Build Stories

This topic covers how you capture insights and group them into stories.

Topics:

• Capture Insights

• Create Stories

• View Streamlined Content

Capture Insights

As you explore data in visualizations, you can capture memorable information in one or more insights, which build your story. For example, you might notice before and after trends in your data that you’d like to add to a story to present to colleagues.

Tutorial

Using insights, you can take a snapshot of any information that you see in a visualization and keep track of any moments of sudden realization while you work with the data. You can share insights in the form of a story, but you don't have to. Your insights can remain a list of personal moments of realization that you can go back to, and perhaps explore more. You can combine multiple insights in a story. You can also link insights to visualizations using the Interaction property.

Insights don't take a snapshot of data. They take a snapshot of the project definition at a certain point in time.

1. Display the Narrate pane, and build your story:
   • Use the Search option in the Canvases pane to locate visualizations to include in your story. Right-click each canvas to include and click Add To Story.
   • Click Add Note to annotate your canvases with insights, such as notes or web links.
   • Use the tabs on the properties pane to further refine your story. For example, click Presentation to change the presentation style from compact to film strip.
   • To synchronize your story canvases with your visualizations, display the Visualize pane, click Canvas Settings, then select Synchronize Visualizations. Alternatively, click Canvas Properties and select this option.
   • To synchronize your story canvases with your visualizations, display the Visualize pane and right-click the canvas tabs to select Canvas Properties, then change the Synchronize Visualizations setting to on (selected).
2. Continue adding insights to build a story about your data exploration.
   The story builds in the Narrate canvas. Each insight has a tab.

Create Stories

After you begin creating insights within a story, you can cultivate the look and feel of that story. For example, you can rearrange insights, include another insight, or hide an insight title. Each project can have one story comprising multiple pages (canvas).

1. In your project, click Narrate.
2. Create the story in the following ways:

   • Add one or more canvases to the story and select a canvas to annotate.

   • To annotate a story with insights, click Add Note. You can add text and web links.

   • To change the default configuration settings for a story, use the properties pane on the Canvases panel.

   • To edit an insight, click or hover the mouse pointer over the insight, click the menu icon, and select from the editing options.

   • To include or exclude an insight, right-click the insight and use the Display or Hide options. To display insights, on the canvas property pane, click Notes, then Show All Notes.

   • To show or hide insight titles or descriptions, on the canvas property pane, click General, and use the Hide Page and Description options.

   • To rearrange insights, drag and drop them into position on the same canvas.

   • To limit the data displayed in a story, on the canvas property pane, click Filters. If no filters are displayed, go back to the Visualize pane and add one or more filters first, then click Save.

   • To update filters for a story, on the canvas property pane, click Filters, and use the options to hide, reset, or selectively display filters.

   • To rename a story, click the story title and update.

   • To add the same canvas multiple times to a story, right-click a canvas and click Add to Story. You can also right-click the canvases at the bottom of the Narrate pane and click Duplicate.

   • To display the story at any time click Present.

   • To close present mode and return to the Narrate pane click X.

   • To toggle insights use the Show Notes option.

   You can modify the content on a canvas for an insight. For example, you can add a trend line, change the chart type, or add a text visualization. After changing an insight, you'll notice that its corresponding wedge (in the Insight pane) or dot (in the Story Navigator) changes from solid blue to hollow. When you select Update to apply the changes to the insight, you'll see the wedge or dot return to solid blue.

View Streamlined Content

You can use the presentation mode to view a project and its visualizations without the visual clutter of the canvas toolbar and authoring options.

1. On the Narrate toolbar, click Present.

2. To return to the interaction mode, click X.