We all like to work in groups. Often times, criminals do too. There are street gangs, organized crime, hockey teams (just kidding). Because criminals work in groups, we need to be able to analyze and study them as groups as well. We can do this with ANB. Creating groups of entities and keeping them connected in a desired layout is important as our charts grow.
Entities are the primary components of i2. Remember that entities have two parts – types and representations. Although entities are individual components (even when linked), multiple entities can be grouped so they can be moved as one unit.
In this post, we will teach you how to do that.
If you are not sure what I mean by an entity and want to learn more about how i2 works, check out our i2 Analyst Notebook Tutorial: Basic Training for an i2 Ninja. This is a perfect starting point for new i2 users.
Ok, let’s get back to our focus of this post – grouping entities.
Why Group Entities in i2 Analysts Notebook?
We group entities because it is more efficient. When we group entities we can move and copy them together, saving us a lot of time when repositioning entities on the chart.
Grouping Entities Step by Step in i2 Analysts Notebook
For the purposes of this post, let’s say there are three entities belonging to the same criminal organization“The Bad Street Boys” and you want to maintain the layout when re-arranging the items on the chart.
There are three steps to this process. An image for each is below.
1. Select All Desired Entities
2. Right mouse click on any of the entities and select GROUP.
3. They are now grouped and you can now move the Group in unison through the margin on the left.
A Few Tips About Working with Grouped Entities
After you have your group you can also copy groups and paste them into a new chart or application. If you want to ungroup Right Mouse Click on the group and select Ungroup.
What’s Next?
It’s great that you took the time to learn how to work more with entities and groups. If you haven’t already, take a moment and join our mailing list to help you learn new i2 skills.
