Share details about charts

You can add information about a chart to its cover sheet. The cover sheet can help recipients of the chart to understand the purpose of the chart and identify the author.

Viewing the contents of a chart or its file name is not always a reliable way of establishing the sensitivity of a chart. Recipients of your chart might use the information on the cover sheet to assess whether they are cleared to view the chart before they open it.

The cover sheet contains the following types of information:
Summary property Standard information about the chart. The cover sheet contains the following summary properties, which you can add information into:
  • Title
  • Subject
  • Author
  • Keywords
  • Category
  • Comments
Custom property Information about the chart that is not included in the summary properties. You can use custom properties to store chart characteristics that are specific to your organization.

Two custom properties are created automatically when you create a chart from the Standard.ant template. These custom properties are Case and Classification. You can enter values for these properties and add your own custom properties.

The headers and footers of your printed chart can contain information from the cover sheet. For example, if your chart runs over a number of pages you might stamp each page with a security classification, chart title, and publication status such as 'draft'.

Editable cover sheet

To prompt you to enter information, Analyst's Notebook can display the cover sheet in an editable state when you save charts. You can choose whether the editable cover sheet is displayed only when you first save a chart, or every time you save, or never. To choose an option, click File > Options, and then on the Save page select the appropriate option in the Cover Sheet area.

To open the editable cover sheet of an open chart at any time, click File > Cover Sheet. You can edit the same information on the Summary > Description and Origin pages of the Chart Properties window.

Read-only cover sheet

You can choose to display a read-only cover sheet to recipients of the chart when they open it. To turn on this feature, select the On Open check box on the editable cover sheet.

The read-only cover sheet is displayed before the chart loads. After the recipient reads the cover sheet they can proceed to open the chart, or they can cancel the operation.