Much like being served the newspaper in the morning, Espresso welcomes you with a status update of your current synthesis, presented in the form of an auto-generated synthesis scheme containing the currently highest yielding or largest scale experiments (selectable), along with the corresponding synthesis overall yield. In publication quality. No more complex and time consuming queries required, it’s simply there, helping you to understand where you are before diving into the micro-cosmos of your next experiment. And it’s interactive, too: Click a step arrow, and a popup presenting a list of all step experiments created so far, sorted by name, yield or scale will directly carry you to any desired experiment. Additionally, the Info Center panel provides convenient quick links and informs about the status of the application and actions to be taken.

Although the summary capabilities of Espresso allow the rapid location of reactions, a reaction substructure search (RSS) sometimes might be the tool of choice. Espresso not only offers standard RSS, but also supports reaction searches using the SMARTS query language. Each reaction hit is returned with a sorted list of experiments associated with it, thus preventing repetitions and providing immediate overview. - In addition to RSS, any structure present in the reaction sketch of an experiment can be queried in the ChemSpider Web portal by the simple click of a button. This opens access to a wealth of information like systematic name, patents, spectra, safety data, syntheses, etc. 

You might be astonished to find that Espresso’s experiment protocols don’t look like the collection of tables you might be used to. In fact, there are no tables present at all. Just experiment data. Imagine that. And they are understood by the application. Enter a range of conditions, e.g. a temperature range, and a corresponding graph is auto-generated. Add materials, and a shopping list constantly updates the totals of all materials entered, by name and supplier. You also won’t see the protocol space occupied by a plethora of material constants not contributing to the reproducibility of your experiment. These data of course still are present in the background, accessible to you and utilized for the various stoichiometric calculations. Also, PDF documents can be embedded into the protocol exactly where they belong to in the workflow context.

Oh, and you can switch the protocol view from amounts-based to equivalents-based, which allows you to recognize all reagent and solvent ratios utilized at a glance. Quick content recognition is further increased by the ability to graphically group materials to indicate mixtures or solutions. Thus no need to write this down in words over and over. And the possibility to divide the protocol into common workflow sections such as reaction, workup and purification ultimately contributes to understand Espresso’s protocols more visually than by reading them word by word.

How often haven't you been able to reproduce an experiment of a colleague (or even one of your own...) due to incomplete data? To help preventing such situations, Espresso guides users towards more reproducible data entry. After all, what's the value of describing a distillation without recording the pressure? And how would one reproduce a crystallization without given temperature and time? Therefore Espresso requests some minimal workflow operation parameters, depending on the type of operation utilized.

Commercial databases of available reagents seem to be a great way for importing materials. The more extensive, the better, right? Well, maybe not really, apart from the costs. Imagine you’d like to import acetone. You will get a flood of hits, one for each supplier, quality and package size. Espresso implements a much more focused way for database material import, resulting in one single hit per material, along with a palette of so far personally entered catalog-numbers and associated purities relating to it (favorites), ordered by use-frequency. How is this done? The materials and their properties originate from a streamlined generic materials database, containing the material name and physical constants only, which easily can be maintained and extended by the user or an admin. If centrally distributed, updates of this database will not interfere with the personal material favorites, since stored in a separate database.

Espresso supports the concurrent presence of multiple experiments in separate, instantly accessible tabs. Thus, all ongoing and other relevant experiments can be gathered for immediate access - an invaluable feature e.g. when running multiple experiments at a time, or when collecting relevant experiments during browsing. There's even an option to automatically open all non-finalized experiments via an Info Center shortcut. On top of that, several users can share the same Espresso instance, which provides functionality for switching from one local user to another.

Gone are the days when you needed to set up a special query just to get a list of experiments sorted by common criteria like yield or scale. In Espresso the click of a button will sort all step experiments within the experiment tree by yield, scale or name (default). And of course this sorted list remains fully interactive. Just click one of its items and the experiment will immediately open.

Would you like to be forced to print the contents of an MS Word document as a database report? Well, probably not really. Espresso instantly prints experiments as displayed on screen. PDF exports contain the same WYSIWYG content, along with an appended set of all documents embedded into the experiment. Usually in about five seconds or less - including convenient PDF bookmark references for all embedded documents.

Since the beginning of chemistry, hand-written signatures and associated dates in paper notebooks were the well-established standard to ensure proof of who did what when. Which in fact was as much as could be done about it at the time. However, no one e.g. could prevent changes to the content after signature. Today's digital signatures, however, radically improve the intellectual property protection. They digest the signed content into a unique fingerprint, unify it with the signature date and time retrieved from an independent time server and add references of your identity. This package then is encrypted to a short, unique sequence of characters - the digital signature. Espresso utilizes digital signatures to protect your intellectual property. No server required - it happens directly on your local desktop database when you sign an experiment. Here's more technical details.

Working with a sluggish electronic lab notebook is like driving a fast Ferrari while having to stop every minute due to a fuel pump problem - it will turn into a nerve problem. Often enough, performance issues with ELN applications occur due to their dependency on server functionality - and there are many causes for delays on a network. Espresso was designed differently. It's built to run completely self-sustained on your desktop. You will immediately feel this from its responsiveness. Think about opening an experiment in less than a second and creating a PDF file of the experiment with appended attachments in about five seconds or less on a current mid-range system. And obviously a temporarily unavailable network or server won't impress you too much.

The installation of a multi-tier (server-dependent) application is a complex task requiring considerable resources in terms of time, people and paperwork. And there's no way to quickly download a demo for testing. Since Espresso does not depend on server resources, it can easily be installed on a local PC for a 1:1 evaluation and subsequent productive use (no re-install required). The demo will allow you to create 25 experiments for testing. Just follow the steps indicated on the product download page.

What's the use of even the best electronic lab notebook, if you simply can't afford it? Well, if you can afford a couple of bottles of THF puriss. per year, you can also afford Espresso. It works like a prepaid phone contract: You purchase, say, a quota of 500 experiments for your personal local database, and after having used them up, you purchase additional experiment quota. Thus, you transparently only pay for your actual usage while no other fees apply - and the latest application updates and upgrades are available to you at no cost. The envisaged cost per experiment is around 25 US cents (500 experiment pack).

Espresso currently is in version 2, so consider the current functionality as a starting point for more to come (remember: registered users obtain application upgrades for free). One strategic focus of future development will be ways to share your experiments with others, among many other items on the list.

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