Society Viewer On-Line Help

When should I use it?
The Society Viewer's high level view of agents provides an ideal summary of a multi-agent system. It provides an 'at a glance' depiction of all the agents known to the Visualiser and the messages sent, as the agents send them. The continual flow of messages can provide reassurance that the agents are still functioning, which otherwise may be difficult to verify given their potential distribution across a network.

How do I use it?

• If you haven't yet connected to an Agent Name Server, no icons will be present in the main panel. In which case, follow these instructions, this will retrieve the list of known agents.
  
• There should now be at least two icons in the main window panel. The layout of these icons can be changed by dragging the icons, or choosing one of the options from the Layout list.
  
• To see messages exchanged by the agents the Visualiser must contact each known agent to request they send it a copy of every message sent. To do this, select the Request Messages option from the Online menu. This will bring up a dialog enabling you to choose which agents' messages are displayed.
  
• If you have requested messages from a Facilitator agent you should soon see message icons moving between it and the other agents as it sends queries to update its ability model.
  
• To see the inter-agent relationships click the appropriate Relations checkboxes, this will show relations as arrows between the agent icons. The viewer's relationship model can be updated by choosing the Update Relations option from the Online menu.
  

The Toolbar Options
Collapse - collapses the icons of a selected hierarchical relationship.
Expand - expands any previously collapsed relationships.
Recompute - moves the icons according to the current layout setting.
Redraw - refreshes the screen, useful if display is corrupted.
Select/Deselect - changes the state of those nodes within a selected area.
Select All Icons - marks all icons as selected.
Hide Selected Icons - removes the currently selected icons from the display.
Show Hidden Icons - shows all previously hidden icons.

These options also have corresponding entries in the View menu.

The Layout Options
There are 4 possible arrangements for the agent icons, which can be selected from the Layout list below the video controls. The default is a horizontal arrangement, but this can be changed to one of the following:

• Vertical - this arranges the agents according to their hierarchical position, i.e. subordinates are shown underneath superiors.
• H-Coworkers - this arranges the agents so that those who are co-workers are horizontally aligned. It will have no effect if no co-worker relationships exist within the visualised society.
• H-Peers - this arranges the agents so that those who are peers are shown beside each other. It will have no effect if there are no peers within the visualised society.
• Centered - this will place the selected agent in the middle of the screen with the other agents arranged in a circle around it. If no agent has been selected the Visualiser will choose one.

Other Menu Options

• The activity displayed live by the Society Viewer can be saved to a file to be replayed later; this process is described here.
  
• Instructions for loading a previously saved session are listed here.
  
• To stop receiving messages from any or all agents, select the Unrequest Messages option from the Online menu. Alternatively, the Filter Messages option can be chosen from the Options menu.
  
• The Options menu also has a Speed... option, which allows the speed at which the messages are animated to be set, (the smaller the value entered the faster they will be displayed).
  
• The Animation Type... menu option enables the on-screen representation of messages to be selected. There are three choices: as icons, colour-coded letters, or colour-coded lines.