Company Relations Agent

One set of companies, held up against each other: who supplies whom, who owns whom, who competes with whom, and which outsiders sit behind several of them at once. Five views onto the same relations, one shared set of filters, and one list of companies they all read from.

Opening the page

The page needs a set of companies to work on, so it is always opened from somewhere that already has one — usually a portfolio. On Portfolio detail, the Relationships view is the way in:

Open the portfolio on Portfolio detail.
Select the Relationships filter, so the Target Network card is showing.
Click Open in Relationships at the top right of the card.

Clicking a company's node on that card's network does the same thing, focused on that one company — see Looking at one company on its own.

A portfolio brings all of its companies with it. The page can also be opened with a single company instead, which is what happens when you arrive from a company's own page or from the marketplace. Then the list holds that one company and you build the rest up from there — see Adding a company. Two things follow from which way you came in:

You arrived with	What you land on
A portfolio	Target network, with the portfolio's companies in the list. Large portfolios do not start out fully selected — see The companies list.
One company	Company board, showing that company and everything Orbit has connected to it. The comparison views have nothing to compare yet.

The other two ways in

A company page offers Open relationship graph, and the System Agents list in the Agent Marketplace has a Company Relations Agent card that asks you to pick a company first. Both work; neither of the two pages they start from is in this manual yet.

The Company Relations Agent page opened from a portfolio. A title bar names the page; under it six figures sit in a row across the top; under them the five view names with Target network underlined; under that a chip reading Relation Type with a cross beside a Filter button; and the rest of the page is split between a ring of company logos joined by coloured lines with a note beneath it, and a panel headed COMPANIES holding an Add button, a search box, a group heading carrying a count, a list of company rows each with a tick box, and Save as portfolio at its foot. — Arriving from a portfolio you land on **Target network**, with the portfolio's companies already on the list at the right. Everything below the five view names belongs to whichever of them is underlined — here, the network. The figures across the top describe the whole list rather than what is drawn, so they stay as they are while you move between views.

The header figures

Across the top sit six counts for the whole company list. They are worked out from the list rather than from what is drawn below, so switching views or narrowing the filters does not move them.

Six figure cards in a row across the top of the page, reading Targets, Counterparties, Relations, Shared, Cross-confirmed and Avg confidence, each with its number above its label. — The last two count things that need two companies to exist at all. Arriving with a single company, **Shared** and **Cross-confirmed** both read 0 — not because nothing was found, but because there is nothing to be shared with or confirmed by.

Figure	What it counts
Targets	How many companies are in the list.
Counterparties	How many other companies those targets are connected to, counted once each however many of the targets they touch.
Relations	How many connections were found in total.
Shared	How many of the counterparties sit behind more than one target. This is the count the Shared counterparties and Shared matrix views are built on.
Cross-confirmed	How many relations between two targets were recorded from both ends — each company's own record of the same link.
Avg confidence	Orbit's average confidence in the relations found here.

The five views

The same relations are offered five ways, and moving between them is free. A view is fetched the first time you select it and kept from then on, so leaving one and coming back does not fetch it again.

The five view names in a row with a rule under the page, Target network underlined, and below them a rounded chip reading Relation Type with a count of 14 and a cross, beside a button reading Filter with a plus sign. — The name that is underlined is the view you are looking at. The chip underneath is the filter bar's account of itself: one chip per filter that has choices in it, each carrying the number of those choices and a cross to clear it.

View	What it is for
Clusters	One company's relations as a ring, grouped by the kind of relation. See Clusters.
Company board	One company's relations sorted into three columns by direction, with the relations themselves listed. See Company board.
Target network	The relations between the selected companies themselves. See Target network.
Shared counterparties	Outsiders that more than one selected company is connected to, and the part each one plays. See Shared counterparties.
Shared matrix	The same outsiders as a grid, one column per selected company. See Shared matrix.

The five are not equally hungry: Clusters and Company board focus on one company at a time, while the other three compare a set. Which of the two you get is settled by the view, not by you — the list on the right offers a single choice in the first two and tick boxes in the last three.

Clusters

Clusters draws one company — the one selected in the list — as a hub, with a spoke out to each kind of relation Orbit has found for it. Each kind is a square on the outer ring, sized by how many counterparties fall under it, and the ring is divided into three stretches: relations arriving at the company, relations leaving it, and relations with no direction at all.

