Category Archives for : Features

Remember, earlier this June we launched our New Creately Viewer? In case you missed the news, let us give you a quick recap of what it is.

The Creately Viewer a handy little widget that lets you embed your diagrams on your web pages or blogs. It may appear like any other static image, but once you hover over it you get a plethora of options on a toolbar that lets you view and explore the diagram in its full glory.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been working on making this even better.

And the latest thing to land on this is an awesome set of linking features that enable you to navigate through links on your Creately diagrams super smoothly.

A Mini Diagram Browser Inside Your Web Page!

Go on, hover over the diagrams below. You’ll see what we mean! 

A Link button will appear on the Viewer’s toolbar if there are any links on your Creately diagram, and when you hover over the shape that is linked, it will be highlighted.

Hovering over the link button, you can access the link menu containing the thumbnail preview and the title of each link.

If a shape is linked to another Creately diagram it will open in the Viewer itself, and if it is linked to an outside source, it will direct you to a new tab on the browser.

And the handy back/ forward button on the toolbar lets you navigate from one linked diagram to the other seamlessly.

If that is not taking viewing diagrams to the next level, we don’t know what is! 😉  

Here are some tips on how to make the most of the new Creately viewer in your day to day usage.

Linked Wireframes for Easy Prototyping

Bring your mockups to life by linking the right buttons and links to other pages or views on your Web and Mobile app wireframes.

Simplify Complex Processes by Breaking down Your Flowcharts

Some flowcharts are too big to digest in one go. A neat trick is to break them down into smaller sub-flows and link them via a primary flow.

Link to Outside Sources on Your Mind Map to Create Knowledge Banks

Links work with other web pages as well. Works great on all kinds of diagrams and especially mind maps!

Connect Your Central Organizational Chart to Departmental Org Charts

If you are a bigger organization, this is a no-brainer. Make org charts for each team/department and link them up. Embed the Auto-Updating diagram inside your intranet (with a secure link) and you’ve got an easily navigable org chart!

Stay Tuned! Big Things are On their way!

The Creately team is in Full-On development mode and we are hard at work on our new HTML5 app (along with a few other things).

We are halfway there and a lot more exciting new things are yet to come before the end of this year.

Stay tuned for the next big thing. It is going to be goooooood!

Late last year, when we released the Creately mobile app, we had one goal in mind; to expand Creately’s powerful collaboration features a step further. To be exact, we wanted to enable our users to be able to easily view and collaborate on their diagrams, no matter where they are.

The Creately mobile app, in fact, has helped us create a seamless diagramming experience for you, regardless of time or place.

It’s Simple, but It has a Massive Cherry on Top!

Like any other mobile app, Creately mobile is built for both Android and iOS and fits perfectly across all mobile phone screen sizes. And it’s Free for all users! Plus all its features are specifically designed to allow users to review and collaborate on their diagrams in any situation.

But hey, here’s why you will wholeheartedly appreciate having the app on your phone

Keep Yourself Updated at All Times

You get to browse and view any diagram, public or private, anytime – on the commute, by the water cooler, on board a plane or on vacation when you decide to ditch your laptop at home on purpose.

You are supposed to review the latest diagram your team is working on or confirm that they are on the right track even without your constant supervision or help? With the mobile app, you can quickly view your diagrams in perfect detail, including any comments left by the team, and make sure that everything’s going according to plan back home!

Get Stuff Done Together (Even Though You are Really Not There!)

Imagine this; you are about to meet with and present to your client a diagram of the product you are developing, and your team informs you that those few issues you had pointed out before you left the office, have been fixed.

Sitting in the lobby outside your client’s office, you feel the need to quickly verify that the diagram is correctly done and is presentation-ready. You can use the Creately mobile app then and there to quickly review the changes and revise your talking points.

In another situation, say, your team is waiting for your immediate feedback, but you are on the way to somewhere else; all you have to do is open up your Creately mobile app, tap on the diagram and leave your comments with instructions. You can even comment on specific shapes by simply tapping on them. As your team works through the changes, you can see and review them as they happen.

