Adding your visuals and analytics is probably the most important stage of populating each of your pages. It provides the analytic content that is at the heart of the data you want to share with your audience. You can either add existing visuals that have been saved to content manager or you can create one-off visuals that only exist within this publication and cannot be reused by other users or in other publications.
Important: If you decide to create a one-off visual in your publication, you can easily change it into a shared visual later using the Make Shareable option on the right-click context menu. Likewise, if you decide to add a shared visual from the content management system, you can unlink it from its parent (making it into a one-off visual and saving it as part of the publication) using the Unlink option on the Component ribbon.
Adding existing visuals
You can add existing visuals from the various apps (discoveries from Discover, visual areas from Tabulate, infographics from Illustrate, and so on) to your publication if they have been saved to the content management system in a location that you can access. You are advised to re-use content as much as possible, as this ensures that you are always including the latest underlying analytic data from your team in your publication. Note that using linked visuals means that any future changes to that original visual will be reflected in your publication.
- For more information, see Adding Existing Visuals in Publish Pro
Unlinking visuals
When you add an existing visual to your publication, you are actually creating a link to a parent discovery that is saved in the content management system. You can unlink the visual at any time, making a copy of the original visual and saving it as part of the publication. Note that unlinking means that any future changes to that original visual will not be reflected in your publication.
- For more information, see Unlinking Content in Publish Pro
Creating and embedding new visuals
You can create a new visual and embed it directly into your publication, either using Smart Reporting or Discover Lite. These are both easy-to-use design-time tools, but whereas Smart Reporting does most of the work of creating your visual for you, Discover Lite provides access to more functionality to let you customize your visual to your own requirements. Once your visual is built, clicking Finish embeds it into the publication.
Tip: Don't worry about choosing "the wrong" option. Once you have created your visual using either of these tools, you can open it up in Discover from the right-click menu to edit it at any time.
Smart Reporting
Smart reporting provides a highly simplified, wizard-like process for building visuals that are then saved and embedded within your publication. Smart Reporting is a good solution for those users who want to build their visuals quickly and want to allow the wizard to design the visual (selecting the appropriate visualization type, for example) on their behalf.
- For more information, see Creating Visuals using Smart Reporting in Publish Pro
Discover Lite
Discover Lite offers a streamlined interface and a slimmed-down range of Discover functionality in comparison to Discover Pro, but it offers more flexibility and sophistication than Smart Reporting. It is a "happy medium" between the full experience and the simplified Smart Reporting experience. Discover Lite is a good solution for those users who want to retain close control of the editing functions available when building their visuals.
- For more information, see Creating Visuals using Discover Lite in Publish Pro