Option to automatically populate a phrase into notes of each variant from a query

[earosenthal]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
For each variant, we keep track of which query produced it. For example, if I run a custom query, I currently add the description of the custom query to the notes section for each variant. However, this can be time consuming where there are 100's of variants.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like an option to automatically populate a phrase (e.g., "Rare Clinvar", "Second hit") to the notes section of each variant that is discovered by the query. Some variants appear with more than one query and I'd like to know that too. So, even if a phrase already exists in the notes section, I'd like the additional phrase to automatically populate if another query also produces that variant.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently, I paste the phrase as a note to each variant.

Additional context
Example:

[hanars]

It is not the recommended use of seqr to mark every single variant that comes back in a search, and you should not be tracking variants that are coming back in searches if they are not otherwise a variant of interest. The fact that a variant is being returned from a search does not mean that you should be saving it to come back to it later, it just means it passed a specific set of criteria. As such, automatically adding a note to every variant in seqr is not something we will be supporting, as it encourages users to misuse seqr.

However, for variants that you are tagging because you have looked at them and determined they are worth coming back to later, it does feel reasonable to track which search produced it. The feature I would propose is that if you tag a variant on a search page that used one of the named "Saved Searches" from the dropdown at the top of the search page, when you hover over the tag you will be able to see which search it was

[earosenthal]

I understand your concern. However, when multiple people with different expertise are reviewing the variants asynchronously, we have found that having a note for each variant makes it easier to find them and we don't have to worry about multiple people re-running custom queries and possibly introducing different query parameters. Does this make sense? Labeling a variant as having appeared from a query does not mean that this variant is biologically interesting. Each person on the team can add their own notes, based on their expertise, asynchronously. Each person on the team can choose to mark a variant for further review, which we then discuss as a team.

[hanars]

Your concern about users re-running searches is a bit confusing to me- if all you are doing is running a search but not actually performing any analysis on the results then there is no harm to having someone else re-running the searches later, and in fact it would be better if someone who is going to do a real analysis runs that search again and actually looks through the results. If your concern is that you do not want users to duplicate real analysis work, bulk-annotating the results of searches is not the recommended approach. seqr include a lot of project management functionality that would be better suited to preventing duplicate analysis. I would suggest your team in particular makes use of the "Assigned analyst" and "Analysed by" fields on the family page - this is the recommended way of tracking who has worked on a case in the past and who is working on a case now. Please watch the following video for a detailed training on these and other project management features available in seqr:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AlcGctAIcA&list=PLlMMtlgw6qNiY6mkBu111-lpmANKHdGKM&index=3

I would also encourage your team to actually review all the variants returned by a search when they run those searches, not just running them. One way to do so quickly is to utilize the single-click "review" and "excluded" tags - as a user goes through results you would click the "review" tag if the variant looks interesting enough to come back to later and the "excluded" tag if they can quickly see that the variant is not of interest. If a user has any actual detailed information to share, such as theier expert opinion of the variant, it would be great if they added a note about it at this point so other users can really see their analysis. Tags are visible to all users of the project and when hovered over show who tagged them and when, and with my proposed feature update would also show which search was run when they were tagged. This tagging strategy should prevent users from duplicating others work, as if tagged variants come back in a search they will easily be able to see that a different user has already looked into it and so they would know not to do so again themselves.