Designing a Notebook

This section describes how to design a Report using the Notebook layout. A Notebook is a collection of tables, charts, and maps along with text and section headings. Notebooks allow administrators and data analysts to combine individual analysis or visualizations into a coherent narrative structure.

The Notebooks you design are visible only to you unless you add them to a Database, share or publish them.

Learn everything you need about Notebooks in our Webinar "Using notebooks for comprehensive data analysis in ActivityInfo".

Once you are familiar with Notebooks, master the feature by completing the guide "Creating a Notebook for 3W activities".

How to add a Notebook

Click on "My reports" to navigate to the "Add report" and click on the drop down to select "Add notebook" button to navigate to the Report Editor page.

Select the resource(s) on which you want the analyses of the Notebook to be based on. The resource(s) can be the content of one or more Databases, one or more Folders or one or more Forms. Depending on what you want to use as your source you can drill down the list to reach a specific Form or select all the contents available instead.
When you have selected all the sources you need click on the "Done" button.

To reach a specific Form, click on "Databases" to reveal the list of the available Databases and select the Database(s) that contains the Folder(s) or the Form(s) you want.
If the Form belongs to a Folder, select the Folder from the list of Folders to reveal the list of Forms in it.
Alternatively, to use the data of all the Databases, click on the Databases box to select all Databases.

Click on "Add component" to reveal the drop-down menu of components and to add the first component to the Notebook layout.

Add a Heading

Click on "Heading" to add a heading to the Notebook.

Type a heading and click on "Done" to close the card and continue adding components.
The Heading will appear in the Notebook.

You can add as many Headings as you need.

Add Text

Click on "Text" to add text to the Notebook.

Type the text you want to add and click on "Done" to close the card and continue adding components.
The text will appear in the Notebook.

You can add as many Text sections as you need.

Add a Pivot Table or a Bar Chart visualization

Click on "Pivot Table" to add a Pivot table or a Bar Chart analysis/visualization to the Notebook.

In the Analysis View you can start designing the Pivot Table or the Bar Chart it by adding Measures and Dimensions. Drag and drop the Measures and Dimensions you want to use.

Apply changes to the statistics, labels and headings if needed.
Add calculated fields or the count of all records if needed too.

Change from a Pivot Table analysis/visualization to a Bar Chart analysis/visualization by clicking on "Select visualization".
When ready, click on "Done".

You can always add more resources by clicking on "Select forms" in the Report Design side panel.
Learn more about designing Pivot Tables.
You can add as many Pivot Table and Bar Chart visualizations as you need.

The visualization has been added to the Notebook.
Click on the component card to give a name to the newly added Report and click on "Done" to save it.

You can click on "Go to pivot table" to go back to the Analysis View and continue working on the analysis.

Add a Map visualization

Click on "Map" to add a Map analysis/visualization to the Notebook. Please note that in order to be able to add a Map, the resources you are using need to contain Geography sources.

You can collect geographic information using a Geographic Point field to collect specific coordinates or by referencing the built-in geographic Database of ActivityInfo to collect information related to a geographic area.

In the Analysis View you can click on 'Select forms' to add more forms as resources or use the ones you have already selected.

Drag and drop the Layers you want to use in the Map and see the Map start forming.

Apply changes to labels, statistics, colors, icons etc.
When ready, click on "Done".

Learn more about designing Maps.
You can add as many Map analyses/visualization as you need.

The Map has been added to the Notebook.
Click on the component card to give a name to the newly added Report and click on "Done" to save it.

You can click on "Go to map" to go back to the Analysis View and continue working on the analysis.