Reporter 3.2: How To Report Calculated Concentrations of "<0" or "N/A"

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

Issue Description

A MultiQuant™ or Analyst® software results table contains values of "<0" and "N/A" for some calculated concentration values. To report out these values into the report template using the AB SCIEX Reporter Template Suite 3.2, the following if statement was used:

"If $Calculated_Concentration<0"

This statement did not work to output the value of "<0" or "N/A" into the report.

An if statement of calculated concentration less than zero does not work for concentrations "<0" or "N/A" in a report template.

Resolution

When using the above if statement in a report template, the text values for calculated concentration that are listed as “<0” and “N/A” are being interpreted as numbers that are greater than zero and not as numerical values less than zero. As a result, this information will not be pulled into a report and shown as "0" or "<0". 

To filter these calculated concentration values of “<0” and “N/A” in a report template, a query must be used that can convert the calculated concentration text to a numerical value. To do this, an if statement in Excel that changes “<0” and “N/A” to true zero numerical values must be added. Then add the new numerical result that was calculated in Excel using a custom tag in the report template. Ensure that the query is linked to the template in the MetaField tag.