Analyst's Notebook data

To build up a full picture of an investigation, Analyst's Notebook can access data from a range of sources. Within Analyst's Notebook, data is stored as entities, links, and properties.

Analyst's Notebook entities represent real-world objects such as bank accounts and telephones, or events such as meetings or appointments. Links represent the relationships between entities, such as associations between people, ownership of vehicles, transactions between bank accounts, or meetings between people. In Analyst's Notebook, entities and links are known as items.

Properties are used to store information that is known about an item, such as whether a person has a criminal record, or the date and time of a meeting. It is important to think about where to store each piece of information. The choices that you make affect the type of analysis that you can do or how you present the information. For example, you might choose to store information, such as the date of birth of a person or model of a vehicle, as an attribute rather than in a card. You can then display that property on the chart surface and use it in your analysis.

You can also add annotation to your chart in the form of a label or legend. Labels are used to add annotation, such as adding a title for a presentation. They are not used for analysis. Legends provide a key for the information on the chart surface.