Topics essentials

In SimpleX, a topic is a group of text answers.

Most users strive to group answers into consistent clusters, most often but not exclusively, based on meaning. 

One answer can belong to one or several topics.

When one group is a subgroup of answers belonging to a group, it is called a subtopic.

Topics are displayed on the left sidebar of the console, with a counter indicating the number of answers contained in the group.

Whenever the console view is filtered, each topic counter indicates how many answers out of the topic population appear in the filtered view. For example, 3/16 stands for "The filter applied has kept 3 out of the 16 answers belonging to the group."

In order to display the answers from one given topic, you can:

• click on the name of the topic in the left side bar
• click on the topic label below one of the text answers in the center console
• use the filter dropdown in the right sidebar to filter through one or several topics

Clicking again on the active topic in the left sidebar reset topic filter and display all the text answers

Edit the topics by clicking on the ... at the right of the topic label in the left sidebar. Select Edit. Edit if required the topic label.

You can also enter or edit the samples that will be used for content suggestion or distribution features.

See also Suggest content and Distributing answers sections

Add a new topic by clicking on the + sign in the topic sidebar on the left or clicking on the Build topics button and select Create new topic.

You are prompted to enter a label for the topic and provide samples. Providing samples is not mandatory. Samples provided are useful in order to guide the AI features suggest content or distribute.

Once created, the topic is displayed on the topic sidebar on the left, as well as in the filtering sidebar on the right.

See also Suggest content and Distributing answers sections.

Delete a topic by clicking on the ... at the right of the topic label in the left sidebar. Select delete. This action cannot be cancelled. Answers are not deleted. They are left in the other topics they were belonging to or in the remaining answers with no topic.

You can merge several topics by selecting Merge in the topic menu. You are prompted to enter a label for the resulting group as well as picking the different topics you would like to merge. The resulting topic will contain all the answers previously blonging to the merged topics. Merged topics are deleted. 

There are several ways to populate a topic with answers:

• moving manually a selection of answers into the topic
• moving automatically answers based on topic suggestion
• distributing automatically answers based on topic population

In order to move manually an answer, select the desired answer by ticking the box in front of it in the center console. In the grouped action dropdown select Move to. Select in the Topic dropdown, select the destination topic. Click the Apply button. Selected answers will be move outside its source topic (if any) and into the destination topic.

This action can be applied to a selection of multiple answers.

By selecting Copy to instead of Move to, the answers are copied into the destination topic while staying also in the source topic.

For further information on the AI-assisted automatic ways to populate a topic, see Suggest content and Distributing answers sections.