Notes View - A history of actions and states

Prerequisites

• Put an X between the brackets on this line if you have done all of the following:
  • Running the latest version of Constellation
  • Attached the Support Package via Help > Support Package`
  • Checked the FAQs: https://github.com/constellation-app/constellation/faq
  • Checked that your issue isn’t already filed: https://github.com/constellation-app/constellation/issues
  • Checked that there is not already a module that provides the described functionality: https://github.com/constellation-app/constellation/repositories-catalog

Description

I think Constellation needs a new view which simply allows users to record notes. These notes would be saved along with the graph and would help the user track their analytical workflow, as well as provide context to other users about how conclusions have been drawn from a graph.

It would also be great to have some automated notes, such as notes indicating when important plugins are run (such as data access plugins). The view should provide a way to show and hide these automated notes at the users request.

That is, it should provide the ability to review what activities have been undertaken on items in a Constellation graph. Some graphs may be used for extended periods of time and the ability to see what queries/searches/enrichments have been done on them and when, would be useful.

For example it will help answer questions like:

• have I run query XYZ on node ABC?
• have I already enriched with datasource Y?
• have I searched event or content already?

In addition, once imports and enrichments are run, the system generated note when selected should highlight the nodes and transactions that were involved with that execution.

[cygnus-x-1]

Functionally, everything seems to be working as intended - no bugs discovered. I do have some thoughts on usability:

• I love that it records ‘automated notes’ (ie. plugins), but think it should be very selective about which types of plugins are recorded. There’s no real benefit to capturing every selection that is made, but there probably is when it comes to adding/deleting elements, for example. The plugin reporter already provides the ability to tag plugins, perhaps we could make use of this (and presumably update plugin tags to suit).
• The edit/delete buttons take up a lot of space on manual notes, could they be moved to the header line, or only appear on hover or something to reduce clutter?
• It would be cool to see manual notes support HTML or Markdown for a bit more expressiveness. Similarly, it would be cool to have the ability to customise the colour of each note (i’d personally use this to categorise my manual annotations).

[sol695510]

Functionally, everything seems to be working as intended - no bugs discovered. I do have some thoughts on usability:

• I love that it records ‘automated notes’ (ie. plugins), but think it should be very selective about which types of plugins are recorded. There’s no real benefit to capturing every selection that is made, but there probably is when it comes to adding/deleting elements, for example. The plugin reporter already provides the ability to tag plugins, perhaps we could make use of this (and presumably update plugin tags to suit).
• The edit/delete buttons take up a lot of space on manual notes, could they be moved to the header line, or only appear on hover or something to reduce clutter?
• It would be cool to see manual notes support HTML or Markdown for a bit more expressiveness. Similarly, it would be cool to have the ability to customise the colour of each note (i’d personally use this to categorise my manual annotations).

These change requests have been summarised into a new enhancement ticket https://github.com/constellation-app/constellation/issues/959.