Communication Visualizer is an interactive and filterable network graph of select email communications that helps you gather insights into communication patterns.
Understand who was communicating with whom, with what frequency, and how those communication patterns evolved over time, to filter down to relationships of interest and review the emails involved.
Communication Visualizer is best leveraged in investigations and workflows throughout the discovery process to identify key communicators, understand communication patterns for specific persons of interest, and identify anomalies in those patterns.
Use this article to understand how to use Communication Visualizer and some key workflows to make the best use of it.
Table of contents
- Overview of Communication Visualizer
- Accessing Communication Visualizer
- How does Communication Visualizer work?
- Graph components
- Using Communication Visualizer
- Communication Visualizer for Common Workflows
Overview of Communication Visualizer
After watching the introduction video above, we recommend exploring Communication Visualizer with a subset of emails in a given project and diving into some common workflows. You can learn more about graph components here and see a comprehensive overview of using Communication Visualizer here.
Access Communication Visualizer
Communication Visualizer is directly integrated with Data Visualizer and can be accessed from a search page, results table, or through the Document Analytics menu in the top navigation toolbar. Note: users subject to document access management restrictions are only be able to visualize emails they can access.
To access Communication Visualizer:
- From the search page: select Open data visualizer after building your initial search.
- From a results table: select Visualize from the top toolbar.
-
From the top navigation toolbar, select Document Analytics > Data Visualizer.
Once in Everlaw’s Data Visualizer, select Communication on the left hand side of the screen to generate a Communication Visualizer graph.
How Communication Visualizer works
Communication Visualizer automatically analyzes the contact names, email addresses, and domains of emails in a given targeted search to generate a visualization of email communication patterns.
To be visualized, emails must have values for the following metadata fields:
- Date sent
- Value must be between January 1, 1971 and present-day
- From
- One or more values for To/Cc/Bcc
Emails that do not have the appropriate values for these listed fields will not be displayed on visualizations generated by Communication Visualizer.
Graph Components
Communication Visualizer generates graphs with three main components:
- Nodes: the circles
- Edges: the lines connecting nodes
- “Others” node: the quarter circle in the top left corner of the visualization
Nodes
Nodes in Communication Visualizer represent a contact name, email address, or domain. Each one of these options can be selected as the node type for a given visualization. The size and position of the nodes provide information about communication patterns:
- Size: indicates the volume of emails (i.e., the number of sent and received emails) associated with the node. Hover over a given node to see the breakdown of the number of emails associated with the node.
- Proximity to other nodes: indicates those that that node either (a) communicated with directly or (b) share mutual communicators with. For example, people on the same team may appear closer together in a visualization.
Edges
Edges represent the volume and directionality of the emails exchanged between nodes. The thickness of the edge and arrow position on the line provide information about communication patterns.
- Thickness: indicates the number of emails sent between the two nodes. Hover over an edge to see the number of emails sent using the To, CC, and BCC fields.
-
Arrow location and direction: indicates the proportional directionality or flow of communication between those nodes.
- An arrow near one end of an edge indicates that most communications flow in that direction
- An arrow near the middle indicates a similar volume of emails from each node.
- The arrow’s position along the edge indicates the actual proportion of email communications that are being sent from either node.
“Others” node
The "Others" node captures all email communications between nodes displayed in the visualization and other nodes in the document set that are not currently displayed in the visualization. This node gives you visibility into all communications involving the top, displayed nodes. Note that the “Others” node does not include communications between nodes that are not displayed in the visualization.
For example, assume the following:
- A is displayed as one of top nodes in the visualization
- B, C, and D are not one of the top nodes in the dataset so they are not displayed in the visualization
- A communicates with B and C
- A does not communicate with D
- D communicates with B
Here, the “Others” node includes any emails between A and B as well A and C because A is displayed in the visualization. However, the “Others node” does not include communications between B and C or B and D because these nodes are not displayed in the visualization.
Use Communication Visualizer
Basic Navigation
- Click and drag: click and drag on a visualization to pan around the page
- Hover over details: hover over nodes and edges to gather more information about the number of emails (sent or received) associated with a given graph component.
-
Zoom in and out: to zoom in and out of visualizations, select the magnifying glass buttons
, scroll with a mouse wheel, or use pinch-to-zoom on a laptop.
-
Undo and redo: to undo and redo the last selection made on the visualization, select the left and right arrows
in the toolbar. Note that the undo and redo behavior does not apply to actions taken in Explore mode.
- Reset view: To reset your initial view of the visualization, select Reset view in the far right corner of the Communication Visualizer toolbar.
Edit visualization display options
Change node type and top number of nodes displayed
By default, Communication Visualizer displays the top 10 name nodes with the highest number of emails sent and received within the underlying search.
