XMind

Brainstorming and Mindmapping!

In November 2009, there was an article about how XMind can be helpful on Project management by using TaskInfo and Gantt Chart. At that time, XMind might not perform well enough, but it still worked efficiently. And with valuable support and suggestions from many enthusiastic people, XMind has made many improvements through time. For example, the “assigned to” option to add a particular person.

Especially in XMind 2012, we bring the “task dependency relationship” to help you identify the dependency relation between tasks, and re-design the Gantt Chart with a more friendly interface, fluent interaction and improved usability. We’re ready now.

Task Dependency In XMind

Before showing Gantt Chart, maybe we should talk about the Task Dependency for better understanding.
A dependency relation exists between any two tasks in XMind. How do you display it? Now, XMind can help you achieve this with few simple steps. For example, task A has a dependency relation with task B. Let’s do as following:
Select task A.

1. On the Predecessors fields, click plus button.
2. Choose task B in the coming Task Dependency dialog.
3. Confirm the Dependency type,
   • Finish to Start, Task A can’t be started until Task B is finished.
   • Start to Finish, Task A can’t be finished until Task B is started.
   • Start to Start, Task A can’t be started until Task B is started.
   • Finish to Finish, Task A can’t be finished until Task B is finished.
4. Click OK to finish.

Then after adding these task details, let’s click Show Gantt Chart at the Taskinfo View bottom. All tasks in current mind map will be shown in the Gantt Chart view.

If you switch among sheets or workbooks, the content will be updated at the same time. Moreover, when you drill down any a topic to focus on more details, Gantt Chart will only show the tasks in this drilled down map. Concentration is ever so easy and simple.

Gantt Chart has two parts. On the left, all topics are listed as a tree. On the right, the tasks are shown as task bars with time indicator. A glance, you can catch the most task details immediately, like Task content, Start/End Date, Progress Status, and Dependencies. When moving mouse on a task, all information will be appeared. How convenient! Also, you can change timeline scale among Hours, Days, Weeks and Months in the left as you want.

In this redesigned Gantt Chart View, we bring various colors for task bars, which depend on the task’ priority. This would be helpful to distinguish one task from the others. One more thing, the Task Dependency, which is shown as the lines between tasks. You’re allowed to insert dependency line here, by selecting the little circle at the start or end of a task bar and pointing to any a task. To help you understand the dependency type better,  please watch the above screenshot, there are four lines, from top to bottom,

• The first one means that Task B can’t be started until Task A is started.
• The second one means that Task C can’t be started until Task B is finished.
• The third one means that Task D can’t be finished until Task E is started.
• The fourth one means that Task F can’t be finished until Task E is finished.

What we do believe is that, you may bring a big surprise to your co-workers while reporting the project status with XMind, and they will understand your work fast and easily.

Earlier this year, XMind surpassed the half a million user mark, and our user base continues to grow exponentially as more and more people discover the power of XMind.
Many people tell us, XMind helps them a lot in business. XMind lets their plan work easier, reports clearer, brainstorming faster, and etc. Some users know and begin to use XMind when they see colleagues are using it. And at last, XMind Pro has the company clients. They bought subscription codes for employees. They believe XMind can power their teams, some have even seen the improvement in work.
During the communication with these companies and small teams/organizations, while solving their problems, we also understand more their requirements. Now to serve teams, organizations, and companies better, XMind prepares multiple plans for business.
Every plan will offer a group license, and has the user number limit. One company only needs to buy one subscription code for all users.
It’ll be easy to power the team with XMind for Business.

Because of our love of mind mapping, the XMind team came together from different parts of China to create XMind. On April 1^st, 2007, we released the first English version of XMind in Beijing.

To make a better productivity tool, we have a few principles that we adhere to:

• XMind must be very easy to use.
• XMind should increase user productivity with a fun to use interface and powerful functionality.
• XMind should be accessible so that more people can benefit from mind mapping.

