Using Sisense Narratives

Sisense supports natural language generation (NLG) to make your data more accessible and easy to understand. NLG refers to textual descriptions of your data explained in natural, everyday, language simplifying complex data analysis. Sisense Narratives calculates your data and generates text-based insights displayed alongside your visualizations making it easier for you to reach decisions faster.

Widget narration is a premium feature. To activate it, contact your Customer Service Manager for more information. Once widget narration has been added to your account, you can enable it for supported widgets from Sisense.
In addition, the following URL should be whitelisted as Sisense contacts the service to retrieve narrations for your widgets:

• https://arria.com

The following are a few examples of narrated widgets:

Sisense supports widget narration for the following widget types:

• Pie chart

• Column chart

• Bar chart

• Line chart

• Area chart

• Treemap

• Area map

• Scatter map

• Scatter plot

• Sunburst

• Polar chart

If you export your dashboards to PDF reports, you can configure Sisense to include or exclude the narrated text in your report from the PDF Report Settings window.

Select the Narrative check box to display your narrated text in your PDF report.

Enabling Narration for Widgets

A Sisense Administrator must activate Widget Narratives. To enable it: click the Admin tab, search for and select Feature Management, which is located under App Configuration, and in the Personalized Cloud Services section, toggle on Widget Narratives.

This generates the Narrative API token that is used to secure the HTTPS communication between Sisense and the narrative cloud service. Your widget's data is sent to the cloud service, which generates the narrative. Therefore, Sisense Narratives requires that your Sisense server has internet access.

Once the Administrator has enabled Widget Narratives, Designers can enable narration for supported widgets through the Sisense. Narration is enabled on the widget level. This means that you select which widgets need narration, and which widgets do not.

This procedure assumes that you have purchased and activated Sisense Narratives for your account. Contact your Customer Service Manager for more information.

To enable narration for your widgets:

1. On the Dashboard, click the Pencil (Edit) button that appears in the top-right corner of a widget that supports narration.

2. In Edit Widget mode, on the right pane, toggle the Narrative switch.

   

   The widget will be narrated in the dashboard and the narration customization options are displayed below the Narration switch. For more information, see Customizing Narrated Widgets.

Customizing Narrated Widgets

In Edit Widget mode, you can customize your narrated text's positioning in relation to the visualization, the amount of narration included, and your narrated text's tone.

To customize your narrated widget:

1. In Edit Widget mode, on the right pane, toggle the Narrative switch.

   

2. Select the following to customize your widget's narration appearance and text:

   Feature	Description
   Display	Select the position of your narrative. You can display the narration above or below your visualization, or display just the narrative.
   Format	Select the format of the narrative as paragraphs or bullets.
   Verbosity	Select how descriptive the narrated text is, High, Medium, or Low.
   Singular vs. Plural	Define how singular and plural dimension names appear in the singular and the plural in the narrated text. The default name of the dimension is taken from the label of the field that is added to the widget. For example, the dimension Date is written Date in the singular, and Dates when plural. Each dimension in your widget is listed with two fields, Singular and Plural. Enter the correct spelling for the Category in Singular and Plural Tense.
   Sentiment	Select the sentiment for your narrated text depending on the trends of your data. The sentiment determines if the narrated text is positive or negative. For example, Sales figures can be narrated positively as they increase but negatively when they decrease.
   Aggregation	Select the aggregation type to define how data totals and summaries are calculated in your narrated text. For example, if you select Sum, Sisense calculates the totals of your data and customizes the text to fit this scenario. If you select Average, Sisense calculates the average and customizes the text accordingly.