Attributes

You can store specific discrete pieces of information on chart items as attributes. Attributes are often displayed as part of the item on a chart surface for presentation purposes and are also used in analysis, such as filtering.

Analyst's Notebook has two types of attributes:

  • Attributes store information about an item such as a person's date of birth or the make of a particular item. You can add attributes manually or you can import information into attributes from a file or a data source.
  • Analysis attributes are automatically generated and store calculated information such as the day of the week that an event occurred or whether an item has any cards.

Attributes are useful during analysis. For example, you can filter on attributes to choose which items to display on the chart surface. When you list the items on the chart, you can sort based on attributes.

Attributes that are imported or created manually

You can use attributes to show specific characteristics about items on your chart. Attributes are typically displayed below a chart item as a symbol and value.

An attribute has three key components:
  • An attribute class: Defines the kind of information that is stored. Each attribute class has a name, symbol, and a type that defines the kind of information that the attributes can contain.
  • An attribute value: The actual information.
  • A semantic type: Allows information to be classified to give a real-world meaning.

Attributes that are automatically calculated

Analysis attributes contain calculated, dynamic information that is taken from an item's context in the chart. Analysis attributes provide useful statistical information about chart items, which might help your analysis. For example, which entity has the most links, which item has the earliest date and time, or which transactions occurred on a Friday. You cannot edit analysis attributes.

Analysis attributes cannot be displayed on the chart surface in the same way as other attributes but you can choose to include them in Infotips.
Note:
If the label values in your analysis attributes incorrectly display negative numeric values, replace hyphens in item labels with either a tilde (~) or an en dash (–).