At General Availability on April 14, 2021 users will have the option to turn on the Spring '21: New Knowledge Graph Search & Entity Previews (early access) account feature. To turn the feature on in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features, and you will find the feature under ‘Early Access Features’.
This feature includes two main updates:
- Knowledge Graph UI Updates (specifically the Entity Search UI)
- Customizable Entity Previews
Entity Search UI Updates
To make Entity Search even more user-friendly we’ve made a few updates to the UI. This includes moving filters to the top of the page for easier access, adding pinned filters to the left-side menu, and featuring the Add Data module more prominently. We have also made it easier to navigate your entities by surfacing new Customizable Entity Previews (you can learn more about Customizable Entity Previews in this post).
As part of this update, we are also making the following enhancements to the search page:
- Simplifying the Knowledge Graph sub-navigation
- Adding a new top filter bar
- Adding Pinned Filter support
- Entity Search UI Updates
- Asynchronous Page Loading
- Customizable entity previews (you can learn more about this in the Customizable Entity Previews community post)
This post will review the details of these updates, starting at the top of the page:
Knowledge Graph sub-navigation
We are updating the sub-tabs displayed in the navigation bar to be more succinct, but also to help you get where you want to go faster. With the new UI we will now display sub-tabs for the following (in the order listed):
- Entities - This will link to the new Entity Search interface.
- Assets - This will link to the existing Assets UI.
- Suggestions - This will link to the existing Suggestions UI.
- Connectors - This will link to the new Data Connectors framework.
- Widgets - This will link to the existing Widgets UI.
- Configuration - This will link to the new Configuration sub-tab. To read more about the Knowledge Graph Configuration tab, visit the Navigating the Knowledge Graph training unit.
- Menus, Products & Services, Bios, and Events - We will display separate links for each type of active Enhanced Content list in an account. These links will be separated from the above 5 links with a ‘|’ separator.
Top Level Filter
Filtering for specific entities is one of the most popular actions on this page! We are updating the filter bar on the entity search page to allow users to more easily filter the entities that are displayed on the page. The main updates include a new location that’s easier to access at the top of the page and new pinned pills for Entity Type, Folders, and Labels. This improvement will help save you time as you update and organize entities in the Knowledge Graph.
You can now apply a filter using the basic filters which appear in the top navigation bar. This includes: Entity Type, Folders, and Labels, or you can click on the Search pill and search for a specific piece of information.
You can also apply these by clicking on the options in the left sidebar. Wherever you select your desired filter, the selection will be mirrored in both places so you can easily see what is currently selected and make any necessary adjustments.
Advanced Filters
To apply an additional filter beyond entity type, folder, or label, simply click on the plus sign to open the advanced filter option and add an additional filter.
Note: At this time, some of the more advanced filters that were supported in the old UI are currently not supported in the new UI, but will be in the near future.
Saving a Filter
Once you apply a filter, you have the ability to save that filter for future use.
If you want to save a filter you have created using just the basic filter bar, you will need to click on the Plus sign to add an additional filter. This will open the full filter section and you will see the Save Filter button. If you set up additional filters, you will see this option by default.
Apply a Saved Filter
Once you have saved a specific filter, you can apply it by clicking Saved Filters on the right side of the page and selecting the saved filter you’d like to apply.
Note: At this time in the new UI you can create additional Saved Filters, but you cannot rename, update, or delete them in the UI. To do this you can either revert back to the old UI or update the Saved Filter in Configuration as Code. Keep an eye out for this functionality to be added directly in the Knowledge Graph in an upcoming monthly release!
Pinned Filters
To make it even easier to apply Saved Filters — within the new Entity Search interface, you can now pin existing saved filters to the top of the page. This update will give users one-click access to those selected sets of entities, making it easier to access common filters and view a subset of your entities in the Knowledge Graph.
To pin or unpin filters, click on the three dots and select the option to Manage Pinned Filters in the Pinned Filters drop-down.
A modal window will appear prompting you to select or deselect the filters that you want to appear in the module.
Once you select the Saved Filters you would like to add to the Pinned Filters section they will appear in the left sidebar and you can apply them with one click!
Editing Entities
With this UI update you will notice that the ‘Edit’ button has been removed from the entity rows. To navigate to a specific entity, you can now click anywhere on the row of that entity. Or, you can click on the three dots to open a drop-down menu and select your desired action.
To edit multiple entities at once, select the checkboxes next to the desired entities and click More Actions. Then select your desired action from the drop-down.
This UI update also comes with additional functionality that makes it easier for you to select a subset of your entities.
This menu option makes it easier for you to:
- Select all the entities in the filter you have currently applied
- Select all the entities on the current page
- Select specific subfolders
- Clear your selection
Asynchronous Page Loading
For all of you power users with very large Knowledge Graphs, we’ve also improved the Entity Search UI so that the components of the page load asynchronously. Now when you enter your Knowledge Graph, the entities will be accessible faster so you can save time.