Attributes

Attributes are the structured fields that describe a patent or a product. A patent carries its title, applicants and dates; a product its websites, categories and manufacturers. They are the light, sortable metadata that sits on every record: what you want to know about it at a glance, as opposed to the deep content of a single record, like a patent's claims or a product's feature tree.

Attributes come in two kinds. System attributes are the ones Patalyze defines and fills in for you. Custom attributes are the ones you add yourself, to record the judgments an analysis produces but the source data never holds: a reviewer's verdict, a priority, an internal deadline. Both belong to a single research database, with patents and products keeping separate sets.

The same attribute shows up in two places. On a table it is a column, so you can scan, sort and filter a whole set of records at once. On a single patent or product page it is a row in the attribute panel, alongside that record's other details. Same field, two views.

System attributes#

System attributes are defined for you. Every products table arrives with a set that Patalyze fills in as it reads a product from its description, files and crawl: its websites, categories, manufacturers, distributors and territories. You can edit their values inline, but you did not create them and they cannot be deleted or retyped, because the rest of Patalyze relies on them being there.

Patents carry their own built-in fields the same way, read straight from the patent record: title, applicants, inventors, dates, status and classifications. For the full picture of what each record holds, see patents and products. Everything below is about the other kind: the custom attributes you add yourself.

Attribute types#

A custom attribute has a type, and the type decides what its values look like and how they behave. Nine are available.

Most types need nothing beyond a name. A few carry a little extra: a currency attribute takes a currency code (EUR by default) so amounts format correctly, select and multi-select each carry a list of options you label and color, and the user and users types draw their choices from the people in your organization. The type is the single thing you fix when you create the attribute; everything else can change later.

Creating an attribute#

Click the plus button at the end of a table's columns to open the column menu, then choose "Create new attribute" at the bottom. Pick a type, and a short form opens.

Give the attribute a name, an optional description, and, depending on the type, its options or its currency code. For a select or multi-select, add each choice with "Add option" and click the swatch beside it to set a color; a select needs at least one option. Click "Create attribute" and it lands as a new column on the table, empty and ready to fill in.

Editing and deleting#

Open a custom attribute's header menu for the rest. "Edit attribute" reopens the same form to rename it, change its description, or add, rename, recolor and remove options. The one thing that stays locked is the type: changing it would strand the values already stored against it.

To take a column off a table, "Don't show on page" hides it without touching the data, and you can add it back later from the column menu. "Delete attribute" is the permanent option.

Setting values#

A value is whatever you record for one attribute on one record. You set it in either of two places, and the controls are the same in both.

In a table cell#

Click a cell to edit it in place. Text opens for typing, a number takes a figure, a checkbox toggles, and a date opens a calendar. A select or multi-select opens its options: pick one for a select, or toggle as many as you like for a multi-select; the user and users types work the same way over the people in your organization. Clearing a cell empties it, and empty cells are simply skipped when you filter, sort or chart.

In the attribute panel#

Open a single patent or product and the same attributes line up in its attribute panel, with the same editors. It is the comfortable place to fill in several at once while you read a record, rather than reaching across a wide table.

Filtering and sorting#

Custom attributes filter and sort like any other column, and the operators follow the type. Text offers contains, is, starts with and their negations; number, currency and date offer the comparisons plus a between range; a select or user filters by is and is any of; a multi-select or users by include and exclude. Add a filter from the toolbar, or open the attribute's header menu and choose "Filter by" it directly.

Sorting lives in the same header menu, with "Sort ascending", "Sort descending" and "Clear sorting" to drop it again. Each type sorts the sensible way: numbers and dates by value, text alphabetically, and the option and checkbox types grouping like values together.

Visualizing attributes#

Any attribute can become a chart without leaving the table. Open its header menu, choose "Visualize as chart", and a preview appears, binned to suit the type: a select or numeric attribute as a ranked bar of its values, a checkbox as a donut split, a date as a trend over time. The preview respects the table's filters, so it charts exactly the rows you are looking at.

From the preview, "Add to dashboard" keeps the chart on an existing dashboard, or "Create dashboard" starts a new one. Click a bar to push that value back onto the table as a filter.