New Features in Version 10

Keep and hide entities based on their entity and relationship types. For instance, you may have telephone call data showing calls between phone numbers and the owner of each phone. Entity Replace lets you replace the phones with their owners to show the connection between the people rather than phones.

Specify the entity types to keep and replace. Advanced options let you choose multiple entity and relationship types to keep and hide. Settings can be saved for future use and multiple saved replacements can be combined.

Entity Replace acts like a filter. Once enabled, the replacement is automatically applied to new entities added to the diagram, including entities added with Get Links. Turn off Entity Replace to see all your entities again.

Layout automatically reorganizes the entities on the diagram. A new feature lets you easily see all the entities by entity type. Under Layout, a new [Group by Entity Type] item moves your entities into a variety of shapes for each entity type.

Each entity type is treated as a separate network arranged from largest to smallest, sorted by name within each type. For example, three entity types (transactions, stores, people) in concentric circles:

Easily select all the entities of a type to remove them or send them to a new Diagram (under Output).

Relationship connections can now be displayed as curves rather than straight lines. This is particularly useful when relationships exist in both directions because the separate curved lines make each direction and arrow easier to distinguish.

Relationship Lines with Style as a Curve

Relationship Lines with Style as a Line

The Query Builder is revamped to be more powerful and easier to use.

More Advanced Queries

• Relationships can be searched independently without entities.
• Relationships can have entity criteria on one or both sides of the relationship.
• Relationships can now be searched by Relationship ID and, like Entities, by Created Date, Created By, Modified Date, Modified By, and Brief.
• Combine multiple, disconnected entity and relationship boxes as UNION queries.
• Search for Blank and Not Blank values.
• Perform multiple value and wildcard searches on entity name and metadata values.
• Search for a metadata type (any value) or all metadata types with a specific value.

Enhanced User Interface

• Adding a new Relationship automatically adds two entities.
• For Relationships, a new [Edit Links] button to reassign entity boxes, and optionally include or exclude TO/FROM entities.
• Lines between entities and relationships are thicker, at top instead of middle, and have arrows indicating TO/FROM direction.
• Criteria entries are validated according to the column's data type, such as date, number, or integer.
• Reordered columns for entities and relationship boxes for easier use and consistency.
• Collapse boxes to reduce their height to the last specified column value.
• Improved user interface for managing metadata criteria.
• Save and open retain the layout more accurately.

Query Results

• Each Run Query result is displayed on a separate form (instead of the bottom of the screen) so more data on a full screen can be shown and multiple results compared.
• The results form includes a text filter and options to send items to the Visualizer or Excel.

Searches for entities and relationships can be saved. Under Search, the new [Combine Multiple Searches] item lets you select and perform analysis among them.

Unlike saved Visualizer Diagrams which save specific items, saved searches are applied against your current database, so their results change with your data. Combine multiple searches to show their Entities and Relationships.

For instance, you may have saved a search for each crime scene selecting entities around a particular location and time. As your database is updated, each search retrieves new results. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find entities that appeared at all or most of the crime scenes?

After selecting the saved searches, choose the Common Data options:

• Every Search: Find Entities and Relationships that are in every selected search. These are the highest value targets.
• Two or More Searches: Entities that are in at least two of the searches.
• Most Searches: Determine the maximum number of selected searches that an entity is found in and show those entities. For instance, 10 searches are selected, but no Entities are in all 10. Sentinel Visualizer finds that the most searches an entity is in is 7, so it shows the entities (and relationships) that are in 7.

The entity search screen now lets you select entities based on their distance from a location.

Specify a radius in miles or kilometers and a center point using latitude and longitude. All entities within the resulting circle are selected.

Entity and relationship metadata search is enhanced to find items with a Metadata Type regardless of value and to support wildcard searching on values.

All Items with a Metadata Type

For the entity and relationship metadata search, you can select a Metadata Type and leave the Value blank to find all the items that have that Metadata Type regardless of its value.

Previously, a value was required which did not support searching for any value for the type.

Metadata Wildcard Search

Wildcard searches support finding values that start with a letter(s), contain letters, and/or end with letters. The percent sign (%) is the wildcard character and represents any sequence of characters. Use it to find values that start with, end with, or contain specific text.

The top menu is reorganized to match the options in the left panel of the Home Page:

Menu Changes

• File: [New Database] combines [New Local Database] and [New Shared Database] into one.
• Visualizer:
  • NEW [Open Saved Visualizer] opens a saved diagram without opening the Visualizer first.
  • NEW [Multiple Visualizer Analysis] combines and compares multiple saved diagrams.
• Search: NEW [Combine Multiple Searches] selects multiple saved entity and relationship searches to show all or only common items among them.
• Add Data: NEW [Import Wizard] simplifies creating a new import with a Wizard.
• View (replaces Reports): Several new items to view lists of entities and relationships without using the dataset builder.
• Help: NEW [Check for Update] to see if you are running the latest version of the program.

Home Page Panel

On the Home Page, the left panel reflects similar changes:

• New buttons include [Open a Saved Visualizer], [Multiple Visualizer Analysis], and view [All Entities and Relationships].
• [New Database] combines separate items for local and shared databases.
• Each section can be minimized by clicking the icon in their top right corner.

A new collection of 9,500+ high resolution images is included for use with Entity Types and individual entities.

High Resolution Icon File Library

The new icons are 128x128 pixel PNG files and replace a much smaller collection of 32-pixel ICO files. For new databases, the default list of Entity Types has the higher resolution graphics.

The Visualizer diagram and other forms support the higher resolution graphics for a richer and more visually appealing appearance.