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Introduction

Welcome to the documentation for Akuko, a platform for turning data into pages other people can read and explore.

What is Akuko?​

Akuko connects to your data and lets you build interactive pages from it — charts, maps, tables and text, assembled into a Post.

  • Build Posts from connected data. Combine maps, tables, charts, images and text on one page. The data stays connected to its Source rather than being pasted in.

  • Connect to what you already have. Upload a file, point at a sheet, or connect a database. See Sources.

  • Shape data once, reuse it. Define Dimensions and Measures on a Source, and build any number of Posts on top of them.

  • Work as a team. Spaces are shared workspaces with their own members and roles.

  • Make it explorable. Filters and events let readers interrogate the data themselves rather than only reading your conclusions.

Let's Begin​

New to Akuko? These seven steps go from nothing to a Post you can share. The rest of this site is organised by topic rather than by sequence, so this is the thread through it.

1. Orient yourself​

Learn the words the rest of the documentation assumes — Account, Space, Source, Source View, Dimension, Measure, Geometry, Post, Component, Folder and Dashboard.

→ Concepts

2. Get your data in​

Create a Source. What that involves depends on where your data lives — uploading a file, pointing at a sheet, or connecting a database. If you need to combine or reshape data before building on it, a Source View does that once so several Posts can reuse it.

→ Sources

3. Understand your Source​

Before you can chart anything, Akuko needs to know which parts of your data are things to group by and which are numbers to aggregate. Some Sources set this up for you; you can always adjust it. If your rows have locations, this is also where you set up Geometries so they can be mapped.

→ Dimensions · Measures · Geometries

4. Author a Post​

Create a Post and add Components — a chart, a table, a map — and choose the data each one shows, then arrange them into a layout. Filters let readers narrow what they see, and Events let one Component react to another.

→ Posts · Components · Events

5. Set up your team​

Add people to your Space and give them roles, and group them so you are not sharing things one person at a time.

→ Spaces · Managing users and groups

6. Control who sees it​

Decide who can reach your work: which people are in the Space, which Posts they can open, and — where you need it finer than that — which rows of a Source a given person is allowed to see. Folders let you share a set of things at once instead of one by one.

→ Managing Posts with Folders · Spaces

7. Keep it current​

Data changes. Some Sources can be refreshed — by hand or on a schedule — depending on the type and on how it was set up. When something looks out of date, the Source is where to start.

→ Sources