Quickstart

Sign up at relaysci.com. A new account comes with sample data, so that is all you need. A small table or image of your own makes step 2 more interesting.

1. Look around the sample you land in

   The first time you sign in, Relay opens the PBMC 3k single-cell sample for you: 2,643 blood cells from one donor laid out as an interactive UMAP, the R notebook that analyses the same cells with Seurat (its results are already in it), and the marker-gene table that notebook produced. Three notes on the desktop say what each part shows.

   Ray, Relay’s assistant, runs a short tour over it. The arrow keys move through it and Esc leaves. To see it again, open Help in the menu bar and pick a chapter under Take the tour.

   The desktop has a menu bar across the top and one dock along the bottom. The dock holds the apps (Data, Commons, Notebooks, Conductor and Studio), then Ray’s bar, then the tools for whichever window is in front. Drag Ray’s bar out of the dock to give Ray a window of its own.

   Getting started in the menu bar opens a checklist of five things to try. This page walks through the same five. It is also under Help.

   Note

   If the sample does not open, Relay says so and offers Try again. You can open it, and other samples, any time from Projects: select the Project name at the left of the menu bar and choose Samples.

2. Bring in a file of your own

   Open Data from the dock and double-click Relay Drive. Drag a file from your computer into that window: it uploads to your Drive. Double-click it to open it in its own Viewer window.

   A table of measurements (CSV) opens as a table you can sort and chart; images, sequences, recordings, single-cell data and many more open in a viewer made for them. See Viewers for every format.

   Note

   Dropping a file anywhere else in Data, or onto the Data icon in the dock, puts it in Local Disk instead. It opens at once but stays on this computer, so it cannot go into a share link in step 5.

   No file handy? Relay Drive › sample_data holds more samples, and Commons has public datasets you can open without downloading.

3. Ask Ray about it

   With your file in front, click Ray’s bar (or press ⌘J) and ask for what you want in plain words. Ray sees the window in front, so “this” means that file. For example, with a table of bacterial growth curves open:

   Plot od600 against time_h, one line per strain.

   Ray turns the table into a line chart with one colour per strain. Undo chart changes, under its reply, puts the table back.

   For a table in your Drive, Ray sees the column names but not the values until you allow it. To let Ray read the rows, open Controls from the dock, choose Info, open Data privacy and turn on Share this data with Ray. Then ask which strain grows slowest? and Ray answers from the numbers and shows how it worked it out.

4. Run a workflow

   Open Conductor from the dock. Workflows lists ready-made workflows alongside any you build. Open 3D Surface Plot, which turns an image into a 3D wireframe of its intensities.

   Its first step, Image Input, needs a picture. In Data, open Relay Drive › sample_data › imaging and drag tubhiswt-2ch.ome.tif (a C. elegans embryo in two channels) onto the Image Input step. Press Run now.

   The run takes a few seconds and each step is marked completed. Runs lists it, and View run shows its steps. The images it made are saved in your Drive under Projects, in the sample Project’s Runs folder, one folder per run. Double-click the surface plot to open it.

   Tip

   Everything on this page runs on the Free plan, which uses CPUs. Notebooks run on CPU too; GPU runtimes need a paid plan. See Compute and usage.

5. Share it

   Press Share at the right of the menu bar. The Share this workspace window lists your open windows, each with a tick box: tick the surface plot and your chart, and untick the rest. Leave Viewer and Anyone with the link selected. The sentence beside them says what the link allows, for example can open 2 windows. No account needed. Expires in 7 days. Press Copy link and send it.

   Whoever opens the link sees those windows read only, as you left them, without signing up. Choose Commenter instead if you want them to reply in comments; commenting needs a Relay account. Revoke, next to the link, stops it at once.

Where next

The Workspace

The dock, the menu bar, windows and Ray, in order.

Projects

Samples, Project Home, and where every run’s results go.

Viewers

What opens, and the controls for each kind of file.

Ask Ray

What the assistant can see and do, and how to point it at a file.

Conductor

Build your own workflows and run them over a folder or on a schedule.

Sharing

Link roles, limits, and inviting people into a Project.