The workspace

The workspace is where a project’s maps, charts and tables sit side by side. This article walks through it on a copy of the Ohio overdose trends sample project, which has four panels and an animated 2003 to 2021 county map. Every step below was run on Vesta Online, and the screenshots come from that run. The buttons for changing a workspace only show on a project you own, so the walk used a copy rather than the sample itself.

Take a tour

1. 1Open a workspaceOpen a project from the Projects page. Its first workspace opens at an address of the form /p/{project}/w/{number}, so a link to a workspace keeps working. The left rail lists Projects, Add Data, Preprocess, Visualize and Analyze, with Settings at the foot. Above the panels are the workspace tabs, then the time slider and the layout buttons Grid, Focus and Compare. The panels fill the middle, the Statistics panel sits to their right and the side pane is at the far right.
2. 2Step the time sliderA workspace whose data has more than one time step shows the time slider above the layout buttons. From left to right it has Jump to start, Step back, Play, Step forward and Jump to end, the slider itself (Time step), the playback speed button (1.0x to start), the loop button (Looping is on to start), the current time and a date picker (Jump to a date). Choose Step forward: the label moves from 2003 to 2004, the clock on each map follows, and the Statistics panel recalculates for the new time step.
3. 3Choose a layoutGrid, Focus and Compare change how the panels are arranged. Choose Focus to see one panel large, with the others as small tiles under it labeled Click to focus. Choose Compare to see two panels side by side, marked A and B, with the rest under a strip labeled Drag up or click. Choose Grid to go back to every panel at once.
4. 4Reload the pageThe layout you chose is saved with the workspace. Choose Focus, reload the page, and the workspace opens in Focus again, with one panel large and the others in the strip. Which panel is the large one is not saved, so it can differ after a reload.
5. 5Use a panel's menuEach panel has a title and a row of buttons: Focus this visualization, Visualization settings (the gear) and Panel actions (three dots). Panel actions lists Export, Rename panel…, Move left, Move right and Remove panel. Export saves what the panel shows. Move left is off on the first panel and Move right is off on the last. Move right swaps the panel with the one after it, and an Undo button appears beside the tabs. Remove panel asks you to confirm: tick I understand this removes the visualization from this workspace. and choose Remove panel. The data the panel read is not touched, and Undo brings the panel back while you stay on the page.
6. 6Add and manage workspacesChoose the + beside the tabs for a new workspace; it is named Workspace 1, Workspace 2 and so on, and it opens with no panels in it: the area reads This workspace is empty, with an Add panel button and the line Add a map, chart, or table and it will appear here alongside anything else you add. The tab you are on has four small buttons: Move this workspace left, Move this workspace right, Rename this workspace and Delete this workspace. Rename opens a Rename workspace box with a Workspace name field. Delete asks you to tick I understand this deletes the workspace and the visualizations it holds. before Delete workspace. Deleting a workspace removes the panels arranged on it, not the datasets and variables they read.
7. 7Read the status bar and side paneThe status bar runs along the bottom. Its right end has the Recent analyses button. Its left end is empty with the Advisor tab open. With the Data tab open it read the dataset's name, its number of objects and its number of times, here Ohio counties · 88 objects · 19 times. The side pane has two tabs, Advisor and Data. Data lists the project's dataset, variables, results and models, with a card for the selection below.

What you should see

The workspace

A workspace

The four panels of the sample in Grid, with the time slider on 2003 and the Statistics panel beside them.

Stepping the time slider

2004

One step forward. The maps and the Statistics panel moved to 2004 with the slider.

Focus

Focus

One panel large; the other three wait in a strip under it.

Compare

Focus after a reload

After a reload the workspace opens in the layout it was left in.

Compare

Two panels side by side, marked A and B. The strip under them is labeled Drag up or click.

A panel’s menu

Panel actions

Move left is dimmed because this is the first panel.

After Move right

Moved

The first two panels traded places. Undo appears beside the tabs.

Removing a panel

Remove panel

The dialog says what stays untouched and asks for a tick before it will remove the panel.

Removed

Three panels remain. Undo is still on offer.

Renaming and deleting

A new workspace

A new workspace starts empty.

Rename workspace

Rename takes a name and nothing else.

Delete workspace

The dialog lists what goes and what stays before it asks for the tick.

The status bar and the Data tab

Data tab

The side pane on Data. The status bar's left end names the dataset, its objects and its times.

What each layout does

Layout	What you see	Notes
Grid	Every panel at once.	One panel fills the width; two or more use two columns, with more rows as panels are added.
Focus	One panel large, the others in a strip.	The other panels wait in a strip labeled Click to focus.
Compare	Two panels side by side, marked A and B.	Needs at least two panels. With fewer, it is drawn as Grid.

Four panels is the size the layouts are designed around, and Vesta Online does not stop you adding more. A panel header in Grid has Focus this visualization, and in Focus has Back to grid. The + Add panel button under the grid opens the Visualize hub to build the next panel.

The panels and the side pane

The Statistics panel on the right of the panels lists a count, minimum, maximum, mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation for each variable on show, and follows the time slider. Collapse it with the button at its top right. Pressing Esc in the workspace clears the current selection.

The side pane’s Advisor tab is an optional AI-assisted guided workflow that helps you choose methods and interpret results; the statistical analyses run on Vesta’s own methods. Its own text says it can add a panel or start an analysis for you and always proposes first. Data visibility is off by default, so your data values are not sent to it; when you turn it on, the Advisor can also read summary statistics and analysis results from your project and look up values for specific places. The walk did not send it a message; see Using the Advisor. Drag the pane’s left edge to resize it.

Limits

• Export is the first item of a panel’s menu and is on every panel; see Exporting data and pictures. The edit items only show on a project you own. Move left and Move right set the order of the panels. Focus and Compare pick which panels you see large.
• The buttons for changing a workspace (+, the tab buttons and Undo) only show on a project you own. A sample project opens read-only.
• Undo is offered while you stay on the page, as the Remove panel and Delete workspace dialogs say.
• Vesta Online needs a window at least 1,024 pixels wide. Below that width it shows a notice in place of the workspace.

NoteNot walked: the Visualization settings gear and Map settings, the Filter button, clicking or dragging a tile in the Focus and Compare strips, a read-only project's status line, moving workspaces left and right, and playing the time slider. Where this article says something about those, it comes from the product source, not from the walk.

Where next

• Make maps for your workspace: Maps.
• Make charts: Charts.
• Link selections across panels: Linking and brushing.
• Save and share what you built: Exporting.