Lessons

In my opinion, three factors have played important roles in the success of MetaboAnalyst: 1) a user/biologist perspective when developing this web application; 2) a lot of efforts in maintaining and upgrading the tool (i.e. bug fixing and adding new features); and 3) a lot of efforts in training the target users. Regarding the last point, David and I have been giving the annual Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops on metabolomics since 2011, and we also published a series of comprehensive tutorials on how to use the tool \cite{21637195,21633943,27603023}. These efforts are often under-appreciated by tool developers but mean a lot to the new researchers of the field.