Workspace Value Chains Canvas
The Workspace Value Chains Canvas is a visual map of an entire value chain, seen from one entity. It shows how a risk connects through your supply chain, so you can see which entities are involved and how they relate to one another. You'll find it on the Value Chains tab (also labeled Network) when you open a product, a supplier, or an exposure — from a workspace or from the Catalog.
What the canvas draws depends on the entity you opened it from:
- A product — everything upstream of that product.
- A Tier 1 supplier — everything upstream of that supplier, at higher tiers.
- A sub-tier supplier — the full network downstream of that supplier, showing how its goods reach the rest of your network.
What you see when the canvas opens
The canvas opens focused on the entity you came in from, with every occurrence of that entity highlighted across the value chain — a supplier often appears at more than one tier, and the highlight shows you all of them at once.
The network arrives aggregated on two levels: first by tier, counted outward from the finished product at Tier 0, and then by location within each tier. A ruler across the top marks each tier. Aggregation keeps a large value chain readable until you choose where to look more closely; you control both levels, and you can change what the second level groups on.
Zoom in and out with the zoom controls in the toolbar, or with your pointer's scroll gesture.
Reading the canvas
Each entity appears as a node, and the lines between them — the edges — represent the trade relationships connecting them. Where the data supports it, hovering an edge shows the input and output goods moving along that relationship.
Hover any node to see the entire supply chain connected to it: every path running through that node lights up across the whole network, and the rest fades. This is the quickest way to trace how a risk reaches you.
Node types
Every node is one of four types, and these are the counts a collapsed tier shows on its chips:
- Exposed — the entity carries a risk. Its risk list is attached; open it for the full exposure details and why the entity was flagged.
- Suggested — a supplier Altana has inferred is part of your network, rather than one you have confirmed. Suggested nodes arrive dashed and badged, and carry the transactions behind them.
- Linked — part of your verified network and matched to a facility.
- Unlinked — part of your verified network but not yet matched to a facility.
Expanding and collapsing the network
There are four ways to open up an aggregated network, from the broadest to the most targeted:
- Expand or collapse everything — from the toolbar, open every tier at once for a fully disaggregated view, then collapse back to the canvas's original layout.
- Expand one tier — select that tier on the ruler across the top to open it, and select it again to collapse it.
- Expand from the node — use the expand control on the tier's own card, which does the same thing from the canvas itself.
- Expand one node type — select a chip on the card to pop out only the nodes of that type. Selecting the Suggested chip brings out just the suggested suppliers; selecting it again puts them back. If some nodes are already out, selecting a chip brings out the rest of that group.
You can also load more of the network than the canvas started with. Where a value chain continues past the outermost loaded tier, explore upstream pulls in what lies beyond it.
Highlighting important entities
Highlight important entities in the toolbar controls the highlight the canvas opens with — the entity you came in from, marked everywhere it appears. It is on when the canvas opens. Turn it off and those entities fall back into the tier and location aggregation with everything else; turn it on again to bring them back, so you can always return to where you started.
Finding an entity
Find in the toolbar searches what is loaded on the canvas, across both suppliers and products. Selecting a result pops that entity out of its aggregation — wherever it sits, including a tier you haven't expanded — and brings it into view.
Found entities accumulate rather than replace one another, so you can find two entities and see how they relate. Select a found entity again to put it back.
A single supplier card can stand for several products, labeled with the count. Expand or double-click that card to see the individual products behind it.
Viewing and filtering transactions
Select any edge to open the transactions panel for that relationship. There you'll see the underlying transactions — transaction date, sender, address, receiver, and more. To make sense of the data quickly:
- Group by any field by dragging its column header into the grouping area. For example, grouping by HS code shows the products moving along that relationship.
- Filter by transaction date to focus on a specific time period.
Use this to check whether the HS codes are relevant and judge the materiality of the risk before making a determination.
Grouping the canvas
Open view settings in the toolbar to change what the canvas groups on within each tier. Each option collapses a tier into one node per value:
- Location — one node per address. This is the default.