Easy-to-use ≠ Simple

Every good tool must be easy to use. But this does not mean simple. In fact, some look-simple tools are not easy to use. Easy-to-use is a design concept that gives people a certain feeling while using a tool.  For example, XMind allows users to create a subtopic with the Tab key. The result is that people can easily mind map with a shortcut keystroke that makes sense. Some users have described this feature as Enter spreads your ideas, and Tab digs one idea. It greatly enhances usability.

The need to focus is very important for building a mind map, especially a big one.  Drilldown provides a perfect solution.  Selecting a topic and clicking F6 brings you into a branch level, where you can focus on the topic for that branch and its associated subtopics.

Navigation is easy too. We can choose to see all topics in a classic style outline viewer or via the diagrammatic Overview viewer. Outline view shows the entire map content in a traditional linear way, which sometimes helps in digesting the map concepts.  BTW, we can directly edit topic content in this viewer. Overview view offers us the flexibility to see and navigate through content on the map. Left-clicking the mouse allows us to move any part of the map into the center. Scrolling the mouse wheel allows us to quickly zoom in or out on the map.

Presentation is an easy task in XMind because of the Presentation Mode.  No matter which topic we are on, clicking F5 will bring us into this special mode. All topics are hidden except the Central Topic, which is at the center and highlighted. Now, by hitting the space key in succession, each main topic is revealed one by one, centered and highlighted instead of the central topic.

In fact, we can pick out more. All of these features, while powerful, were designed with ease of use in mind.

Increasing User Productivity with XMind

When we decided to enter the mind mapping software market, we wanted to provide functionality that was not only easy to use, but fun to use and productivity-enhancing. We didn’t find a mind mapping tool in the market that provided all of these aspects, so we took on this challenge with XMind.

Since releasing XMind, we’ve received lots of positive feedback about the user interface, that it’s pleasing to the eye. We believe having an attractive interface makes work tasks more fun and greatly enhances productivity.

We’ve also received many accolades for our Multiple Sheets functionality within the main view.  Similar to how a spreadsheet workbook allows you to have multiple sheets within that file; we can create multiple sheets within a single XMind file. Searching, finding and navigating content is much easier this way. Instead of having to open and close various files, or follow links and navigate away from a starting point, users can easily click between different sheet tabs for maximum efficiency in perusing various map content.

Other functionality for finding and sharing content within XMind makes it an essential productivity tool.

Finding

If we want to find something in a single map, normally Find and Replace (Ctrl+F) will be good enough. When we have many opened maps, with some having multiple sheets within them, Powerful Search view will be a great assistant. In this viewer, we can search any content in all opened workbooks. The search results are listed as a tree with a clean looking format. We can get to the content we need to find quickly and efficiently.

Sharing

XMind can export map content to other file formats such as Image, PDF (Map), PDF (Document) , HTML, etc., for fast sharing.

XMind also offers another free sharing solution, XMind Share. Suppose you’re a teacher and a mind mapper. You want to share some special class content with your students in a non-public way. Just open the map in XMind and sign-in with your XMind Account (free to set up on www.xmind.net). Click the Upload button on the toolbar, select Unlisted in the privacy controls, and upload the map to XMind Share. This map will be assigned a unique URL, which you can provide to your students so that they can go and read the map online or download it to their own computers. Note that people without the URL will not be able to get to your map and it won’t be searchable in Google.

Making XMind and Mind Mapping Accessible to the World

When we started XMind four years ago, we had the vision of exposing as many people as possible to the power of mind mapping. We believe that XMind Open Source is a great way to achieve this vision.

This open source version of XMind has many features which meet most peoples’ basic mind mapping requirements. More importantly, it incorporates all of the design rules mentioned above, namely easy to use, fun to use, and productivity-enhancing.

Along with XMind Open Source, we also offer XMind Pro, which has more advanced business features such as Presentation mode, Audio notes, TaskInfo view, and Gantt chart viewer. XMind Pro is subscription-based software with a very reasonable entry–level fee.

Remaining true to our principles has gotten some results that we are really proud of. Earlier this year, XMind surpassed the half a million user mark, and our user base continues to grow exponentially as more and more people discover the power of XMind.