Click a square to fan its counterparties out around it, and click it again — or click the empty canvas — to fold them back. The counterparties appear as dots: bigger where there is more than one relation, firmer where the confidence is higher, and outlined differently where the counterparty is shared with another of the listed companies or is privately held.

Hovering any part of the drawing fades everything that is not on the same path — hovering a counterparty lights up the whole chain from the hub out to it. Scroll to zoom and drag to pan.

Nothing is opened yet: each square stands in for every counterparty of its kind, and the figure under the name is how many relations that covers — which is why the squares are not all the same size. Clicking one replaces it with its counterparties.

Company board

Company board takes the same single company and lays its relations out as lists instead of a ring. The company sits in the middle with its own totals, relations arriving from other companies are on the left, and relations going out to other companies are on the right. Relations with no direction — the ones where both companies stand in the same position — get the full-width row underneath.

The two side columns are the two directions of the same relations, so one company can appear on the left for one relation and on the right for another — the same name in both places means two records, not a duplicate. The counts in the middle column are the company's own totals rather than a tally of the rows drawn, since every block stops at fourteen entries. A filled tick in place of a row's circle with a plus means that company is already on the list at the right.

Each column collects its relations into one block per kind, and the blocks follow a fixed order rather than the order the data arrives in, so the same kind of relation always sits in the same place and the two facing columns line up with each other. Every entry names the other company, carries the confidence, and draws it as a small bar. A ring marks a privately held company, and the count of them is given in the middle column.

A block shows the strongest entries first and stops at fourteen, with Show all N beneath it to open the rest and Collapse to close them again.

Two things at the end of each entry act on the company named in it. The circle with a + adds that company to the list on the right so it can be compared; once it is there the circle turns into a tick and clicking it removes it again.

Where the company page is

Clicking the company's name opens its own page, and hovering the name brings up the details of that relation — the kind, the confidence, which way it points and where it came from. The company page is where that landing page is documented, including the relationships card that leads here.

Target network

Target network sets the outsiders aside and draws only the selected companies, with a line wherever a relation was found between two of them. Lines are coloured by the part the relation gives one of the pair, and where a relation points one way rather than both, the line carries an arrowhead.

The order around the ring is not alphabetical. Companies are placed by how strongly they are connected, so those with the most between them end up beside each other and the lines gather into bundles instead of crossing the whole ring.

Past twenty companies drawn at once the shape changes: the ring becomes rings wrapping outwards, the company names come off, and the lines are drawn faintly until you hover a company. Hovering lights up that company's own relations and fades the rest; scroll to zoom and drag to pan.

An arrowhead appears only where a relation points one way rather than both; a line with none joins two companies standing in the same position. Two logos can be joined by more than one line at a time — one per relation — which is why the lines between a pair are drawn at different curves instead of lying on top of each other.

The same wide canvas with far more companies on it: a dense cloud of logos packed into a small circle at the centre and thinning into rings around it, no names written beside any of them, and the lines between them drawn so faintly that together they read as a pale haze. The line of small print along the bottom has changed. — One more company than twenty and the drawing changes shape rather than dropping anything: every company is still here, in rings that grow outwards, with the names withheld so that a hundred of them do not run together. Hovering a logo brings one company's relations back out of the haze, which is what lets the lines be left as faint as they are.

Clicking a company's node takes you to Looking at one company on its own — the same company's direct relations, one row each, rather than the whole network.

Shared counterparties

The first of the two comparison views asks a different question: not how the selected companies relate to each other, but which outsiders more than one of them is connected to. Anything touched by a single company only is left out here — that is the point of the view.

The count at the right of the heading is every outsider that is shared at all; the line beneath it is how many of those are being drawn. Both belong to the view and move with the selection and the filters — unlike the Shared figure at the top of the page, which is counted from the whole company list and stays where it is.

Each card is one such outsider, with the number of selected companies that reach it. Under that, one line per company, naming it and the part it plays — which is often a different part for each, so a bank can be a customer of one company and an investor in another.

The list runs to a hundred cards, taken from the largest companies by market capitalisation, and says so above itself. Narrowing it further is what the filter's Counterparty choice is for.