- Organization — one node per company, standing for all of its locations. The card counts the products and locations behind it; expand it to see them.
- Product — one node per product.
- Relationship Type — one node per type of supplier: manufacturer, distributor, producer, raw material producer, and so on. This comes from a label you apply to your catalog, which then flows through to the canvas.
- Country — one node per country, counting the sites behind it. This shows how your goods flow between countries on their way to your final sites.
Grouping works alongside the inspection modes below — you can group by country and then pin or focus a node to follow goods from one country into another.
Layout configuration
View settings also control how each tier is ordered:
- Alphabetical Layout — sorts each tier by name. This is the default, and it lays out faster than Smart Layout, which matters most on large value chains.
- Smart Layout — reorders each tier to reduce the number of edge crossings, for a cleaner view when the alphabetical order produces a tangle.
Showing the Suggested network
Toggle your Suggested network off to show only the relationships you have verified, and on again to bring the inferred ones back. Combined with grouping and zoom, this lets you view the canvas at whatever level of detail works best for you.
Pin mode
Hovering a node lights the paths running through it, but the highlight is lost as soon as the pointer moves away. Pin mode holds it: the pinned node's network stays lit and the rest of the canvas greys back, so you can keep working the network without losing track of where you came from. This matters most on a network too tall to hold in your head.
Pin follows real paths through the node rather than everything that touches it, so a path routed through a collapsed tier lights only the side genuinely connected to it. Pinning does not open the side sheet or select the node.
Focus mode
Where pin mode greys out the rest of the network, focus mode removes it. Focus reduces the canvas to one node and the relationships connected to it, which is the difference that counts when a value chain runs tens or hundreds of suppliers deep.
The focus panel names the anchor — its product, supplier, and address — and counts how many nodes are shown against the total. Tier steppers widen or narrow the window one tier at a time: step downstream toward the finished product at Tier 0, or explore upstream where the network continues past what is loaded. Transactions stay available inside focus, so you can inspect a relationship without leaving.
Within focus you can lock another node along the path to narrow further: locking pins that node's tier and drops its siblings, so locking tier by tier tightens the path incrementally. Focus mode is keyboard-navigable — arrow keys move within and across tiers, and the lock control works from the keyboard too.
Pin and focus are mutually exclusive; entering one leaves the other.
Path isolation mode
Path isolation mode reduces the canvas to the paths between two entities you choose. Like focus mode it removes everything extraneous, but it works from a start point and an end point rather than a single anchor — useful for understanding how a raw material becomes a finished product, and which suppliers it moves through on the way.
- From a node, start the path. Everything still reachable from it stays lit.
- Optionally shift-click any lit node to add a via — a point the path must pass through. Each via fixes the direction and re-narrows the highlight, so the remaining choices visibly shrink. Shift-click a via again to drop it.
- Select a lit node to set the end point and isolate the path.
If no path exists between your choices, the canvas is left as it was and the panel tells you so. Press Escape or close the panel to exit.
The canvas walkthrough
The canvas walkthrough in the toolbar opens a guided tour built into the product — how to read the canvas, how to get around it, how to change the view, and how to work a single node — with an animated example for each step. Page through it with the arrow keys. Dismiss it with Do not show me again, and reopen it any time from the same control.
Acting on what you find
Once you've reviewed an exposure and its transactions, you can update the status of the exposure directly, then work through the remaining edges the same way.
Key terms
- Node — an entity on the canvas: a company at a location, or a grouped company, product, relationship type, or country.
- Edge — a line between two nodes representing the trade relationship and its underlying transactions.
- Tier — a step outward from the finished product at Tier 0, marked on the ruler across the top of the canvas.
- Chip — a count on a collapsed tier card, one per node type, that also acts as the control to pop out the nodes of that type.
- Suggested network — inferred connections beyond what you've verified, marked with the Suggested icon.
- Via — in path isolation, an entity the isolated path is required to pass through.