← Back to Analyst's Notebook Learning Path
Where intelligence analysts pretend to be CSI detectives with fancy software instead of sunglasses.
Overview: The Software That Makes You Look Like You Know What You're Doing
IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook is the intelligence community's answer to "how can we make connecting dots look
really impressive?" It's a powerful visual intelligence analysis tool that helps analysts discover
patterns, connections, and insights in complex data - and makes your investigation board look way more
professional than red string and thumbtacks.
Analyst's Notebook Truth #1
The more complex your chart looks, the less likely anyone will question your conclusions. This is both a
feature and a danger.
Key Concepts (Or: How to Speak Notebook Without Sounding Like a Newbie)
Analyst's Notebook uses a visual approach to intelligence analysis, allowing you to represent entities
(people, places, events, etc.) as icons and the relationships between them as links. This visual
representation helps identify patterns and connections that might be missed in textual or tabular data - or
as we like to call it, "finding needles in haystacks without getting hay fever."
The Analyst's Notebook Interface: Where Buttons Go to Hide
Upon opening Analyst's Notebook for the first time, you'll be greeted by approximately 17,000 buttons,
menus, and options. Don't panic - this is normal. By the end of your career, you might understand what 60%
of them do.
- The Ribbon - Like Microsoft Office, but with more ways to visualize criminal networks
- The Chart Surface - Your digital canvas where you'll create intelligence masterpieces
(or, more likely, a tangled web that somehow makes sense to only you)
- The Palette - Home to all the entity types you'll need, from "Suspicious Person" to
"Vehicle That Was Definitely There But No One Got The License Plate"
- The Analyst's Notebook Graveyard - The bottom right corner where features go to die,
never to be clicked on by anyone
Things You'll Learn to Create (Besides Eye Strain)
- Link Charts - Visual representations of relationships that will make you feel like a
detective in a TV show
- Timeline Charts - For when you need to prove that Suspect A couldn't have been in two
places at once (unless they have a twin, which always complicates things)
- Transaction Patterns - Follow the money, because criminals are bad at many things, but
especially accounting
- Social Network Analysis - Discover who's the Kevin Bacon of your criminal network
(everyone is six degrees or fewer from Kevin Bacon, even criminals)
Pro Tip
Save your work every 10 minutes. Analyst's Notebook crashes are like tax audits - not a matter of if, but
when.
Common Rookie Mistakes (That You'll Make Anyway)
- The "My Chart Looks Like a Plate of Spaghetti" - When you've added so many entities and
links that your analysis resembles an Italian dinner
- The "Where Did That Icon Go?" - The frustrating game of hide-and-seek with entities
that somehow migrated off-screen
- The "I Forgot to Save" Tragedy - Followed by the five stages of grief, ending with
reluctant acceptance as you start over
- The "Accidental Delete" Panic - That moment of horror when you realize you just deleted
three hours of work with one misclick
Analyst's Notebook Fundamentals
-
IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook Documentation (Insomnia Cure)
-
Analyst's Notebook Templates (So You Don't Start From Scratch)
-
Chart Style Guide (Making Your Analysis Pretty AND Functional)
Next Topics
-
Creating Entity Relationship Charts (Connect ALL the Dots!)
-
Timeline Visualization (Time Is A Flat Circle, But Your Chart Shouldn't Be)
What is Analyst's Notebook?
IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook is the most widely used visual analysis tool in law enforcement, intelligence, and corporate security. It transforms complex relational data into visual charts that reveal patterns, networks, and connections that would be difficult or impossible to see in text-based formats.
- Visual Analysis Paradigm: Unlike database tools that present data in tables or text tools that present data in reports, Analyst's Notebook works on a visual canvas where entities (people, places, things) are represented as icons and their relationships as connecting lines. This visual representation leverages the human brain's exceptional pattern-recognition capabilities.
- Multi-Dimensional Analysis: Analyst's Notebook supports multiple analytical dimensions simultaneously - network analysis (who is connected to whom), temporal analysis (when events occurred), geospatial analysis (where events occurred), and hierarchical analysis (organisational structures).
- Enterprise Integration: Analyst's Notebook can integrate with existing intelligence databases, case management systems, and data feeds, allowing analysts to work with live data rather than static exports.
The Analyst's Notebook Interface
New users should familiarise themselves with the core interface components:
- The Chart Canvas: The main workspace where entities and links are placed and arranged. The canvas supports unlimited zoom, pan, and layering, allowing analysts to work with charts ranging from a handful of entities to thousands.
- The Entity Palette: A toolbar containing standard entity icons (Person, Organisation, Location, Vehicle, Communication, Financial, etc.). Entities are dragged from the palette onto the canvas.
- The Link Palette: Defines the types of relationships that can be drawn between entities - ownership, communication, association, temporal, and custom link types.
- The Attributes Panel: Displays and allows editing of detailed information about the selected entity or link. Each entity type has configurable attribute fields.
- The Conditioned View Panel: Allows analysts to create rule-based views that highlight specific patterns - for example, highlighting all entities connected to a particular phone number in red.
Core Analytical Capabilities
Analyst's Notebook provides several analytical capabilities that distinguish it from generic charting tools:
- Link Analysis: The core capability - identifying and visualising connections between entities. Link analysis reveals hidden relationships, communication chains, and organisational structures.
- Timeline Analysis: Chart entities and events on a common timeline to reveal sequences, gaps, and temporal patterns. Timeline analysis is essential for understanding the chronology of complex investigations.
- Social Network Analysis: Built-in SNA metrics (degree centrality, betweenness centrality, etc.) quantify the structural position of entities within a network. These metrics can identify key players, brokers, and peripheral actors.
- Entity Resolution: Tools to identify and merge duplicate entities - when the same person appears under slightly different names or with different identifying information across multiple data sources.
- Chart Comparison: Compare two versions of a chart to identify what has changed - new entities, new links, or relationships that have been modified or removed.
