Adding Annotations to Elements

Annotations allow you to share your insights on a Metric or Report with other users. You can apply an annotation to a single date point or to a range of dates. You may easily apply your annotation to a broad set of elements.

To be able to create Annotations, Power Users  must have either View or Edit Access to element as well as the Add Annotation Privilege.

Table of contents:

  1. Access Metric Viewer
  2. Define Annotation Settings
  3. Choose Other Affected Metrics
  4. View the Annotation
  5. Adding Annotations for Future Dates

1. Access Metric Viewer

Open the Metric Viewer by opening the Metric Editor and clicking [View].

Click 'Add Annotation' below the Chart Legend

Access the Add Annotation pop-up by either:

1. Clicking on an existing Datapoint and clicking [Annotate]

2. Clicking [Add Annotaion]

2. Define Annotation Settings

Provide the information required to create an Annotation
  1. Use the Calendar icons to select Annotation start Date and Annotation finish Date
  2. Add your text. Note, that if you want to change text formatting or add a link, you need to use Markdown. To learn the basics of Markdown syntax, click the M↓ icon at the top right corner of the text field
  3. If you wish to notify others about this Annotation, you may do so here. See The Share function for more details.
  4. You also have the option to attach a file to provide more details to your annotation
  5. You can add this annotation only to the current Metric or to other Metrics as well. For more information see the following Step

3. Choose Other Affected Metrics

If you think that other Metrics were also affected, select them and add the same Annotation

If other elements are affected, select them to add the same Annotation:

  1. This drop-down allows you to select related metrics based on various criteria (e.g. Measure of, Topic, Category)
  2. You can restrict your element choices based on Measurement Interval
  3. Check and un-check elements to add the same annotation to their charts

4. View the Annotation

Select Save to View your Annotation
  1. Annotation range is indicated on Chart  
  2. Details on annotation appear below the chart allowing others to comment on your annotation

NOTE: If existing metric values are deleted, any data associated with the original metric values such as annotations will be discarded, even if the value of the data point(s) remains the same after data is recollected. For annotations on a range of data points, if the first point in the date range is deleted and recollected, the annotation will be deleted.

5. Adding Annotations for Future Dates

Users can easily add Annotations for a Metric's data points for which data has not been collected yet.  This is helpful when a user knows something will be happening during the current or future period. The annotation will appear on the Chart and at the Homepage > News View when data is collected for that period; until then, the annotation can be viewed on the Metric Viewer below the actual chart as show below.

NOTE:  Display of Future Annotations is controlled based on the last data point collected, regardless of how OLD that data is.

5.1. You will receive a warning when adding annotations to dates in the future

Future Annotations

5.2. Viewing future Annotations below the Chart

Viewing future Annotations

As the Chart does not have a data point to which to 'attach' the annotation, information related to future annotations is displayed in the Event/Annotation/Comment section below the Chart as shown in the image above. To see the details of future annotations, click Show future annotations

5.3. Example of future Annotations

Example of future Annotations

NOTE: Future annotations have a different icon