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Lineage Tips & Tricks

Everything on the Lineage canvas is driven by the toolbar at the bottom left and by what each node reveals on hover. This page is the reference for both.

The Canvas Toolbar

Control What It Does
Zoom out Decreases the magnification by one step.
Zoom level The button between the two zoom controls shows the current percentage. Clicking it opens presets at 200%, 150%, 100%, 75%, and 50%, and picking one jumps straight to that magnification.
Zoom in Increases the magnification by one step.
Fit view Sets the zoom and position so that everything currently on the canvas is visible at once. The quickest way back after scrolling away from the graph.
Reorganize Re-applies the default layout. Expansions add nodes to the existing arrangement rather than recomputing it, so this is what to reach for once the graph starts to look tangled.
More options Opens the menu described below.

The More Options Menu

Entry What It Does
Focus current Returns the view to the container whose Lineage tab you are on, however far you have navigated.
Focus selection Centres the view on what you have selected. Greyed out while nothing is selected.
Expand fields Opens the field list on every node at once, instead of one node at a time.
Collapse fields The same entry, once the field lists are open. Closes them all.
Expand upstream Loads the upstream side of the graph without picking a node first. Greyed out when nothing is left to load on that side, or while another expansion is running.
Expand downstream The same, in the other direction.

The two expansion entries sit below the rest of the menu on purpose: everything above them can be undone by clicking again, and expanding cannot.

Working With the Graph

  • Expanding is one way. There is no collapse for the graph itself, only for field lists. Reload the Lineage tab to get back to the starting view.
  • Reorganize after a big expansion. New nodes are placed around what is already there, so the layout drifts as the graph grows.
  • Focus before you zoom. On a dense graph, clicking a node or a field dims everything unrelated, which is usually faster than zooming in to find one chain.
  • Copy a name you cannot open. An asset that is not registered in Qualytics is drawn with a dashed border and has no page to visit. Right-click it and use Copy Name to take its full name, as the source spells it, into a search or a ticket.
  • Find the gaps from the listing. The container listing's Has lineage filter is the fastest way to see which containers have no connections at all, rather than opening tabs one by one.