Conversations

In Spotfire, conversations are bookmarks on steroids! With conversations, you can have contextually aware discussions with colleagues looking at the same analysis. You can comment on the visualizations and record any marking or filtering or other configuration to explain the context of the conversation or any kind of insight or finding in the data.

Let's look at the KPI example again. Conversations work exactly the same whether you are using the Analyst or web clients. The example I am showing here requires Editing mode in order to prepare the visualizations. I'm editing the visualizations to make them more useful:

1. Change the bottom right-hand visualization to show color by Name:

1. Right-click on the line graph and select Create details visualization. Choose a Bar chart. I recommend you add labels to the bar chart by right-clicking to go to the visualization properties. I also recommend setting the bar chart to show side-by-side bars

1. Change the Filter type for the Date column to a Range Filter:

1. Here's what I have:

1. Save the analysis. Now let's apply some filtering and marking and capture that as part of a conversation!
2. Mark the Consumer Discretionary KPI tile to select that industry sector:

1. Let's focus on AMZN—one of the fastest-growing stocks. Mark it by clicking on AMZN on the legend on the right-hand side line chart.
2. Filter to the last couple of years of data only. My data only covers 2012-2017.

1. Here is what I have ended up with:

1. Save the analysis file so it takes the changes you have made.
2. Now, let's start a conversation! Click the Collaboration icon on the toolbar. It will open a small window that can be used to start a conversation:

1. Click the bar chart in order to make it active. Then click the + sign to start a conversation. Enter some text:

1. Click the Post button. You can move the green conversation icon wherever you want on the page, but I recommend you place it near or on the visualization you want to highlight.
2. You don't have to do this, but in order to illustrate the point, I'm now going to log in as another user and open the same analysis (on the web) and see what happens.
3. I have logged in as a different user—one called sales1. Initially, there is no sign that there is a conversation associated with the analysis, but if I click the Collaboration icon, a green speech bubble appears against the bar chart:

1. If I click the bubble, the Conversations panel opens. I can then click on a conversation to open it:

1. Clicking the conversation text applies the filtering and marking settings and opens the conversation attached to the visualization:

1. Recall that I am now logged in as the sales1 user. I can now do some more analysis and reply to the conversation. I have chosen to mark FOX in the line chart in order to compare it with AMZN:

1. Now I can reopen the conversation by clicking on the grey bubble and entering my reply. Notice the checkbox that enables me to choose whether I should save the analysis state in the reply. I'm going to leave it checked:

1. Now let's return to the original user (sfadmin). If I open the conversations panel, I can see that there's a new reply:

1. If I then click on the arrow, I can expand the conversation and apply the analysis state that the sales1 user was working with:

1. One final point—if sfadmin were now to reply to sales1, the Conversations panel would update to show a refresh icon. Clicking this will bring in the latest replies to the conversation:

Note that you don't need to save the analysis in order to use conversations. The Conversations panel will always update without needing to load or save.

The Conversations feature is a really nice way to discuss specific insights and findings within your Spotfire analyses. The conversations are context-aware so you can see what others see. Marking and filtering are captured, much like bookmarks. It's really useful for collaborating with colleagues to analyze data and take action from it.