And sharing with the mobile app cannot get any easier; you can simply share the diagram with someone from within the app by giving the email of the person or you can get the link to the diagram and send it to someone using any of your messaging apps.

From One Diagram to Another with a Simple Tap

The Creately mobile app creates a real interactive experience in viewing in-line links. You can navigate smoothly through interlinked UI mockups, wireframes, sitemaps, context diagrams etc. through the mobile app. Linked shapes or areas of the diagram are highlighted with a small indicator by clicking which, you can easily get to the next diagram right from inside the app. You can navigate through all the linked diagrams within that same screen.

The Mobile App is an Important Milestone. But There’s More!

Remember when we announced our New Beginning early this year? The mobile app is a significant part of this much bigger effort in reinventing Creately in a monumental way. As we continue to build on it, you can expect an array of new features and capabilities that will make your diagramming experience with Creately something that you truly crave for.

Creately is used by people in over 130 countries. While we primarily operate in English and we may appear that we cater to only English language speakers, that cannot be further from the truth!

Creately natively supports 20 languages and it has supported it for a few years in fact. Creately is built on the principle so that it works and adapts to how you want to work without any fuss or drama.

Our languages feature also works the same. If your locale on your operating system or web browser is set to one of our supported languages, Creately automatically chooses that language and sets the app to the right set of defaults.

It just works and helps you draw the best diagrams possible with the least effort. This is why we come in to office every single day.

Is your language supported?

Creately’s interface at present supports the following languages.

• English
• German
• French
• Spanish
• Simplified Chinese
• Japanese
• Russian
• Arabic
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Indonesian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Malay
• Norwegian
• Turkish
• Vietnamese
• Portuguese
• Polish
• Dutch

The Creately interface gets customized to match the language.

Creately automatically adjust to Chinese

My Language is not in this list, can I draw diagrams with text in another language?

Yes you can! With Creately you can use ANY local font installed on your computer and our included font’s support a wide array of languages so you can add any text you’d like into diagrams.

Localized Creately in Chrome Store

Creately is a popular app on the Chrome Web Store and the product descriptions and app profiles are also in our supported languages when you look for Creately in there.

If you haven’t installed the Creately Chrome App yet you use the browser, it’s time you added it on. Our chrome app makes it even faster to get diagramming with Creately.

Install the Chrome App >>

If a picture is worth thousand words, an infographic is probably worth million words. A well thought out infographic can condense years of research and tons of data into a single understandable image. So its no wonder infographics are so popular. But the biggest problem faced by many bloggers and websites owners is how to display large infographics in a meaningful way. And in this post we’ll show how you can use Creately viewer to do this  efficiently.

The toolbar provides plenty of features to better view the image

What is the Diagram Viewer ?

Creately viewer is small JavaScript code which you can use to embed your diagram in webpages and blogs. When you’re working on a diagram you can see it under the “Publish” section. Below I have embedded an infographic about hurricanes so you can see how it looks like.

If you hover over the image you will see a toolbar at the bottom. You can use that to zoom in on the infographic, view it on new window or even download it. For a detailed look into the Creately viewer and its capabilities check out this link. For a brief overview of the features check the next section.

How Creately viewer make infographics awesome

• Ability to define the size of the viewer – By default the viewer is set to 600 x 400, but you can give a custom range so the viewer exactly matches the dimensions of your page.
• Ability to link to sources – Most of Creately objects can be linked to other Creately objects or external pages. This enables you to link to external resources within the context of the diagram.
• Zooming – To zoom in on the infographic to capture more details. Especially useful for large infographics.
• Ability to drag the image – combined with zooming this makes it very easy to absorb details in large infographics.
• Other usability features – The toolbar comes with fit to screen button, 100% zoom button, download button and even have buttons to share on Facebook and Twitter making it even more user friendly.

How to show existing infographics using the Creately viewer

If you already have infographics or want to showcase an infographic belonging to someone else using the Creately viewer, you can do this by importing that infographic as an image. Just make sure you have the right to do so and you’re not violating copyright laws.

Are you using Creately viewer to display large infographics? Even if you’re using it to show normal diagram we love to hear about how you use it and what we can do to improve it. if you’re not using it what’s holding you back?

