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Manipulating the graph: Node Grouping

Node grouping enhances network exploration, accelerating the analysis workflow. It simplifies the understanding of complex networks by grouping together nodes that share the same information.

Accessing the node grouping panel and creating a node group rule

To be able to group nodes, you first need to create a node grouping rule, which will then enable users to activate grouping in their own investigations.

The node grouping panel is accessible by clicking on the following icon in the toolbar at the top right of the screen.

The node grouping panel will then open, listing the available grouping rules.

If no grouping rule exists, a button will allow to create a first grouping rule.

To create a grouping rule, click on the "Create rule" button at the bottom of the node grouping panel.

Clicking on this button opens a modal with the node grouping rule creation form.

To create a rule, you need first to choose a title. This title will be visible in the group caption. Next, you'll need to select the property on which the grouping will be based.

Nodes can be grouped by one property value. In the example below, we want to group all nodes that belong to the "RealEstateValue" category and belong to the same city (share the same value in their "city" property).

The grouping rule is based on the schema of your database. Therefore, once you've selected a property by which to group nodes, you'll need to choose the categories which this property belongs that you want to group. In this way, you can create a group comprising nodes belonging to one or more different categories. By default, all the categories which the property belongs to are selected.

Once you've created a grouping rule, you'll find it in the list of available rules (in the right panel).

A grouping rule is available to all users of the same datasource. Only the rule creator or an administrator can delete it.

Group nodes in a visualization

You can activate and deactivate grouping rules in your visualization to change its appearance and discover new information more easily.

You can only activate one grouping rule at a time. Activating a second rule will automatically deactivate the previously activated one.

In the example above, we want to focus our investigation on people with a nationality that has been flagged as suspicious by relevant authorities. Rather than looking at each “Person” node to check each one's nationality, we can activate the "Nationality" rule.

After activating the grouping rule we can see three groups of nodes in this visualization. The first one groups all those whose nationality is "America", the second “China”, and finally the third "Russia". We can then decide to begin our investigation by focusing on the nationality we're interested in. All grouped nodes remain accessible, and all associated functionalities (such as expand, queries, and custom actions) remain available.

For a better analysis experience, grouping will change where nodes are positioned in the visualization. Because of that, the pinned nodes belonging to groups will be automatically unpinned.