Finally, we want to say a big Thank You to all of XMind users who have sent feedback via email or left messages via Twitter, Facebook, and our user forums, or just support us quietly. No matter whether its praise, suggestions, or criticism, your support provides the fuel for the XMind Team to keep working hard and make XMind better and better.

In the past months, we received lots of inquiries about XMind Pro Enterprise license. They told us that XMind Pro was good at enhancing the efficiency, saving working time, and wanted to know something about the Enterprise license support.

The full name of Enterprise license is XMind Pro Enterprise Unlimited License. Actually, it’s another type subscription code, which means all people within a company or an organization can enjoy XMind Pro. Of course, there is no limitation on the number of users.

Normally, we will recommend this Enterprise License to these inquirers only when the estimated user number is more than 100. In that case, it has the superior cost-effective. More important, only one license and a few special XMind accounts needed, so it’s very convenient for you to mange your team, department, and your company.

Interested in it? Please fill this form.

One of our best friends, an XMind Pro daily user from South Africa, reminds that XMind not only can organize our ideas but all our work as well, for example, manage all your files in Project Management.

This friend told us that, most of time, he was drowned in numerous files, notes, spreadsheets, quotes, web links. Until one day, he found XMind can be used to manage all these files. Most people just think of mind maps as a way of organizing sparkles or ideas. However, XMind, as a mind mapping software, indeed, can help us as a great files management tool.

One significant way is to use the attachment. It’s very handy. We can directly drag and drop any required files into XMind as a subtopic of the exiting topic, or a floating topic. Double-click will open these attachments.  Fast and simple. But this may not be the best solution. Because:
XMind will save a copy file. Then, after editing them in XMind, the original version in your local computer will not be updated.
After inserting many files, esp. file with big size, your XMind file will become bigger. And it will use more time to open, save and close.

So here is the second way, Hyperlink, a better solution. You can build a hyperlink between any topic and any a local file/folder. It’s very simple.

Select a topic, Click “Ctrl+H” or hyperlink icon on toolbar, Select file, and here choose the file/folder and link type, “Absolute or Relative”. That’s all. And with one simple click, we can view and edit these linked files/folders in XMind directly.

BTW, if you usually move XMind files in your computer, such as from “D driver” to “E driver”, it’s better to use Absolute link. It can works after moving it. Note that this absolute links will be invalid if being moved to another computer.

If using Relative link, please do not change the relative position between XMind file and the linked files/folders. Then, you can bring them together, and work with this linked files anywhere. For example, if they are in one same folder, the links will work no matter where this folder is. This is very useful for working on airplane, doing presentation to clients, and etc.

Then all the files in the map present themselves to us. We can navigate the files within the map, organize and arrange them by changing the structure, color, line shape, and even use label, boundary, and theme.

With XMind, time will be saved, meanwhile, both ideas and files will be well organized.

P.S. here, we want to share another usage from a Chinese daily user. Hope this is useful.
He told us that they have many files (they are not allowed to save in other computers.) in their LAN server, and needed to link them in XMind. He hopes that the link in map will be available while he open linked files and show them to manager. He called us, because Absolute link and relative link neither worked.

After testing, we find Web link (select Web in Hyperlink dialog) is feasible. Instead of using “http://”, paste the target file position in to field, such as “\\venus\D\xmind-portable-3.1.1″, at last fill “\”+”file name”. Then inside their LAN, work goes fluently again.

Now, please enjoy our XMind Pro XMAS family package!

As I wrote before, all the XMind Pro features that I listed can benefit Project Management a lot. Now, let’s step into another important feature, Presentation Mode.

First, I want to spend a little time talking about meeting. Undoubtedly, meetings run through the whole project. How to get our meetings effective during Project Management? Is there any good approach to have a meaningful meeting? Presentation Mode in XMind Pro is entering to its stage.

Let’s take project status reports for example. How to express your project status clearly, how to make your co-workers get fully understood of what you are talking about? The answer is to use XMind Presentation mode, which can help you to present your thought perfectly to others according to the map you drew.

