Archive for March, 2011

Introducing the FPinfomart Dashboard & Heads Up Display

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 31, 2011

More and more, our customers are asking us for tools to help them move from answering the question “what’s happening” to “what does it mean?” The newest feature in our toolbox for content analysis is the Dashboard.

Heads Up Display

You’ll notice that as of today, when you open a Personal Profile, a Folder, or view the results of a Quick Search or an Archives search, you’ll see a brief graphical display, which we’ve named the “Heads Up Display.” This is a subset of the Dashboard components designed to give you a quick “heads up” as to the data within your results set. The graphs in the Heads Up are a trend line, and a media mix pie chart. The Heads Up display will be shown by default unless you click the “Heads Up” link at the top of any Profile, Archives Search, Quick Search, or Folder. Once you close the Heads Up display it will remain “off” until you click again to turn it back on.

The Heads Up display is a subset of the dashboard, designed to alert you to any spikes or dips in data volume, and the media mix.

Dashboard

To open the full Dashboard, click the “Dashboard” link located next to the Heads Up Display link (see screenshot, above).

The Dashboard is intended to give you graphical insight into the makeup of your results set. Note that all graphs within the Dashboard are clickable, and will narrow your results set to only those items containing the data point you clicked (e.g. clicking the “Broadcast” wedge in the media mix pie will narrow your results to only those in broadcast media).

The components of a Dashboard are as follows:

Activity

The activity graph shows volume of content over time. In Personal Profiles and Quick Search, this graph will show the past seven days. For Archives and Folders, this time axis of this graph will vary depending on the date range of your search or Folder contents.

The Activity graph shows number of hits over time and includes a total hit count.

Media Mix

The Media Mix section shows two graphs. The first is a line graph which breaks volume of hits over time out into the 6 major media types (print, wires, online, blogs, social, broadcast). The second is a pie chart displaying the total hits in each media type (7 days for Personal Profiles and Quick Search; total results set for Archives and Folders).

The media mix charts show you where in the media your results originate.

Tone

There are two Tone graphs. The first is a line graph showing volume of hits in each of the three Tone categories (positive, negative, or neutral). The second, a pie chart, shows total hits in each of the Tone categories.

The Tone charts let you see the trend of positive or negative coverage, and the Tone break-out for your entire results set.

Geography

The World Geography pie chart breaks out proportion of total coverage in each of the 4 global categories (Canada, US, UK, and International). The Canada bar-chart shows you the relative amount of coverage in each of the Canadian provinces, with an additional bar for National sources (such as the National Post, Globe & Mail, CBC News Network, Canadian blogs, etc.).

The Geography graphs allow you to analyze the publication origin of your result set.

Topic Cloud

The topic cloud (also known as a “tag cloud”) shows the most frequently-used people, places, companies, and keywords found in your results set. The larger the font within the Topic Cloud, the more frequently-used the topic within your results set. Please note that the Topic Cloud is displayed on the Dashboard for Personal Profiles and Quick Search, but NOT for Folders and Archives searches, as the data is unavailable in these modules.

The Topic Cloud can help you quickly and easily identify the common topics covered in a results set, before reading each individual article.

Printing and E-mailing Dashboards

You’ll find links at the top-right corner of the Dashboard screen allowing you to generate a printer-friendly version of the graphs, or to e-mail them to a colleague. If you wish to save a copy of the Dashboard, click Printer-friendly and use your own installed PDF printer to save a PDF copy.

Please note that printer-friendly and e-mailed dashboards are static and NOT clickable (i.e. clicking does not drill down within your results set as described above).

Print

Click the printer-friendly icon or link to load a printer-friendly version of the graphs. Please note that the regular (non-printer-friendly) version may not print correctly on paper or to a PDF.

E-mail

You may e-mail a printer-friendly version of the dashboard to a colleague. Click the E-mail link or icon. Your own e-mail address will be filled in to the From: box by default, however you may change this if you wish. Enter the e-mail address of your colleague in the To: box, and optionally, enter a comment to be sent with the Dashboard.

Need a copy of this information as a PDF Help document? Download it here.

