Bookmarks

Bookmarks are traditionally used in paper books to identify where you've got to. The same goes for bookmarks in Spotfire. They capture the current state of the analysis that you are working with and allow you to recall various parts of the state.

Bookmarks work fairly similarly in Spotfire's web and analyst clients—the differences will be pointed out in the example that follows:

1. Load one of the analysis files you created in a previous chapter. For the purpose of this example, I will use the KPI chart example created in Chapter 3, Impactful Dashboards!.
2. If you recall, toward the end of the example, I marked Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, and Energy, and Financials on the KPI chart, by holding down Ctrl and clicking the tiles. Do the same again:

1. Now change the hierarchy slider on the x-axis of the right-hand graph to Date(Quarter) and zoom in on the right-hand side so that you can see the data for 2016 and 2017 only.

1. Filter out the line for PCLN (hover over the lines and find it—it's the top one—mark it, right-click, and select Marked Rows-Filter Out) and adjust the x-axis zoom slider. PCLN is the outlier in the data as it's so much higher than the other lines:

1. Now, let's capture that as a bookmark. For analyst clients, click the bookmark icon on the toolbar, then enter a name for the bookmark and click the + button:

1. For web clients, the process is similar, except the bookmark icon looks different. Note that you won't be able to filter out PCLN by filtering out marked rows unless you switch to Editing mode (top-right of the screen). You can, however, filter it out by using the requisite filter in the filter panel:

1. The bookmark captures the current state of the analysis and can be recalled at any time. It's like a snapshot in time. Now try changing some other settings. It's up to you exactly what you do, but you might try resetting the filters or marking some different tiles in the KPI chart. Also, try changing the left-hand line chart to show Avg(Volume) rather than Avg(Close). Here is what my analysis looks like after I have changed some settings:
2. Capture a second bookmark—in my case, I am calling it Other Sectors, showing volume:

1. Finally, if you are using an Analyst client, you can create a special type of bookmark that captures only certain settings. In my case, I want the visualization configuration, and layout to be captured, but nothing relating to the data itself. This time, right-click on the + button and choose Add Bookmark Special....

1. I have deselected everything to do with data:

1. Click on the Add Bookmark button.

So, now that we have created some bookmarks, what can we do with them? We can apply them as is or select only certain settings to apply, or we can use them to perform actions when a user clicks a button. We can also make bookmarks public, so others can make use of them:

1. Click the first bookmark created from the bookmarks menu—notice that the page updates to show the settings you first created. Note how the analysis returns to the very first state when you did all the marking and filtering, zoom slider adjustment, and so on.
2. Next, let's apply just parts of the second bookmark—click on the drop-down arrow on the bookmark and choose Apply Special.

The following shows a screenshot from the Analyst client:

This screenshot shows the web client:

1. Choose Page Layout and Visualizations. Notice how the filtering and marked data does not change. I'll discuss in a moment why bookmarks are so useful, but finally, let's try assigning a bookmark to a button. Note, this is only possible in Analyst clients.
2. Right-click on the text area at the top of the page and choose Edit Text Area.
3. The text area editor will open. Now click the Insert Action Control button:

1. Enter a Display text, then expand the Bookmarks section of the Available actions box and choose the Avg(Volume) Line Chart bookmark and add it to the Selected actions box:

1. Click on the OK button, save the text area, and return to your analysis.
2. Now try applying one of the other (not the Avg(Volume) Line Chart) bookmarks in the list manually, then click the button you just created.

See what happened? Now you have created a button that sets a new visualization configuration that shows something different from the default. Of course, in the real world, you might create several bookmarks, each capturing a separate set of settings for the visualizations on screen.

By default, bookmarks are created as Private Bookmark. This means that only you can view and apply them. However, if you right-click on the bookmark (Analyst) or expand the menu (web), then you can make the bookmark public so that others can view and apply them:

So... now that you understand how to work with bookmarks, what purpose can they serve and why did I suggest that you create three different ones?

• Bookmarks are an excellent way of saving the state of an analysis and returning to it at a later stage—for example, if you are in the middle of experimenting with finding some insights in the data; or, if you have found something interesting and don't want to lose that thought!
• Bookmarks are a great way of sharing configurations, data, and insights with other users. However, other features of Spotfire can be even more useful than bookmarks! They are covered later in this chapter.
• Bookmarks are great for capturing the setup of an analysis, so that you can guide a non-expert user through an analysis that you created, step by step, or highlighting useful ways of looking at the data. They also help with analytic application development.
• Why the third bookmark, with special settings? This was designed to show the use of bookmarks for guided analysis. Did you notice that when you created the action button, you couldn't choose which parts of the bookmark to apply? The Settings... button is grayed out, so if you only want certain settings of the bookmark to be applied, then you need to make sure you set only those settings when you create the bookmark.