As we know, XMind is a great and powerful visual thinking tool to help us to organize our ideas, plans, and tasks. And visual thinking tools are naturally good at communication. To enhance this advantage, XMind Pro brings the well-designed Presentation Mode. The Presentation mode allows us to browse maps with a minimum of distraction.

Press F5 to enter Presentation mode. Now the map appears on the whole screen rather than in a window. And only the central topic is highlighted on the center of Window. See as follows:

With the Arrow keys, we can navigate in Presentation mode fluently. While we are focusing on the current topic, we can also have a glance of the topics mentioned before:

There also is a hidden button panel in Presentation mode. Moving the mouse to the bottom, we will see it, which has six buttons. They can help us navigate the topics, zoom the map, highlight all topics, and Show Sidebar.

In this sidebar, we can see the outline of all opened works, enjoy the powerful filter, and enable audio notes. This sidebar should be remembered esp. while navigating a complicated map.

With this presentation mode, our audience can easily concentrate on the selected topic. At the same time, they can also read the topics we have navigated. This is the point. From the beginning, XMind shows all things as a whole.

From the task percentage, the difficulties you met when implementing the task, any other improvements in existing tasks, next major tasks, the estimated completion date, all the listed stuff can be arranged orderly, can be presented clearly. In Presentation mode, with arrow keys,  you can show them one by one. Then, your team members can see all the other stuffs you listed as a whole. Meanwhile, your customers could understand your clearly. Everything you present keeps their integrity, but have their own emphasis as well. Presentation mode in XMind will help you do better project status reports.

What about trying XMind Presentation mode to assist your Project Management, it won’t let you down.

It is obvious that Visual Think really can do something helpful to Project Management. XMind, as a great Visual Think/Brainstorming Software, can also benefit our Project Management via its friendly design, many powerful but easy-using features. In the coming several blogs, we’ll focus on how to make full use of XMind in managing projects.

Of all the features that XMind owns, Taskinfo, Gantt View, Powerful Filter, Map Merge, Presentation Mode, Fishbone Chart, Spreadsheet chart, Multiple Sheets/Workbook, Brainstorming mode/Timer* do play important roles in Project Management. Here goes the first one: Taskinfo and Gantt View.

When running a project, there are numerous things need to organize, such as: steps in the whole project, business requirements analysis in measurable goals, financial analysis of the costs and benefits, task assignment, task priority and so on. Therefore, how to get all these things done is not that easy.

Now, you may need XMind, a visual think tool. Suppose that in Executing Stage of a Project, drawing a mind map is very necessary to carry out all the things planed to do, such as business requirements, functions as it was intended, acceptable quality standards of the product, time and budget constraints, and all others aspects. Then we need to list all tasks, and each task has a start and end date, has its own priority and progress. It’s time for us to use Taskinfo. We can select the task and choose the start/end date, priority, and progress percentage for a certain task in the Taskinfo View, and even add the person in “Assigned to”*.

Everything is in order. Click “Show Gantt Chart” under View menu, we will easily check all these tasks and detailed information. Gantt Chart in XMind is a special Viewer illustrating a project schedule, showing the timelines of the tasks, ordering all tasks with their priorities. When does this task start, when does it end. Which tasks are urgent, should be done at once, which have not to. What’s the progress of a task. Moreover, moving a mouse to a task, we will see who are in charge of it in the future. Here, we can understand fully at one glance. I guess it will be a better idea for us to use this view to communicate/discuss with other members than just watching it by ourselves.

Apparently, you may be aware of that Taskinfo and Gantt View can do better performance when they work together. That’s definitely true. Finally, it seems that arranging and managing your tasks is not that hard.

How Effective and valuable approaches for Project Management, would you like to have the experience by yourself? Just do it, don’t be hesitate. Whatever you think of them, please make your voice heard.

*The features, Brainstorming/Timer and Assigned to, will be available in the coming version.
**Taskinfo and Gantt View are both available in XMind Pro only.