
• #83: How to create a Custom Sample Set Field
• #84: How to create a Component Custom Field
• #85: How to create a Peak Custom Field
• #86: How to copy a Custom Field from one project to another
• #87: How to modify a Custom Field
• #88: How to create a Result Custom Field
• #89: How to modify a Custom Field that applies to specific samples and/or specific peaks
• #90: How to use Empower to evaluate whether the sample meets specific criteria
• #92: How to create one custom field to determine a sample pass/fail
• #93: How to create an Intersample Custom Field

This week, we will create an Intersample Custom Field with a summary function, such as average or %RSD, and learn how Empower Software calculates the average area or the %RSD of the area (i.e., for a peak of interest over multiple samples).

Q: Why create a Custom Field when a simple summary report will provide those values?

A: When we view the average or %RSD in a summary report, we only see those values in either the Print Preview screen or if we save the report as a PDF. The result of the Custom Field is stored and we can use those values for further calculations like a pass/fail.

Let’s get started.

Step 1

The syntax for Intersample calculations is seen in Figure 1. The difference is the addition of the summary function.

Figure 1

Step 2

We can take advantage of some “shortcuts” in this Custom Field. For example, we can use the % symbol to replace multiple characters in the sample labels and/or use it to tell Empower to use ‘all of the injections’ in the calculation (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Step 3

Whenever we use a summary function, we need to add one final line to our Sample Set Method, which is Summarize Custom Fields (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Step 4

The result: the %RSD for the retention time of our peak is 0.234% (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Step 5

For purpose of comparison: view the summary report showing the same information (Figure 5).

Figure 5

It’s that easy!

Final notes:

• See Tip#90 to learn how to create a custom field for pass/fail evaluation.
• This procedure can be followed using the QuickStart or Pro interface.

Please rate this Empower Tip of the Week

Next week in Empower Tip #95 – We’ll continue our series on Custom Fields.

More resources

• Save the Date for [inform] 2019. Waters Informatics Users’ Conference, May 20-23 in Austin, Texas.  Learn More
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• See all of our tips for using Empower CDS Software.