Instructions and Support

This page explains the basic functions of the MK Insight website, including how to navigate it and find content and data, as well as how to contribute new content, visualise the data, and create shareable “data pages”.

Quick facts about MK:Insight

Here some quick facts about MK:Insight portal.

Which contents are available in MK:Insight?

From the homepage You can browse insights about Milton Keynes.
Start selecting a topic area to explore facts about MK.

MK:Insight includes 439 data sources. You can either have a preview within MK:Insight or download the data source files.

What can I find out about Milton Keynes?

MK:Insight provides data supported facts about Milton Keynes. You can start browsing among the topic areas on the MK:Insight homepage.

What can I do with MK:Insight?

From the homepage it is possible to browse a selection of facts about MK extracted by the datasources within MK:insight.

From the browse page it is possible to filter datasources by category.
From the browse page it is possible to download sources or have a preview of their contents.

By selecting to preview a datasource you can look at the file content and extract figures from it.

Within the search page it is possible to filter contents based on keywords, tags and categories.

Frequently Asked Questions

There are three types of posts: News, reports and data posts. News posts can be found through the latest news column on the front page. Data and report posts can be found in the latest resource feeds of the frontage, as well as in the thematic pages. All posts can also be found through the search facility, top right corner of the screen.

Thematic pages are pages that show information about specific themes. There are 8 thematic pages accessible through the front page. Each thematic page shows a dashboard with the key figures related to the selected theme in Milton Keynes and a feed of the latest data and reports that relate to this theme.

Data posts are posts that are associated with data. Each data post includes a description of the data, at least one file that contains the downloadable, raw data and can include charts visualising parts of the data. All charts and visualisations are interactive and can be downloaded (as images, etc.) All posts can be shared on various social networks.

The “chart” facility makes it possible to reuse any of the visualisations included on the website to create specific data pages. You can have headings, text paragraphs and charts to your own data page, print it and save it as a PDF file. If you are logged in, your data page will also be automatically saved, and you can send the link to it to others by email.

Charts on MK Insight always have the same form and functions. They represent simple, two-dimensional data which can be represented as different types of charts (bar charts, the default representation, pie chart and line chart), as well as in a simple table.

mki-charttypesTo change the type of chart displayed from the default to another chart or a table, use the links/buttons at the bottom right corner of the chart as shown in the image here.

mki-zoompanYou can select a specific region of a bar chart or a line chart to display by dragging the mouse across this region. Once you have zoomed in, buttons will appear in the top right corner of the chart (see image) allowing you to reset the zoom, or switch to panning mode so you can explore the entire chart by dragging it left or right.

mki-sort

By using the buttons/links in the bottom right corner of the chart, you can choose rather it should be sorted by the X or Y dimension.

mki-saveimages

When a chart is displayed, the button in the top right corner makes it possible to download an image of the currently displayed chart, in JPEG or PNG. When a table is displayed, buttons appear at the top of the table allowing you to download the table as a simple Excel or CSV file.
mki-savespreadsheet

If you have an account allowing you to contribute data, you can use the “contribute” section to create a new post, including a data post. Simply describe the data you want to add, using text, categories and tags. You can upload the file containing the data using the “add media” button.

If the file you have added is a spreadsheet (Excel or CSV), a feature will appear as soon as you have saved your post for the first time to create visualisations for your data. It allows you to select the part of the spreadsheet to visualise, choose the type of “things” it represents (wards, estates, schools, roundabouts, etc.) and attaches specific dimensions to them based on the values of the columns. Once that is done, the tool will suggest a set of charts that can be inserted in your post. These charts can be copied anywhere else on the site as well and reused through data pages.

Note: Click on the linked heading text to expand or collapse the panels.

Contact

If you didn't find an answer to your question or a solution to your problem above, please use to contact form below to describe what you are trying to do and why it does not work.

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