Bloom

Neo4j Enterprise Studio has three tools built in, Query, Bloom, and Dashboards. All three of them allow you to interact with your data directly from the UI.

Bloom is a graph exploration tool for visually interacting with graph data. It allows you to explore your data without using Cypher®, you can visualize existing connections and create new ones directly from the UI.

Bloom is also built in to the Neo4j Aura console. The functionality is almost identical between the different deployments. This page is a brief introduction, for more information about this powerful tool, see Neo4j Aura → Bloom documentation.

In Enterprise Studio, you can find Bloom in the sidebar, under Tools.

Select your deployment via the dropdown and select your database from the database dropdown.

exploreui
Figure 1. The Bloom UI

The UI consists of the Settings header, a search bar, the Scene, two vertical toolbars, a map, and a legend panel.

Settings header

The Settings header contains options for Perspectives and exports, as well as the settings drawer.

settings header
Figure 2. Settings header

A Perspective is the context you explore with this tool. Instead of looking at all your data, you may be interested only in a part of it. Defining a Perspective is deciding which entities should comprise your explorations, and this is done in the Perspective drawer. See Bloom → Perspectives for detailed information about Perspectives.

You can export the data in the scene, either as CSV or as a screenshot.

The Settings drawer contains settings for the Bloom tool, such as the query limit and search timeout.

Search bar

Most data explorations in Bloom start in the search bar. This is where you describe what you are looking for and when you execute, you will see the results visualized in the Scene. Once you have elements in your Scene, you can interact with them in various ways. See Bloom → Search bar to learn more about the search bar.

Scene

The Scene is the main workspace in Bloom and this is where the graph based on your search is visualized. You can interact with the elements in your Scene in various ways, you can learn more about them, find hidden connections, edit them, and more. See Bloom → Scene interactions for more information.

Toolbars

The toolbars contain useful tools to help you interact with the data in your Scene. Which tools are available depends on whether you have a plugin installed in your instance or not. These are the available tools:

  • Filtering - Allows you to filter out elements in the current Scene.

  • Slicer - An interactive way to demonstrate differences in numerical values of properties via a timeline.

  • Scenes - A way of saving and sharing the Scene you’re currently working on.

  • Graph Data Science integration - Use an assortment of GDS algorithms on the data in your Scene. Requires the Neo4j Graph Data Science library to be installed on the connected deployment.

  • Marquee tools - The bottom of the two toolbars contains the individual select, the box select, and the lasso select. You can use these to select elements in the Scene, both nodes and relationships.

Map

The minimap of the Scene allows you to pan the entirety of your Scene. It has controls to change what is visible on the Scene and can help you navigate around your graph if your visualization is large. See Bloom → Map

Legend panel

On the right side of the Scene is the legend panel. It shows a list of all categories and relationship types available in the current Perspective and a list of which style they are rendered in. You can use this to select elements in the Scene, but also to control how they are visualized. You can change the size, color, and which property to display on the element. Additionally, the legend panel also offers rule-based styling. See Bloom → Legend panel to learn more about the legend panel.

Share scenes

You can share a Bloom scene with other users of the same Neo4j deployment. In Enterprise Studio you can share a scene with a specified database role, or you can share with other users of the database by their username.

The roles or users you share a scene with will see it in their Bloom tool once they have been added. If you want to revoke access from a role or user, you can do that from the same dialog, accessed via the Share button.

Migration

To migrate Perspectives and Scenes from Neo4j Desktop or standalone Bloom, see Administration → Migration to Enterprise Studio.