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.