The cards do not open anything

A card highlights under the pointer, but clicking one does not open a panel or change the page. Everything the card has to say is on the card.

Shared matrix

Shared matrix asks the same question as Shared counterparties and answers it as a grid: one row per outsider, one column per selected company, so the outsiders that reach several companies can be read straight down the page.

A line saying the rows are the top ones by market capitalisation, then a table. Its first three columns are headed Company, Targets touched and Relations, each header carrying a small pair of sort arrows; the columns after them are narrow and headed by company names. Most cells hold a few small coloured squares, and a few rows carry a small grey marker beside the company's name. — A row whose name carries that marker is an outsider that is also one of the companies on the list: it is in the grid because of the part it plays in another company's relations, and it has a column of its own further to the right. An empty cell means no relation was found between that pair under the current filters, not that the pair was left out.

A cell holds one small square per kind of relation found between that outsider and that company, coloured by kind — the same colours as everywhere else on the page — and drawn fainter where the confidence is lower. Hovering a square names the part and the confidence; clicking one does not open anything. Reading across a row shows one outsider's whole spread; reading down a column shows one company's.

The first three columns are the outsider itself, how many of the selected companies touch it, and how many relations that comes to under the current filters. The header of a column can be clicked to sort by it. Like the cards, the matrix is cut off at the hundredth company by market capitalisation.

Looking at one company on its own

Clicking a company's node on the Target network view brings you here in a narrower form: the grid keeps a single column, for that one company, and every row is one of its direct relations. The count on each row is what that company's node showed on the network, so the two views agree.

It is a temporary state rather than a different view. Clicking another node on the network switches the focus to that company, and moving to any other view and back puts the grid back the way it was — the companies you had selected are still selected.

The same grid narrowed to a single company: the first three columns are unchanged, and in place of the run of company columns there is now one wide column headed by a single company name, centred across the space. Six rows follow, each with the same small number in the two counting columns and a single small coloured square in the wide one. — Each row is one of the focused company's direct relations, which is why both counts read the same small number — an outsider that several companies touch has one row and several squares in the full matrix, and one row and one square here. Nothing else has changed: the companies ticked in the list are still ticked, and moving to any other view and back restores the matrix as it was.

Opening the company behind a row

The name and logo in the first column open that company's own page. The company page is on the list of pages still to be written.

Narrowing what is shown

The filter bar sits under the view names and applies to all five views at once. A choice made here stays made as you move between views.

The page with a two-column panel opened over the drawing. The narrow left column holds a Search filters box, then the filter names — one of them with a count beside it and an arrow, another with only an arrow — and a Reset at its foot. The wide right column is headed Relation Type, has a search box of its own, and lists the kinds of relation under group headings, each kind with a tick box and a coloured dot, ending with a line saying how many are selected and a Clear beside it. Above both, beside the Filter button, sits the page's chip reading Relation Type with a count and a cross. — The two columns are one control: the left picks which filter to open, the right is that filter. Relation Type holds all fourteen choices from the moment the page opens to the moment you clear it, so its chip is there with them — a chip says a filter has choices in it, not that it is narrowing anything.

Filter	What it does
Relation Type	All fourteen kinds of relation, grouped into the same three directions the views use — arriving, leaving, and no direction. Every kind starts out switched on; clearing one takes that kind off every view at once.
Min confidence	A single choice out of >=20, >=40, >=60, >=80 and >=100. Relations Orbit is less sure of than the threshold are dropped.
Counterparty	Offered only on Shared counterparties and Shared matrix, because it is the outsiders those two list. Choosing some keeps only them. The two views remember their choices separately.

Relation Type carries a chip beside the + Filter button from the moment the page opens, with all fourteen choices behind it — a chip means a filter has choices in it, not that it is narrowing anything. Each chip carries the number of those choices and a cross that clears that filter in one click, and Reset clears every filter at once and puts the Relation Type list back to fully switched on.

Filters narrow the views, not the figures

The header figures are counted from the whole company list, so they stay put while you filter. The counts written into the views themselves — a column heading, a block in Company board, the total above the shared counterparties — do follow the filters.

The companies list

The panel down the right-hand side holds the companies every view works from. It is one list, not one per view: a company added here is available to all five.