Posted in Features | Tagged: data, interface, measurement, metrics, new | Comments Off

Notice: FPinfomart Scheduled Maintenance – Thursday March 31 & Friday, April 1

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 29, 2011

FPinfomart will be unavailable for two brief maintenance windows this Thursday and Friday, March 31st and April 1st, from 8:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, in order to replace the hardware responsible for last Friday’s outage.

We thank you for your patience and understanding during this scheduled disruption to our service.

Posted in Maintenance | Tagged: admin, Maintenance | Comments Off

New Current Event: Canadian Federal Election 2011

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 28, 2011

It doesn’t get much bigger in the Canadian media than a federal election, so setting up a new Current Event to follow the coverage of Canadians’ upcoming trip to the polls was a natural fit. Visit our Canadian Federal Election Current Event and watch the action unfold!

Current Events are fixed searches we set up based on prominent and ongoing issues in the news, to help you keep up-to-date with stories of universal interest. All users have access to all Current Events. You can follow any Current Event by visiting its page on FPinfomart; by subscribing to its RSS feed; by adding it to your Morning E-mail preferences; or by signing up for Alerts.

Have a suggestion for a Current Event? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail me.

Posted in General | Tagged: current events, new | Comments Off

FPinfomart Student-to-Conference Awards Winners 2011

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 28, 2011

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the two winners of the 2010 FPinfomart Student-to-Conference Award:

Yannet LaThrop and Janina Mueller

The FPinfomart Student-to-Conference Awards provide the winning two students with a stipend up to $1,500, awarded by the SLA [Special Libraries Association] Toronto Executive Board, so that they may attend the SLA Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from June 15-18, 2011. The winning essays will be published in upcoming issue of SLA Toronto’s quarterly newsletter, The Courier.

Please join us in offering our best wishes to our two winners. Have a great time at the conference!

Posted in Announcements | Tagged: sponsorship | Comments Off

24 Hours Ottawa now available on FPinfomart

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 25, 2011

The commuter publication 24 Hours Ottawa has been added to the Ontario Papers group of content on FPinfomart. You can browse this content through Latest News, or add it to your Personal Profiles for ongoing monitoring.

Posted in Content, Uncategorized | Tagged: Content, new | Comments Off

We’re serving breakfast and you’re invited!

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 24, 2011

As FPinfomart celebrates its 25th year of offering information solutions, we hope you’ll join us for our annual breakfast presentation. We’ll visit Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Toronto in order to give you a product update, preview upcoming tools, and provide you with the opportunity to network with other FPinfomart users.

For venue details, registration, and more information, please see our Events page.

We look forward to seeing you in May!

Posted in Events | Tagged: current events | Comments Off

Six weekly newspapers from the Windsor-Essex Publishing Group now on FPinfomart

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 21, 2011

We are pleased to announce the addition of six titles from the Windsor-Essex Publishing Group to FPinfomart.ca.

You’ll find these sources in the Ontario Papers section of our source list. They’re available to add to your Profiles, Quick Search, and Archives searches, as well as any Source Libraries.

Posted in Content | Tagged: Content, new | Comments Off

Save the Date & Call for Panelists

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 18, 2011

FPinfomart Breakfast Series – Save the Date!

We are thrilled to announce that the FPinfomart.ca Breakfast Series will be visiting four of Canada’s major cities again this year. Watch your inbox for an official invitation later this month, and details will also be posted here.

Please mark your calendar for the presentation nearest you:

Vancouver - Wednesday, May 4, 2010
Calgary - Thursday, May 5, 2010
Toronto - Wednesday, May 11, 2010
Ottawa - Thursday, May 12, 2010

Invitation to Participate as a Panelist – FPinfomart Breakfast Series

Each year FPinfomart strives to create an interesting theme for our event, as well as provide opportunities for interactivity. This year’s breakfast event will conclude with a panel of FPinfomart users who will participate in a live, guided discussion about their use of information and how FPinfomart fits into this space in their daily work. We have had similar customer presentations in the past which have been received very positively by our audiences. We invite you to consider applying to join our customer panel at your city’s breakfast event!

