This weekend saw a new rollout for Spark that streamlined the user interface, making it easier to see and interact with important information at a glance. One of the most noticeable changes is that the Insight Analytics page is now known as Insight Explorer.

This section of Spark is laid out in an intuitive fashion and has improved functionality. The new Insight Explorer section gives a more in-depth look at each data gathered for each individual insight by including a complete list of relevant URLs. These URLs can be sorted with the new global filter to find and highlight the material that is the most important to you.

The Bulk Options box can be checked to automatically select the individual boxes to the left of each URL. Use that option or select nodes individually and apply the Delete Selected Nodes feature or the Export Data icon.

Insight Explorer is laid out in an easy-to-read format that gives you a snapshot of the most important information, with the ability to delve further into each URL. Here’s a glance at some of the new features:

Site Type – Each site type is color-coded and has a corresponding abbreviation.

Sentiment – The circle next to the site type graphic will either be colored, red, green, or gray to represent the negative, positive, or neutral average sentiment level of each URL.

Page title – The title of the URL is displayed just to the right of the sentiment rating. It is bolded and in blue. If you click on the title, you will go to the Site Details page for that particular URL where more detailed information about that web page is shown.

Domain – Under the title on the left side is the domain of the URL. If you click on the domain, a direct link to the specific URL will pop up in a new tab in your web browser. If you roll your cursor over the domain, the full URL will appear.

Influence – This ranking orders each node in your insight according to Spark’s influence algorithm. This is the same proprietary algorithm as the Node Influence ranking on the Top Engagements Targets gadget.

Summary – This displays text from the URL that was indexed from RSS feeds or search engine APIs, and is often—but not always—the first words of the post. Each site will be different.

Options
• The Delete Node icon will delete the URL.
• The Favorite icon highlights that site by adding a favorite icon next to the sentiment score. Favorites can be used to develop a Daily Growth Report. Click the icon a second time to un-favorite a site.
• The Notes/Tasks icon allows you to add notes or tasks to the URL.

If the options exist for that URL, one to four feature icons may appear along the bottom of each listing.

• The Excerpt Available icon appears if Spark has captured at least one excerpt of overt sentiment. Click on the icon and a new box will appear below the listing with the text of the excerpt, its sentiment rating, and the date it was captured by Spark.

• The Notes/Tasks icon appears if one or more notes or tasks have been assigned by a user within the insight. Clicking on this icon takes you to the Site Details page, where all tasks and notes assigned are displayed.

• The Video Embed icon and External Comments icon will appear if a site offers API access to extra information such as videos or comment streams. Clicking on these icons takes you to the Site Details page, where the URL’s embedded video and comments section are displayed.

Last month, we rolled out a helpful new workflow management system. The tasks feature allows managers to assign tasks to employees within the Spark platform. A task can be created and assigned that relates to either a specific URL or insight, at which point assigner and assignee will receive email updates.

Spark’s new alert system can be set with user-specified parameters to email you when unusual traffic or spikes occur in your insight that need your attention.

An iterative development cycle is vitally important to our company. Spiral16 considers customer feedback to be essential and are fortunate to have engaged customers who share their time with us. As we move forward with improvements to Spark, our newly created S16 User Team will have our ear as we incorporate the following new features.

Here are some things Spiral16 is currently working on (not final layout–still in development):

Global Date Filtering
With the addition of a global date filter, users can now set a default date range and custom filters that will be automatically applied across all areas of an insight. One-stop filter and sorting options will save time and make it easier to build customized reports.

Insight Explorer
Based on usability best practices and client feedback, Spiral16 is redesigning the detailed list view of insights to include better at-a-glance information. This will help clients understand which URLs matter the most for each specific topic.

In addition, a new bulk-action option has been included to allow clients to quickly update sentiment scores, site-type categories, and date information on multiple URLs at once. A new visual layout will improve readability across the board.

Conversation Sentiment page
Spiral16 is redesigning our Conversation Sentiment page to match the Insight Explorer layout with a focus on readability, quick editing, and a better grasp of important sentiment nuggets at a glance.

Insight Summary page
In addition to ease of use with the global date filter (which will allow users to set a single date range for all reporting gadgets), Spiral16 is improving the Insight Summary page to allow users more control over how their reporting gadgets are displayed.

With a more dynamic feel, users can now control the layout more fully, greatly improving the reporting capabilities.

“Where did your company get its name?”

It’s a question we’ve been hearing more often recently, so I thought I’d explain the significance behind Spiral16:

Spiral16 gets its name from the golden ratio – a mathematical constant of approximately 1.6180339887. It is also referred to as the golden mean, golden number and golden section. Expressed as an equation, the ratio looks like this:

Due to its aesthetically pleasing value, the golden ratio has been used since the Renaissance in art. Da Vinci’s the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa are two famous examples. The ratio’s use in architecture dates back as far as the Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Acropolis.

The ratio is directly related to the Fibonacci sequence.

The Fibonacci sequence is an unending series of numbers where each term in the series is defined by the sum of its two predecessors (assuming that 0 precedes the initial number of 1): 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…

If you divide a Fibonacci number by its immediate predecessor, the answer is approximately 1.6180339887. For example: 13/8 = 1.625

In the 18th century, Charles Bonnet discovered that the phyllotaxis (arrangement of leaves, stems, and branches) of plants are usually spirals of two series of the Fibonacci sequence. This natural spiral gives the company the first part of its name.

The numerical ratio is part of the algorithm that drives our virtualization software. So, we lopped off the extended decimals and went with Spiral1.6, which eventually morphed into Spiral16.

And that’s the rest of the story…

On Monday we added a few new features to Spark – something we are constantly doing to improve our product. One feature in particular will be useful for clients interested in organizing the list of pages that contain sentiment (emotion about a particular topic).

Watch this short video blog to see how the new sort features work. One feature I forgot to include: you can export these organized lists into Excel by clicking the icon next to the title ( )

Watch the video in high quality on our YouTube channel.

Jamie's delicious birthday cake.

Jamie Lang celebrated her birthday on Sunday, Jan. 11!

We all attempted to sing happy birthday to her during our weekly round-up meeting.

I think we should give up software and tour the country as a show choir. (Not so much.)

Happy birthday, Jamie!