Colabra

Colabra is built to replace fragmented document stores, email threads and generic project tools with a single research-first workspace for biotechs, CROs and academic partners. It combines a collaborative electronic lab notebook (ELN), project and milestone tracking, file management and threaded discussion in one place so teams can preserve experimental context, reduce rework and keep partnerships moving through personnel changes. The platform emphasizes usability—real-time co-editing, fast text search and ergonomically designed interfaces—so scientists actually use it as their day-to-day home for experiments, notes and deliverables. Core capabilities center on experiment capture, project coordination and compliance. The ELN supports rich experimental notes (DNA sequences, microscope images, math equations), embedded protocols, annotations on PDFs, and compliant e-signatures to preserve audit trails. Project management features include quick task creation, customizable statuses and workflows, subscriptions to project activity, saved views and dashboards to track progress and budgets across multiple studies. Colabra stores unlimited version history, replicates hourly backups globally, and offers snapshots for long-term retention, which helps make IP admissible and records defensible in regulated environments. Colabra also embeds AI and advanced search to make unstructured research data actionable. Full-text NLP search and an enterprise Copilot surface relevant documents, summarize recent project updates, explain jargon, and help maintain consistent writing across collaborators. The platform can pull in trusted public sources such as PubChem and NCBI and—critically for teams with sensitive data—offers private AI deployment on your own Azure tenant; Colabra states it does not use your data to train external models. Developers can extend the workspace through a well-documented API and webhooks, and apply complex filters to find documents, tasks, people and files by intent, not just keywords. Integrations are comprehensive and biased toward the Microsoft and scientific ecosystems. Colabra is designed to work natively with Microsoft 365 and Azure (Azure Storage, Data Lake, PostgreSQL, Azure VNet, Azure Marketplace) as well as Teams, Outlook and Power BI. It connects to common storage and collaboration tools—SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box—and to lab/science services like Jupyter notebooks, GitHub, figshare, GeneNetwork and publication services. SSO, SAML, OAuth2/OpenID Connect, Okta, Shibboleth and Azure SSO options simplify enterprise authentication and provisioning. You can embed external content (Figma, Miro, SlideShare, Tableau, Monday boards) inside experiments and projects so wet-lab notes and in-silico analyses live together. Real-world use cases span alliance management, regulated ELN use and cross-site R&D coordination. Alliance managers use Colabra to centralize NDA'd deliverables, assay results and partner conversations so outsourced testing, CRO activities and academic collaborations stay auditable and discoverable. Lab teams use the ELN for day-to-day experiment capture, co-authored protocols and approval workflows; the platform’s GxP and 21 CFR Part 11 alignment (with correct configuration) supports regulated studies. Data teams lean on the API and dashboards to aggregate progress across instruments and software, assess bottlenecks, prioritize resources and plan future experiments using Copilot-driven summaries and risk assessments. Enterprise features and deployment options address security, scale and data residency. Colabra is SOC 2 Type II certified, enforces TLS and encryption at rest, offers granular permissions and approval workflows, and provides options for custom data residency, dedicated VPCs or deployment into a customer’s Azure tenant. Plans require an annual commitment and workspace-wide upgrades; discounts are available for qualified non-profits, academic institutions and startups in partner programs. For teams looking to move from spreadsheets, SharePoint, generic ELNs or task boards to a research-oriented platform, Colabra positions itself as an intuitive, auditable and extensible single source of truth for scientific R&D.