We will provide the questions to the selected panelists well in advance of the event in order to provide you with time to think about what you might like to say; however we hope that the discussion will take on an organic nature as the panelists interact with each other.

If you are chosen to participate, you would be expected to attend the breakfast event in your city (please see dates, above), arriving no later than 7:45 a.m., and wrapping up by 11:00 a.m., and participate in a moderated three-member discussion panel in front of an audience between 50-100 people.

If you are interested in being a panelist at your city’s event, please reply to Jennifer Stein expressing your interest by March 31, 2011. Selected panelists will be notified during early April.

Posted in Events | Tagged: current events | Comments Off

Flashback Week: Is a picture worth 1000 Tweets?

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 16, 2011

I’m away this week, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to repost some of my favourite entries from the Archives of this blog. This post originally ran on November 25, 2010.

(or blog mentions, or forum posts, or… ?)

Reading a stream of content, however you monitor social media, can be interesting – but when crisis strikes nothing is more compelling, telling, or has more impact than a graph showing a spike in conversation surrounding an issue.

When I read about this week’s recall of Junior-strength Motrin (amongst other products), I thought immediately about our FPinfomart Heartbeat demo of the pharmaceutical industry. It monitors comparatively between the major pain-relief brands (Tylenol, Advil, and Motrin) along several issues-based criteria, including recalls. What would the social media conversation surrounding the Motrin recall look like?

The Heartbeat "Measure" screen shows a clear spike in conversations mentioning both Motrin and recall, on the day that the recall was announced. Notice also that the conversation continued in the Twitter medium into the following day, more so than in other media types.

I was also curious as to whether the other pain relievers monitored in this Heartbeat would also receive additional attention in the context of this conversation, so I used the “Compare” tab to find out.

Comparing Motrin to other pain relievers

It is interesting to note that Tylenol received a corresponding bump in mentions in conversations about recalls on the day that Motrin's recall was announced. This was mostly due to reporters and individuals reminiscing about the relatively recent recall of Tylenol products, and using the two examples as the basis for discussions about the safety of these products in general.

As evidenced by the graphs above, having the tools available to report instantly on issues provides critical insight into the impact of any crisis event. They also show the value of strategic monitoring of your products, your competitors, and the issues facing your industry.

For more information on FPinfomart Heartbeat social media monitoring, or for a free trial, please contact your FPinfomart sales representative.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged: social, web | Comments Off

Flashback Week: Introducing the FPinfomart Customer Idea Exchange

Posted by Jennifer Stein on March 14, 2011

I’m away this week, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to repost some of my favourite entries from the Archives of this blog. This post originally ran on October 5, 2010.

My philosophy has always been that our best product ideas come from our users. Those who know me have often heard me say that we take all customer feedback very seriously. We track all incoming suggestions, and I’m proud of the statistic that we’ve implemented 26% of recorded customer feedback in the past 18 months, and have scheduled an additional 17% of these items for future development.

But I still think we can do better.

We’ve embarked on a project called the FPinfomart Customer Idea Exchange. Its purpose is to create a community where FPinfomart users can share their suggestions for the product, both with each other, and with the FPinfomart development team. Users will be able to see the ideas that others have submitted and “vote” on those items that they think would be useful to the user population. This will allow us to better prioritize our development efforts and ensure that FPinfomart is optimally useful to the greatest number of people.

Other features of the Idea Exchange include the ability for me (as Product Manager) to add a status to each idea submitted – such as “reviewing;” “scheduled for development;” or “implemented” (when a suggestion is completed). I will also be able to indicate if an item will NOT be implemented, and if not, give a reason for this.

Users will be able to comment on each others’ suggestions, adding detail and additional ideas.

Access to the Idea Exchange will be by UserID and password, making it a secure community with entry restricted to authorized FPinfomart users. All current FPinfomart users are eligible to participate in the Idea Exchange, however you’ll need a separate User Name and Password to login (your existing FPinfomart userID won’t work). To request access to the Idea Exchange, please contact customer service at helpdesk@canwest.com.

We look forward to watching our community grow!

Posted in Announcements | Tagged: admin, feedback, new | Comments Off

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