Have you ever found yourself struggling over just how to go about creating an i2 Analyst’s Notebook® chart, or working with an existing chart and asking yourself “How can I logically / reasonably expect to extract information from this chart?”  If you have been using the software for a while, you know that it’s much more than an expensive box of crayons to use as a drawing aid.  You know that it CAN analyze information but may be struggling with HOW to organize your data in order to maximize Analyst’s Notebook’s true analytical capabilities.

Whether you are planning to create or working with an existing one, I would suggest that you start at a whiteboard and consider the following: 

• All entities on your chart (icons, events, theme lines) can have distinct searchable fields that can be used to store identity and label, description, date and time, grading, source reference, source type, cards and multiple, user-defined attributes.
• Links can also store a label, description, date and time, grading, source reference, source type, cards and multiple, user-defined attributes.
• Links can be drawn to entities but NOT attributes.

With this in mind, ask yourself “What questions have I or others involved in this file are asking or are likely to ask?”  For example – find all persons with a passport issued between January 20 and 31, 2005 OR what is the total value of transactions that occurred between two bank accounts held by certain individual(s).

Answering these questions will assist you in determining where to store vital information: links vs entities, entities vs attributes.   Having determined this, you are ready to move from the whiteboard to Analyst’s Notebook® and start inputting data.  And remember – consistency is your friend.  Once the data has been input in a consistent manner, you can logically expect to use Analyst’s Notebook's built-in analytical tools to begin analyzing the data.