AN OVERVIEW OF POLINODE
If you haven’t used Polinode before - it’s a tool for mapping, visualizing and analysing networks in the browser. With Polinode you can either create Networks, Surveys or both. Polinode Networks allow you to upload arbitrary network data to the cloud and then visualize and analyze this data directly from your browser. The source of the data can literally be anything including emails, 360 degree performance reviews, enterprise social networks, social media, etc.
Polinode Surveys allow you to collect network data using the relationship-based survey tool. For example, you can ask questions such as “Who do you work with often?” or “Who do you go to for advice?”. You can then visualize and analyze this network data in one integrated and highly flexible solution. Applications are many and varied but include change management, identifying emerging talent, M&A integration and improving workplace layouts. This is what we call the ‘Survey’ functionality and in summary it is most often used for organizational network analysis.
SNOWBALL SURVEY FUNCTIONALITY
By far our most requested feature over the last 12 months has been to add snowball survey functionality. What do we mean by this? Well snowball survey functionality allows respondents to a survey to add items to the lists that they can choose responses from. For example, you can ask a respondent a simple question like “Who do you work with often?” and present them with a list of people to choose from (either other respondents or people in a Supplementary List). Previously, the people that they could select from was limited to the items in the list. Now, however, you have the ability to allow the respondents to enter other names - people that you may not know about. These names can even be entered as respondents to the survey where the respondent would then enter both a name and an email address. Or, they can be entered simply as additional names without an email address. We’re really excited by this new feature and all of the additional use cases it enables!
In order to enable this functionality you need to create a Search and Select question and then click on Advanced Options. As indicated by the red box above you will then see two new options: Input Additional Names and Hide Search Input. If the Input Additional Names option is set to yes then respondents will be able to add names to either the Respondent List or Supplementary List. Essentially, they will start typing a name and if it's in the list already then they will be able to select it but if no matches are returned then an input for adding the name will appear. We have included a screenshot below to demonstrate what the input for adding a respondent looks like. The second input, Hide Search Input, allows you to specify that you don’t want the search box to appear at all. If it’s set to yes then respondents will automatically see the input for adding a name rather than first having to search. If the exact name has already been entered by another respondent then it won't be added to the list but will be selected. If it’s a new name then it will both be added to the list and selected.
SIMPLIFIED PRICING
Previously the pricing for respondent credits in Polinode was tiered and you would select one of a few different packages. We understand that this pricing was a bit complicated to understand and today we are announcing a simplified pricing structure - just $3 / respondent credit across the board. Volume discounts are still available though, if you would like to purchase more than 2,000 respondent credits in a single transaction please contact us to discuss.
We have also tweaked the pricing of our Networks offering, which still starts at just $29 / month for a private network but we have now introduced a new tier in between 1 private networks and 5 private networks. You can now subscribe for 3 private networks for just $59 / month. You can find a summary of this new simplifed pricing structure at www.polinode.com and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
SOME OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
There are two other improvements that are worth noting. Firstly, we’ve greatly improved the network export functionality from within the explore view. You can now export your networks to Excel and preserve all the positions of your nodes across your various views as well as any custom attributes you may have added such as node images or node shapes. The format that Polinode exports in can be easily reimported at any time and it’s possible to apply filters so that you export only a part of your network.
We’ve also improved the node and edge coloring functionality in Polinode. You’ve always been able to color nodes and edges by any numerical attribute but now you have more flexibility and can choose two different colors for the low and high threshold and Polinode will interpolate between them. Previously you chose only one color and Polinode automatically created a color range based on that single color. So now you have much more control!
TRYING POLINODE
If you already have a Polinode account you should definitely log in and check out these new features! If you don’t have an account yet, it’s easy to sign up and you can create an account for free and try all of the above and a lot more. Just click here and you’ll be up and running in about 30 seconds.