Choosing an investigation mapping tool

An investigation mapping tool receives the most sensitive material you hold: names, hypotheses, links you have not verified yet. The choice deserves better than a sales demo. Here are the seven questions that genuinely separate the options, in the order they matter.

1. Where the data lives

This is the first question, and it is often the last one asked. Three possible answers.

• On your own machine. The case never leaves it. You are responsible for your backups, and nobody else sees what you are looking for.
• At the vendor. Convenient for working together, but your queries and your drafts become data hosted by a third party, in a given country, under a given legal regime.
• On your own servers. The best of both if you have the means, with the running cost that comes with it.

None is wrong in the absolute. What would be wrong is not knowing which one you picked.

2. What happens when you leave

Ask the question directly: if you stop the subscription tomorrow, what are you left with?

The good answer is a complete, readable file holding the entities, their fields, their positions and their links. The bad answer is an image, or a partial export that loses the relationships.

This is the most expensive point to discover late. A six-month investigation that will not come out of a tool is a six-month investigation to redo.

3. The export format

Look at the exported file, properly. Open it in a text editor.

If a human can read it, if it carries a version number and if it is documented, you will be able to read it back in five years even if the vendor has disappeared. If it is encrypted, compressed and proprietary, you depend on a piece of software to reach your own work.

4. The vocabulary the tool imposes

Every tool comes with its own object kinds and link kinds. Check two things.

Do the kinds cover what you actually handle? If you work on companies and the tool only knows people and IP addresses, you will spend your time bending fields out of shape.

Can you step outside the list? A tool that refuses a link kind it did not anticipate will force you to misstate your own data.

5. Time to the first useful map

Measure it. Install it, and try to reproduce an investigation you already know, with about fifteen entities.

If you get there in under an hour without documentation, the tool fits your hand. If you need training to draw three links, ask yourself who on your team will genuinely still be using it in six months.

6. Working together

An honest question: do you need it?

Many investigations are run by one person, who shares a result rather than a workspace. In that case a file you send over is enough, and it saves paying for seats for people who never log in.

If you genuinely need several people writing at the same time, then it is a first-order criterion, and it takes you straight back to question one.

7. The real cost over three years

Add up the subscription, the seats, the separately billed modules, the training time and the exit cost estimated at question two. Compare that total, not the entry price.

A table to decide with

Criterion	Question to ask	Warning sign
Data location	Where is my case stored?	An evasive answer
Reversibility	What am I left with if I stop?	An image only
Format	Can I read the exported file?	A closed format
Vocabulary	Can I create my own link kinds?	A fixed list
Learning curve	How long for fifteen entities?	Mandatory training
Collaboration	Do I genuinely need it?	Seats imposed on you
Cost	How much over three years, all in?	Modules billed apart

Where Ositra stands

For the sake of transparency, here is where this tool sits on the seven criteria. The data stays on your machine, with no account to create. A case exports to a readable, versioned file that reopens elsewhere. Ten entity kinds are offered, and the nature of a link is free text. It takes a few minutes to pick up. Several people writing at the same time does not exist today, and that is a deliberate choice at this stage.

If your main need is real-time collaborative editing, another tool will serve you better. If it is keeping control of your files, privacy is the starting point of the design.