Flight Recorder

The Flight Recorder is a record of what you have done that can also be used to repeat previous actions. It provides

• A record of what you have done. Actions you take and selections you make from charts are listed. Small images of charts you have selected in show the selection you made.
• A place to collect observations by adding notes.
• A tool that can repeat previous actions, in the same session on the same data or in a later session with updated data.
• A tool that can save "bookmarks" that may be reused in the future or shared with others.

The Flight Recorder is a panel that appears initially on the right side of the application frame. It is not displayed by default. Clicking on the Flight Recorder button in the Analyze Ribbon

Most of your actions are recorded to the Flight Recorder automatically. Recorded actions have a 1 line summary; some have additional details that are revealed by clicking the arrow to the left.

The display for a selection operation includes:

1. The label "Select", the operation.
2. An indication of the selection mode: Replace (=), add (+), subtract (-), intersect (&) and toggle (^).
3. The type of chart (Bar, Pie, Line, etc.).
4. The Page and Title of the chart.
5. Expanding shows additional details:
   • A textual description of the selection.
   • The number of rows selected.
   • A reduced image of the chart after the selection.

Other actions are tracked as well, although they are typically only described by the action and (if appropriate) chart page and title.

Clicking a Flight Action selects it; click again to unselect it. Drag over a series of actions to select them all. Selected actions are highlighted in green.

The Flight Recorder pane provides a set of action buttons. (All of these may not be visible if the pane is not wide enough; drag the frame wider if necessary.) By default a minimal set of action buttons is shown; a larger set may be shown using the context menu in the Flight Recorder pane (below).

Buttons are:

You drag across items in the Flight Record with mouse button 1 depressed to select them.

Clicking the Right Mouse Button shows a context menu with additional options:

1. Select All: Select all text in the Flight Record.
2. Copy: Copy currently selected text to the clipboard.
3. Print: Print the flight record.
4. Full User Interface: show all operations listed above.

The pane containing the Flight Record can be managed like any ADVIZOR Analyst pane:

• It can be hidden by clicking the "X". It can be restored using the "Flight Recorder" menu item in the "View" menu.
• It can be "unpinned" by clicking the "pin" icon so that it "folds" into the side of the application unless you hover the mouse over it.
• It can be detached from the application, making it a floating window, by dragging the top window frame.
• It can be docked to a side of the application by dragging to the aplpication frame; the pane docks when the dragged mouse cursor touches the frame.

Local Bookmarks

Bookmarks are states in your analysis that you can return to. They persist between sessions on the current PC and are associated with the current project. A bookmark can either be a saved list of actions (as in the "Do" command described above) or a list of actions that recreate the state as of a single selected action (as in the "GoTo" command described above). Bookmarks are managed with the "Bookmark" menu item in the top toolbar.

Actions for bookmarks are:

• Go To ...: Go to the state defined by a bookmark.
• Create: Create a new bookmark using the state of the currently selected action; you will be prompted for a name. "GoTo" style bookmarks must be created from a single selected action; "Do" style bookmarks are created from a list of selected actions. Bookmarks must have unique names.
• Export: Export the current bookmarks to a file.
• Import: Import bookmarks from a previously exported file.
• Clear All: Remove all bookmarks.

Since bookmarks are stored on the local PC, to share them with another person or PC, export the bookmarks and send the file.

How are "Go To" and "Do" performed?

The "Go To" and "Do" commands replay actions you took previously. These both use the text descriptions given by the "Select" or "Filter" detail lines in the Flight Record. These lines are text descriptions of the selection action that you took with the mouse in the chart.

Differences between these commands are:

1. The "Go To" command replays only previous actions that impact the goal state that you selected, returning you to that state. The starting state of the dashboard doesn't matter.
2. The "Do" command replays only the actions you selected. The starting state is whatever the current state is when you press the button. If this state is not the state when the sequence was originally done, the end state may be different.

If you select the same sequence of actions and use each button, "Do" works starting at the current state, while "Go To" will try to return to exactly the same state no matter what the current state is.

Actions are replayed using the text descriptions given by the "Select" entry for the action. These descriptions are logical expressions using the same language supported by the Expression Builder. Replaying works by evaluating this condition for every row in the data table. If the result is true, then that data row is "identified" by the action, just as it was by the graphical selection you made with the mouse. The impact of a row being "identified" is based on the selection mode (replace, add, subtract, intersect, toggle) recorded for the action.

Graphical selections in charts can be ambiguous: there may be a number of interpretations of you intent. For example, consider the selection in the bar chart labeled "Perror per Team" here.

This bar chart is ordered by "Team", the X axis category, with categories weighted by the field "Perror". This selection could be described in a few ways:

• The top 4 bars in the chart.
• The bars named "Sea.", "StL.", "Tex.", and "Tor.".
• The bars with names between "Sea." and "Tor.", inclusive.
• The bars with names greater than "S.F."

If this exact data is loaded, any of these interpretations will have the same result. If the data is different, however, the result may be different with different interpretations. For example, if a new category "SanD." appeared in the data, this category would be selected by condition 4 but not by the other rules.

The conditions created are based on the ordering of the chart, its range, and the items selected. Conditions are chosen to give a description that seems most appropriate, but this condition may not have the same result when applied to new data.

When the automatically created condition is not correct for new data, you can edit the text on the "Select" (or "Filter") line, using the expression syntax described for the Expression Builder, to better express your intent.

Conditions are in terms of the data that is used by a chart. For charts that show aggregated data, the conditions are in terms of the aggregation, not the underlying data.

When a previous Flight Actions is replayed, it is done using the state of the chart when the action was recorded, independent of the current state of the chart. For example, if you change the ordering of a bar chart, replay of a previous action is still based on the ordering in effect when the original action occurred (assuming the recorded condition depends on order).

Limitations

• The number of items selected may differ slightly even when replaying against the same data due to slight differences between the graphical selection and the condition. Typically the difference will only be a few items.
• Ordering by percent selected and by average in aggregated charts (Bar, Line, Pie) are not currently recognized.
• Text condition are not created for these charts: Multiscape, Data Constellations, Time Table, and Map. For these charts, replay is done by reproducing the graphical sweep that you did originally.