Using bookmarks

While performing interactive analysis, you might want to capture analysis views with interesting findings to be able to revisit them later on. The use of bookmarks makes this possible because bookmarks are snapshots of the state of an analysis. Bookmarks can be shared with others, but they can also be kept private.

You can view and manage bookmarks in a popover or in a docked panel, opened by clicking Bookmark toolbar button on the menu bar, or by selecting View > Bookmarks. The Bookmarks panel or popover will open in the mode it was opened the last time you had it open. The image below shows the Bookmarks popover with three added bookmarks. From the popover, you add the bookmarks as well as apply them.

A bookmark is a snapshot of the current 'state' of an analysis, and it can be captured at any time. The state includes the following components:

Page layout and visualization configuration, that is, selections on axes, coloring, formatting, and what is visible or hidden.
Which items have been marked.
Which page and visualization is active, including whether the active visualization is maximized.
Filter settings.
Filter organization (applicable to bookmarks created in the installed client).
Properties and property values (applicable to bookmarks created in the installed client).

When a bookmark has been captured, you can, whenever you want, easily return to exactly what was captured, or share this state with others.

Note: If you, after adding a bookmark, remove visualizations or pages, they will not be recreated when applying a bookmark. Neither will any pages or visualizations, which you have added after capturing a bookmark, be removed.

Tip: Spotfire attempts to find a symbolic representation of the data when a marking is applied; that means that all rows matching the marked category will be marked after data is reloaded. By using an aggregated visualization when marking, you can create a bookmark that marks all current rows matching the selected categories, rather than the absolute rows that were marked at the time of creation. See Reapplying markings when reloading data for more information.

Private and public bookmarks

There are two kinds of bookmarks:

Private bookmarks (indicated by ), which only you can see. When adding a bookmark, it is private by default.
Public bookmarks (indicated by ), which are available to all users of the analysis.

In the popover/panel, private bookmarks are listed at the top and public bookmarks at the bottom.

Bookmarks can be used as actions

When using the installed client, bookmarks can be included as links in a text area. This helps you create guided analyses where the recipient of your analysis can click on action links or buttons to quickly move through several different views of the analysis.

Permissions

You can always apply any bookmarks that are visible to you in an analysis, but the ability to add and modify bookmarks can be restricted on two levels:

Library folder permissions – The creator of an analysis can specify the folder permissions required to add bookmarks in the Document Properties dialog (installed client only). See Details on Document Properties – Library in the Spotfire Analyst User Guide for a list of the available alternatives. To learn more about folder permissions in the library, see Permissions in the Spotfire Analyst User Guide.
Licenses – Which license you have determines whether or not you will be able to add bookmarks to analyses. Contact your administrator if you are missing a license feature.

Limitations on Bookmarks

It might not be possible to apply all parts of a bookmark if there are significant changes to the underlying data or the analysis. If the bookmark cannot be applied, you will see a notification about the issues.
If data is refreshed, markings in unaggregated visualizations can only be reapplied provided that key columns have been configured for that data table. See also Reapplying markings when reloading data.
Bookmarks are saved per user, per document. If your web client is configured for “impersonation” to allow multiple users to log in anonymously, these users all impersonate a single user profile, so any private bookmarks captured by one user will be visible to all the other users under the same user profile.
Bookmarks cannot capture filtering which is created using Marked rows > Filter to or Filter out.