Topic Finder

Important: Topic Finder works only with the Legacy Topic Builder, and does not work with the newer Topic Builder introduced in Medallia Admin Suite.

Topic Finder enables you to create new topics from system-generated themes. The Theme Discovery Engine creates these themes by using machine-learning approaches rather than imposing user-defined rules on the data.

Note: Topic Finder appears automatically after you run theme discovery for the first time.

You can create topics from the themes list. Alternatively, link themes to existing topics.

Topic Finder is particularly useful when you want to:

  • Begin capturing comments—Adding or linking to a theme can be a quick, effective way to start the topic creation process.

  • Tune existing comments—Linking to suggested themes can help you tune your topic. Medallia Text Analytics suggests themes based on the rules you create across a topic set, so the relevancy of the suggested themes often increases as you create more rules.

  • Get ideas for new topics—Searching themes can be a good way to gauge how frequently a subject is discussed, get ideas for new topics, and discover emerging issues.

Note: Topic Finder is optional, and is configured in a separate process from the rest of Text Analytics.

Creating a new topic from a theme

The Themes list displays the themes with the most untagged comments, so they can provide insight about issues and subjects that aren't represented by your current topic list. As you create new topics from themes, keep the following information in mind:

  • Themes are temporary until you add them to the permanent topic list.

  • After you add a theme to the topic list, you can add rules to it and activate it just as with any other topic.

To create a topic from a theme:

  1. Open a topic set.
  2. Expand the Themes section to view the themes generated by the theme discovery engine.

    Themes is an expandable section above the list of topics

  3. Add a theme to your topic list by dragging it outside the Themes section to where the screen indicates, Drag here to create a new topic.

    Drag a theme to create a new topic

    After you add a theme to your topic list, that theme no longer appears in the list of themes.

    Note: After you add a theme to the permanent topic list, you can edit the topic the same way you would edit a topic that you had created yourself (creating additional rules, linking to themes, and so on). Additionally, if any comments captured by the theme are inaccurate, you can remove those comments from the topic.

    After you add a theme to your topic list, you can remove any captured comments you don’t approve of, and edit the topic just as you would any other topic in your topic list. Read the comments in the annotation panel. When you hover over comments that are captured by a theme, a minus icon appears, allowing you to remove the comment from the topic:

    Click the minus icon to remove a comment from the topic

Linking to a theme

When Topic Finder is enabled, Topic Finder displays a tab with a list of themes that you can link to from existing topics. When you link an existing topic to an theme, the comments associated with the theme become part of the existing topic.

Here are a few tips for using the Themes tab:

  • Linking to a theme can be a quick, effective way to begin capturing comments.
  • Text Analytics suggests themes based on the rules you create across a topic set, so the relevancy of the suggested topics often increases as you create more rules. Linking to these suggested topics can help you tune your topic.
  • Searching themes can be a good way to gauge how frequently a topic is discussed and get ideas for new topics.

There are two ways to You can link to a theme from an existing topic in two ways: from the topic's Themes tab, and from the Themes list.

Linking to a topic from the Themes tab

  1. Open a topic and select the Themes tab.

    The themes tab displays a list of themes that you can link to the selected topic

    A series of generated themes is displayed, arranged according to relevancy and the number of comments associated with each theme.

  2. Explore the themes list. You can expand the high-volume themes to view lower-volume themes associated with them, and search for themes by concept. Any themes that have a Suggested label have been recommended based on the rules you entered into the system.

    In this example, Class Membership is a suggested theme

  3. To link to a theme, hover over the theme and click Link with this topic.

    When you hover over the theme, the Link with this topic option appears

Linking to a topic from the Themes list

  1. Open a topic set.
  2. Expand the Themes section to view the parent and themes generated by Text Analytics.

    Themes is an expandable section above the list of topics

  3. Add a theme to your topic list by dragging it outside the Themes section to where the screen indicates, Drag here to link with this topic.

    Drag a theme to create a new topic