Analyzing Data in a Network Visualization

The Network visualization allows analysts to quickly view data about individual items and the relationships between them in a visual format. Business attributes are represented by circular nodes, while the lines between the nodes (called edges) represent relationships between the nodes.

You can view additional information about an item in the visualization by hovering the cursor over a node or edge. A tooltip is automatically displayed in the visualization, showing the attribute and metric values associated with the node or edge. To zoom in or out on the visualization, click and drag the thumb on the slider in the top left of the visualization. You can click the Fit to Screen icon on the top of the slider to size the visualization so that all nodes and edges are displayed in the visualization area.

You can reposition a node, select multiple nodes, or click and drag on an empty area in the visualization to pan your display. Do one of the following:

To reposition a node, click and drag the node to its new location.
To select multiple nodes, click the Select icon , then click and drag over the nodes you want to select.
To pan your display of the visualization, click the Pan icon , then click and drag in the direction of the area you want to view.

You can change the layout style used to display nodes in the visualization. Do one of the following:

To display the nodes with edges of similar length, minimizing the number of times the edges cross each other, select the Force-directed Layout icon in the top right.
To display the nodes in a circular layout, select the Circular Layout icon in the top right. A circular layout makes it easy to identify clusters and relationships in the visualization.
To display the nodes in a straight line, select the Linear Layout icon in the top right. The linear layout makes it easy to see where edges begin and end (if the edges are displayed as arrows), as well as groups of closely related nodes.

By default, a legend is displayed on the right side of the visualization, which contains information on node size, edge size, edge color, and so on. You can expand or collapse the legend by clicking the arrow icon at the top of the legend.

If you choose to filter or drill on a visualization, filter conditions are automatically added to the visualization's local filter to customize your view. Because each visualization has its own separate local filter, these filter conditions are only used to filter the display of data in the selected visualization, and do not affect any other visualizations in the quick dashboard. You can remove these filter conditions to undo your changes. Separate steps are below to drill on data, filter data, or undo your filtering or drilling changes.

Prerequisites

You must have the Edit Dashboard and Run Dashboard privileges.
The procedures below assume that the visualization in which you want to analyze data has already been created.

To drill or filter data in a Network visualization

Select one or more nodes in the visualization by doing one of the following:
- To select nodes one at a time, press CTRL, then click each node you want to select. Click the arrow icon displayed at the top of the selected nodes.
- To select all the nodes in a rectangular lasso shape, click the Select icon , then click and drag over an area of the visualization to choose all the nodes in the area. Click the arrow icon displayed at the top of the selected nodes.
From the context menu, select one of the following:
- To drill to an object, select the attribute you want to drill to. For example, to drill to the data at the Category level, select Drill to Category. Only the nodes you selected are displayed, and the attribute you selected is used to group nodes in the visualization.
- To display only the nodes you have selected and their neighboring nodes, and remove all other nodes from the visualization, select Keep Only (Nodes + Neighbors).
- To display all nodes in the visualization except the nodes you have selected, select Exclude.

To undo filtering or drilling on data

Hover the cursor over the visualization in which you want to undo filtering or drilling, then click the arrow icon in the top right. A list of options is displayed.
Point to Edit Filter, then do one of the following:
- To remove all filter conditions from the visualization at once, select Clear All. All filter conditions in the local filter are removed, and are no longer used to filter data in the visualization.
- To remove filter conditions one at a time, hover the cursor over each filter condition you want to remove, then click the x icon next to each condition. The filter conditions you delete are no longer used to filter data in the visualization.