Oracle Analytics (Cloud and Desktop) version 6.2 intoduces the Canvas Annotation facility. This is a really useful feature for aiding presenting and storytelling, so let’s look at this with an example.
Below I have a simple analytic which is highlighting some spikes related to Invoices on Hold.
If we have taken an action to assign people to look at the holds and see if there is anything we can do to prevent them happening then it would be useful to see this here. It would be great if we could easily annotate our visualisation to show this and then when we’re presenting to senior management (or indeed they self-serve the project) they could see the actions being taken.
The new notes facility can be accessed via the new icon on the top toolbar as shown below. The dropdown gives two options, either Add Note to create a new one or Hide Notes to hide the notes from the canvas.
Let’s add a Note. Clicking on the ‘Add Note’ pops up a box in which to put the note and a set of formatting options.
I have added a note with a date the action was assigned and some notes as to what that is.
What I can now do is to connect the note to this data point. I can easily do that by selecting one of the points around the box (as pointed out by the arrow below) and a message pops up telling me to drag this to the point which I want to link to.
When I do this, then I can see the link and also the data point to which it is attached.
If I right-click the note, then I get a number of options. All fairly explanatory.
One option I am going to use is ‘Duplicate’ so that I can create another note using the same look and feel as the one that I have just created. As I can connect a canvas annotation to multiple data points I am going to copy this one and show that in action.
Initially the duplicated note look like this below.
I will use the right click to detach it, change the content yet keeping the same formatting and then attach it to the other data points.
So now it is pretty clear what actions are being taken here. Of course we have the option on the top menu to hide the annotations if they are making the visualisation look ‘busy’.
Summary
This is a flexible new feature for annotating specific data points in visualisations. If we were to have the analytic we have discussed above playing a part in explaining the Procure-To-Pay process of the organisation, then this facility would also be a very helpful part of the storytelling process.