Managing maps

Maps belong to your organisation. Every member can create, edit, rename and delete them.

Your maps

The home page lists the current organisation’s maps, with a count beside the heading. Each row shows the map’s name, its number of nodes and connections, and when it was last edited. Hover over the time to see the full date. Adding, changing or importing data counts as an edit; opening a map doesn’t.

• Click a map to open it in Edit mode. On wider screens, hovering over a row shows Edit, Visualise and Table shortcuts that open it in that mode.
• Find a map filters the list by name. Press / to jump to it.
• Recent and A–Z switch the sort order.

If you belong to more than one organisation, choose one from the organisation name at the top left. The menu shows your role in each. The app remembers your choice on every device.

Create a map

Click New map and choose how to start:

• Blank: name the map, then click Create map. It opens on an empty canvas in Edit mode, with a Type tag group (Person, Organisation) ready to use (see Tag groups).
• From a file: choose a CSV or GraphML file. The map takes the file’s name unless you type one. You then go through the import steps. If you close the import before it runs, the empty map is removed.
• Duplicate: copy an existing map (see below).

Import, next to New map, opens From a file directly.

Duplicate a map

Choose Duplicate from a map’s ⋯ menu, or in the New map dialog. You get an independent copy in the same organisation with:

• every node, connection and canvas position
• its own copy of every measure, tag and connection type, including unused ones, with tag groups, icons and colours, and the map’s default grouping
• the map’s recipe, credited to you. Nobody has confirmed it on the copy yet, so the copy’s first data change marks it out of date (see About this map).

Saved views aren’t copied. Changes to the copy never affect the original.

Rename, download or delete

Each map’s ⋯ menu has:

• Rename: edit the name in place. Press Enter to save or Esc to cancel. You can only rename a map from the home page.
• Download: GraphML (full graph) or CSV (nodes only). See Exporting.
• Delete: asks you to confirm first.

Deleting a map removes everything in it for everyone in the organisation: its nodes, connections, measures, tags, connection types, saved views and uploaded import files. It can’t be undone. Other maps aren’t affected.

About this map

Every map has an About this map button at the top right of the canvas, in Edit and Visualise. Click it to open the panel. Click it again, or press Esc, to close it. It’s closed whenever you open a map.

• What you’re looking at describes what’s on the canvas, built from your current settings. It describes only what’s shown, never what’s hidden, faded or left out.
  • In Visualise it names the mode, how many nodes are shown (and what they have in common, when Nodes leaves some out), which connections shape the layout and how, what the Visibility filter picks out and shows, and what size, colour and line thickness show. For example: “A bridges view of the network, showing 260 nodes, shaped by 1,481 funds connections, according to the total amount recorded between each pair of nodes. The filter shows 1,213 connections dated between 2019 and 2023.”
  • In Edit it counts the nodes on the canvas and the connections drawn between them, such as “Showing 180 nodes and the 1,203 connections between them.” When you highlight a row in the Connections card, it adds a sentence such as “Funds connections are highlighted.”
• Where it comes from shows the map’s recipe.

A PNG export from Visualise includes the panel (see Export an image).

Write the recipe

The recipe is a note on how the map’s data was made: where it comes from, the steps that built it, and what was left out. Anyone who can edit the map can write it.

1. Open About this map and click Write the recipe, or Edit if there’s one already.
2. Type in the Write tab. Markdown works: headings, lists, links and tables. HTML and images aren’t shown. Preview shows how it will look.
3. Click Save, or press Cmd + Enter (Mac) or Ctrl + Enter (Windows). Cancel drops your changes.

Below the recipe, “Edited by” says who changed it last, and when. The editor stops at the maximum length.

If someone else saves the recipe while you’re editing it, Save warns you instead of replacing their version. Click View theirs to drop your changes and read theirs, or Overwrite to save yours anyway.

When the recipe is out of date

When the map’s data changes after the recipe was last confirmed, an amber dot appears on About this map. Above the recipe, a note says “The map’s data has changed since this was confirmed”, with the date and who confirmed it. If nobody has confirmed it yet, it says “since this was written”. Read the recipe, then click:

• Still accurate if it still describes the data, or
• Edit to change it. Saving counts as confirming it.

These change the data:

• adding, editing or deleting nodes and connections, including their properties, measures and tags
• every import, from Import / Export or through the API, even one that changed nothing
• deleting a measure, tag or connection type, turning a measure into a tag, or ticking or unticking a connection type’s Records a value.

These don’t:

• moving, placing or unplacing nodes
• creating, renaming or describing measures, tags and connection types, and other changes to them that leave the values as they are
• saved views and Visualise settings
• the recipe itself.

The panel checks for changes every 30 seconds, when you come back to the tab, and a couple of seconds after your own edits.

Who can see a map

Only signed-in members of the organisation can open its maps. There’s no way to share a map publicly yet (see Limits).