The pair of numbers beside ORIGINAL is how many of that group are ticked against how many it holds, and the dash rather than a tick in the group's own box is that partial state — clicking it would tick the rest. This is how a large portfolio arrives on Target network: the ticked ones are the twenty largest by market capitalisation, and the rest of the group is held but left clear.

The list is split in two. ORIGINAL holds the companies you arrived with — the portfolio's companies, or the single company you came in on. TEMPORARY holds the ones added on this page, and only those rows carry the cross that takes them off the list again. Both headings carry a count.

Choosing from the list does different things in different views. On Clusters and Company board, where one company is shown at a time, the rows carry circles and an entry replaces whatever was being shown. On the three comparison views the rows carry tick boxes, and each of those views keeps its own selection — ticking companies on Target network leaves Shared matrix as it was.

Ticking is deliberate rather than instant: the tick appears under the pointer straight away, but the views redraw once you have stopped clicking. Rapid ticking therefore costs one redraw instead of one per click, and none of the clicks are lost.

The search box narrows the list to the companies matching what you type, in name or in identifier, without changing which of them are selected. On the three comparison views each heading also carries a tick box that selects or clears that whole group, with the number selected shown beside it. A large portfolio does not start out fully selected: past twenty companies, Target network starts with the twenty largest by market capitalisation and leaves the rest clear, so that what it draws is readable. A company with no relations found for it still appears in the list.

The icon at the top left of the panel folds it away, leaving only that icon; the other way round brings it back.

Adding a company

Add at the top of the panel opens a search box. Picking a company puts it on the list straight away, under TEMPORARY, and selects it, so it joins the current view without any further step.

The result gives the company's full name with an identifier and a ticker after it, which is how two companies with similar names are told apart. Picking one is the whole step — there is no confirm, and the company turns up on the list already selected.

Only the added ones can be taken off

The cross appears on TEMPORARY rows only. A company you arrived with stays on the list for as long as the page is open — removing it from the portfolio itself is Portfolio Management's job.

Saving the list as a portfolio

Save as portfolio at the foot of the panel turns the whole list — original and added companies together — into a portfolio, which is the way to keep a set you have built up by hand. The dialog says how many companies are in scope and where they came from, and offers Create new portfolio with a name, or Add to existing with a portfolio picked from your own.

The page dimmed behind a dialog headed Save as portfolio with a cross at its top right. Under the heading a bold line gives how many companies are in scope and a grey line under it says where they came from; then a Destination label with two buttons side by side, the first chosen and the second not; a name box holding only its example placeholder; a line of small print saying what saving will do; and Cancel and Save at the foot. — **Create new portfolio** and **Add to existing** do different things: the first makes a portfolio that did not exist, the second puts these companies into one you already have, and the small print under the name box changes to match. Cancel closes the dialog and leaves the page as it was — nothing is written until Save is pressed.

Save writes to your portfolios

Save is not a way of keeping the page's arrangement for later; it creates a real portfolio, or adds the companies into one you already have. The result shows up in Portfolio Management and in the left rail's PINNED list if the portfolio is pinned.

When there is nothing to compare

Target network, Shared counterparties and Shared matrix compare companies, so they need something to compare. Rather than draw an empty frame they say which of two things is missing, and one of them comes with a button that starts fixing it.

An otherwise empty page with a small linked-nodes icon at its centre, then a bold line reading No comparison companies yet, then two lines of grey text naming the company the page was opened with and asking for at least one more, and a filled Add company button beneath. — The grey text names the company you arrived with, and that is what separates this message from an empty list: the list holds that one company and the view needs a second. Add company opens the same search as the panel's Add — the other message, for a view with nothing ticked, carries no button, because its fix is in the list at the right.

Message	What it means
No comparison companies yet	The list holds fewer than two companies — the state a single-company arrival starts in. Add company opens a search box that takes several companies at once and puts them on the list when you confirm.
No companies selected	The list holds enough companies, but this view has none of them ticked. The fix is in the list on the right — see The companies list.

Opened with no companies at all

A link with neither a portfolio nor a company in it leaves the page with an empty list and nothing to draw. Something has usually been lost from the address on the way here; the two ways in are listed under Opening the page.