Questions about using Word Cloud in SAS VA (7.1)

[Frank_Boekamp]

Hello,

We are using the word cloud object to show trending topics. 

Some questions:

1) We want to show the word cloud in a SAS VA report. For this we are exporting the word cloud as an image and importing the image in the report. Is there another way of transfering the word cloud to a report? Is there a way to automate this?

2) The image of the word cloud is not looking very crispy. Some aliasing is visible in the letters. Is there a way to improve this?

3) The word cloud is created having multiple topics. However, we want to see a word cloud covering all topics at once, like a merged word cloud. How to proceed?

Thanks,

Frank

[roansa]

Hi Frank,

There are a couple ways:

You could create the report in the Report Designer view instead of the Explorer view. This way it will just show the high level view or "merged word cloud" that you referred to.

If you want to do it in the explorer, on the 'Roles' tab of the word cloud visualization, click the drop down list under 'Show word cloud' and select 'Using category values'. Then go to File -> Export -> Export as Report.

When you export as image you're just sending a picture not the actual report. For your purposes I think option 1 works best.

Regards,
Rob

[Sam_SAS]

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@roansa wrote:



If you want to do it in the explorer, on the 'Roles' tab of the word cloud visualization, click the drop down list under 'Show word cloud' and select 'Using category values'. Then go to File -> Export -> Export as Report.
Rob

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Hi Rob, unfortunately you cannot export a word cloud visualization. I have no idea why this is, because you can create a word cloud in the designer.

Ideally Frank should create the word cloud directly in the report designer.

Frank, you mentioned poor image quality in your exported image. Be sure that you select Scale type=None when you insert the image into the report.

Thanks,

Sam

[Frank_Boekamp]

Hi Sam,

If I select Scale type=None then the image size is huge and won't fit in my report. So I select Fit All

Thanks,

Frank

[Sam_SAS]

Have you tried creating the word cloud in the designer?

[Frank_Boekamp]

Maybe I'm missing something but the functionality of the Word Cloud seems very limited in the designer. I think the functionality of the Word Cloud in explorations is more comprehensive and delivers much better results like the detection of topics.

I just miss an overall picture in the explorations. So now I'm merging all topic datasets to one dataset. Using the merged dataset I create a new word cloud using categories. This is a bit cumbersome....

[Sam_SAS]

The designer does not support text analytics, so that is a difference between word cloud in the explorer and designer. But it seems like you are missing most of the features of text analytics if you merge all of the topics. I have never tried that so I'm not sure what advantages such a word cloud has over the basic word cloud in the designer.

I think the image quality issue you are having is due to the browser resizing that occurs when you set the scaling on the image. Possibly you would get a sharper result if you resized the image in an external photo editor such as Photoshop Elements.

[Frank_Boekamp]

Hi Sam,

I think I need to clarify a bit my working process: I start using text analytics in an exploration. Six seperate topics are created. Somehow I want to merge these topics to get one wordcloud showing trending topics. From every separate topic a dataset is exported containing terms, roles and weights. In SAS EG these datasets are appended and filtered for adjectives etc which are not so interesting. The 99 terms with the highest weights are then selected. This result dataset is uploaded in SAS VA and a new wordcloud is created using the terms as categories and the weights for the font size. Last step is exporting the image in a report.

So I'm wondering if this all could be done in a more simple way.

Cheers, Frank

[Sam_SAS]

Thanks for the details, Frank.

I have relayed this thread to the development team.

[Frank_Boekamp]

Hi Sam,

To be complete: the final step in my working process is no longer needed. So I don't need to export/import an image. It is possible to create the final Wordcloud directly in the report based on the merged dataset. That looks fine.

So the only issue left is merging of the different topics in one wordcloud to use as Trending Topics

Thank, Frank

[Sam_SAS]

Hi Frank, the text analytics word cloud is changing some for next release. I believe that your topic merging issue might be resolved, although obviously I cannot make any promises about future features.

Thanks,

Sam