You can change the node type and number of top nodes to display in the visualization. For example, if you are interested in gathering insight on the use of personal email addresses (e.g., @google.com, @yahoo.com, etc.), change the node type to domains.
To change the node type and the number of top nodes to display in the visualization:
- Select Edit from the toolbar to open the Edit visualization display options menu.
- Select the node type to display: select Names, Domains, or Emails
- Enter the number of top nodes to display.
- You can currently display up to 25 nodes in a visualization when displaying name and email node types, and up to 20 nodes when selecting the domain node type.
- You can currently display up to 25 nodes in a visualization when displaying name and email node types, and up to 20 nodes when selecting the domain node type.
- Select Recalculate to regenerate your visualization based on these selections.
Display specific nodes
You can also edit the visualization to select specific nodes to display with or without a specified number of their top neighboring nodes.
Selecting specific nodes to display with top neighboring nodes can be especially helpful if you are interested in examining email communication patterns between a specific set of name, email, or domain type nodes.
To do so:
- Select Edit from the toolbar to open the Edit visualization display options menu.
- Select your desired node type: Names, Domains, or Emails.
- Select Display specific [node type].
- Select the search bar to choose specific nodes to display, or type in specific values to filter from the dropdown menu. You can select up to 25 names or emails, and up to 20 domains.
- For Top neighbors of specified [node type], select whether to Display top x [node type] or Don't display neighbors of specified [node type]. Read on for a description of these options.
- Select Recalculate.
Top neighbors of specified [node type] are the nodes with highest numbers of email communications connected by edges to a specific node. In step 5 above, you choose whether or not to display them:
-
Display top x [node type]: Communication Visualizer displays the top X nodes that each of the specified nodes have communicated with most (the neighbors). In this option, the total number of nodes displayed must be less than or equal to the max number of nodes for the selected node type (i.e., up to 25 total nodes for name and email node type visualizations, up to 20 for domain type visualizations).
For example, let’s say you know that Ashley and Brian send emails to each other often and you want to know who else these specific individuals emailed frequently. If you select Ashley and Brian as the two specific name nodes to display, you can select up to 11 top neighboring nodes to display for each of the two specified names (i.e., 11 top neighbors for Ashley and 11 top neighbors for Brian)because the total number of name nodes displayed would be less than the 25 node maximum for names (i.e., 2 specified name nodes + 11 top neighbors for Ashley + 11 top neighbors for Brian = 24 total nodes). In contrast, if you instead selected two specific domain nodes to display, you can select up to 9 top neighboring nodes to display for each of the two specified domains because the total number of domain nodes displayed would be less than the 20 node maximum for domains (i.e., 2 specified domain nodes + 9 top neighbors for Domain A + 9 top neighbors for Domain B = 20 total nodes).
Node type: Names (25 node max)
| A: # specified names | B: Max # top neighbors |
C: Resulting # nodes C = A * (B + 1) |
| 1 | 24 | 25 |
| 2 | 11 | 24 |
| 3 | 7 | 24 |
| 4 | 5 | 24 |
| 5 | 4 | 25 |
-
Don’t display neighbors: no additional nodes are displayed, and only emails between the specified nodes (and no one else) are represented in the visualization. Note that if there are no email communications exchanged between the specified nodes, the visualization is empty.
Filter by date
Leverage the date filter at the bottom of the page to narrow the date range of the email data displayed. You can expand the date filter at the bottom of the screen then pan around and zoom in/out. Click and drag to capture a specific date range or type in the relevant date range in the from/to fields to understand how communication patterns evolve over time.
-
The dark bars on the date filter represent communications between the nodes displayed in the visualization. These include communications between the nodes displayed in the visualization and the “Others” node.
-
The light bars represent communications that are in the underlying search but are not displayed in the visualization. These include communications within the "Others" node.
Interaction modes
Communication Visualizer has two interaction modes:
- Selection mode: every click adds or removes documents from your current selection.
- Explore mode: you can freely click on nodes and edges to view more details without affecting your current selection.
Selection mode
By default, Communication Visualizer opens in Selection mode. When you select a node and/or edge on the visualization, details about your overall selection appear in the side menu.
You can also select nodes from the Search [node type] to select dropdown menu in the toolbar. This dropdown menu is especially helpful to quickly see all the nodes displayed in the visualization, sorted by decreasing communication volume.
You can modify your selection by selecting additional nodes or edges, selecting more nodes from the dropdown menu in the toolbar, or by interacting with the checkboxes within the side menu that appears after selection.
Select nodes
There are some visual cues that indicate whether a node is fully selected, partially selected, or not selected.
|
|
Fully selected | all edges from the node are selected |
| |
Partially selected | some, but not all, edges from the node are selected |
| |
Not selected | no edges from the node are selected |
For example, when you first click on a node, the selected node and all connected edges, including the edge connected to the “Others” node, are highlighted in blue.
