gokubi.com

I started playing with Prefuse a couple weeks ago. It’s an open source java toolkit for visualizing data. Really cool stuff–man there are some smart people out there… f you look at the examples on the site, you’ll see that this toolkit can do an amazing number of different types of visualizations, including social networks, and geography-based stuff.

In Salesforce.com I have a custom object that records relationships between two people. We’re using it to build social network info about our constitutents. The data is good, but navigating it is hard–enter Prefuse. Here’s a simple social network visualized by Prefuse using data directly from Salesforce–it runs off a trivial XML file schema.

In real life it’s a java app or applet that is dragable, auto-centers, and is searchable. My test is just a proof of concept, but I got it working in just a couple hours–surprisingly low entry barrier. The next things I see on the wish list:

• Automate the gathering of data (PHP or some other toolkit to generate XML file)
• Crawl all the relationship types (Contact-to-Account, Account-to-Account, Contact-to-Contact, Contact-to-Other Account, Contact-to-Household)
• Display relationship metadata on the links (“employment”, “spouse”, “board member”, etc.)
• Turn it into a web app so it can be updated from in Salesforce (using a java applet I guess…I wish I were a java programmer)
• Provide links back to sf.com web interface, or display a summary of sf.com info in a sidebar
• Figure out what prefuse visual display options we have and improve the look and usability
• Set it up to be usable with a minimal amount of setup for any Salesforce.com instance

I don’t expect to have tons of time to play with this, but if you’re interested in it, drop me a line.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 3:16 pm and is filed under CRM, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.