Nodes selected from the toolbar dropdown are highlighted in blue because they are fully selected. Fully selected nodes are displayed with an orange background in this dropdown.
Add filters
After making selections in a given visualization, you can filter documents by selecting Add filter in the side menu. After the filter is applied, the visualization regenerates to reflect the newly filtered set of emails. Applied filters are represented at the top of the screen with information about the selection. Select the red X to remove applied filters.
The image above displays the top 10 name visualization. Jeff Dasovich has been selected. Once Add Filter is selected, a representation of the filter appears at the top of the screen. The screenshot below shows an example of what a filter added from Communication Visualizer looks like.
This filter shows a preview of the selection. In this example, communications between Jeff Dasovich and 6 neighbors are selected, and there are 6 additional nodes in the selection. On hover, the full list of selected nodes and their respective number of selected neighbors is displayed.
Explore mode
Use Explore mode to learn more about the displayed nodes and edges in the visualization and pull up granular details without impacting your current selection. To enter and exit Explore mode, select the Explore button in Communication Visualizer’s toolbar.
In Explore mode, select a node or edge to see information about how many email communications were sent to and from the selected node or edge. The node or edge that is currently being “explored” is displayed with an orange highlight, regardless of whether or not it was previously selected in Selection mode.
After taking a closer look at a node or edge, you can update your current selection from Explore mode. Select the relevant button at the bottom of the Explore mode side menu. The Explore mode side menu indicates what the pending changes to the selection would be if the “Update current selection” button is selected .
For example, in the image above, we previously selected the node for John Arnold in Selection mode (as indicated by the blue highlight), then entered Explore mode to look through any additional nodes or edges to add/remove/update our current selection. After clicking on the edge between Phillip K. Allen and Ina Rangel (as indicated by the edge being highlighted orange) to see the breakdown of email communications, we can add this to our current selection by selecting Add to current selection at the bottom of Explore mode’s side menu. When returning to Selection mode in this example, we will see the edge between Phillip K. Allen and Ina Rangel highlighted in blue.
Communication Visualizer for common workflows
Communication Visualizer can be leveraged for a variety of workflows throughout investigations and the discovery lifecycle. This section provides some common workflows to get you started, but you can use any search containing email communications to generate a graph with Communication Visualizer.
Identify key communicators within a dataset
In this scenario, you have uploaded email data to Everlaw and want a high-level overview of the key communicators in your dataset.
- Select Document Analytics
> Data Visualizer .
- Navigate to the Communication tab in the left-hand side of the Data Visualizer page.
- In the resulting visualization by default, you will see the top 10 individuals that frequently communicate within the underlying search. You can increase the number of name nodes displayed to identify additional key communicators within the underlying search.
If your project contains more than 1 million emails, you need to narrow your search (e.g. use filters in Data Visualizer or refine search then visualize).
Identify key communicators discussing a given topic
In this scenario, you have already identified a narrowed set of emails involving potentially interesting topics and want to find out who is communicating about these topics.
- Create a search for emails containing specific content or clusters of emails pertaining to relevant terms.
- Select Visualize from the results table (or Open data visualizer directly from the search page or Clustering page) and navigate to the Communication tab on the Data Visualizer page.
- In the resulting visualization by default, you will see the top 10 individuals involved in communications about the selected topics within the underlying search. You can increase the number of name nodes displayed to identify more people that are involved in communications about the selected topics.
Learn more about the communication patterns of specific individuals
In this scenario, you have already identified one or more people of interest in the default top 10 Names node type visualization and want to learn more about their communication patterns. Specifically, you want to know who else these people are frequently emailing with during specific date ranges.
- Select nodes for one or more people of interest and select Add to filter in the side menu.
- Select the name node for each person of interest to see a breakdown of who they were talking to and how often. You can increase the number of neighboring name nodes displayed to identify more people that the specified name nodes were speaking to.
- Expand the date filter and select relevant date ranges to understand how communications involving specific people of interest evolved over time.
Find anomalies in communication patterns
With Communication Visualizer, you can also quickly spot when individuals are using private email addresses to send/receive emails.
- Change the node type for your visualization to Domains so you can see the top email domains which can indicate the organizations that have communicated most frequently in the underlying search.
- Select the edge between two Domain nodes of interest (e.g., @enron.com and @aol.com) and select Add to filter in the side menu.
- Change the node type for your visualization to Names so you can see which individuals were involved in emails exchanged between the two selected Domain nodes of interest.
- Select Name nodes of interest and select Add to filter in the side menu to narrow your search then select View results table to review the relevant emails.
0 Comments