Colors can make or break your diagram. It can be the difference between a diagram loved by thousands and a diagram viewed by only you. We thought long and hard about this and came up with a color palette that will make you look like a design genius.

How do we make you look like a pro? Our design team has designed the color palette in such a way that when you select a color; the fill,  border, gradient and even the text will get matching colors. Colors of the same palette complement each other. Decades of design training, yours with one single click.

At first the color palette might look like a random selection of colors, but it’s not. Each row represents a theme suitable for different situations and different diagram types.

• • The first row consist of rainbow colors also known as happy colors. These bright colors are perfect for most k-12 diagrams including story boards, KWL charts, ISP charts and SWOT diagrams or anything that requires attention grabbing colors.
  • The second row represents flat colors, which is the current trend for user interface mock-ups. There are many UI designers among Creately users and they’ll love this color theme.
  • The theme in third row represents retro/vintage colors. These are excellent for info-graphics and posters. These are perfect for getting the old/worn out effect in your diagrams and designs. If you want a diagram to look like a 70’s posts then this is the theme to use.

The all new Creately color palette

• Next row represents a warm color theme with gradient effect. This theme highlights the gradient feature in Creately and provides you with some styles already having top to bottom gradient.
• The fifth row consist of dull/calm colors with the gradient effect. Other than the color difference this row has many gradient styles like bottom to top, sideways etc.
• The next row has different fill and border colors. Perfect for highlighting a specific area in complex diagram or if you want to achieve a contrasting effect in an object.
• The  seventh row consist of white/light background with borders. These are perfect for diagrams like database diagrams which has lot of text within the object. This color them is perfect for any diagram where you want to clearly see the text within an object.
• The last default color them consist of dotted lines around an object. Perfect for objects that require dotted lines like control process, event process ( data flow ), availability zone (AWS), future page(site map) and group(BPMN).
• Finally you have the custom styles. Creately’s smart interface automatically detects any custom styles applied in a diagram and make them available to you in the color palette. So when you open any diagram you’ll get all the default themes plus the custom styles in your palette so you can apply them to other objects easily.

Combining Fade and Gradient with Color Palette

The new color palette combined with our fade and gradient features lets you create even more styles for stunning diagrams. After adding a color select the “Fill” button to add gradients or fade colors. Below image shows numerous gradient styles available to you.

Create more styles for your diagrams by applying gradients

Fade is perfect for creating a lighter shade of you preferred color. It is also ideally suited for diagrams like Venn diagrams where you usually have overlapping objects. Below image show fade at 100% and 40%.

Fade at 100% and fade at 40%

Combining color palette with fade and gradient you can create the exact style you want for your diagrams. What do you think of the new color palette? Have you ever tried the fade feature? We love to hear from you about our new features and how you plan to use them. Contact us at support or get in touch using our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn pages.

For start ups today, the purveying axiom remains the same since antiquity – how do startups do more with less. With growing mobility and now this nebulous cloud phenomenon, it seems that startups may be getting a leg up. In fact, collaboration between coworkers and departments – on-site and off – has never been easier than it is today.

While one can get lost in the thousands of apps, workflow dashboards and cloud-based tools for startups on the market, it seems that three characteristics remain the same across all fan-favorites: Usability, Availability and the ability of Real-Time. Here is a breakdown of the 3 key factors you should think about when choosing collaborative tools, apps or cloud-based workflow aides:

Must have’s for collaborative tools

1) Usability: We all have found wonderful tools out there to help us collaborate better, to track
projects and to keep everyone on the same page. With more of the workforce acclimated to the digital and computer world, most of the time these tools are fairly self-explanatory. Employees can learn a tool or app fairly quickly – particularly if they have used similar apps, software or tools in the past.

Yet, most of the issues with workflow and collaboration tools revolve around complexity too many menus, too many functions and just too much to worry about. In that respect, don’t be afraid of the tool-box approach – picking the right tool for the job rather than turning a screwdriver into a hammer.

Usability was one reason Creately became so popular with users. Contextual menu’s for less cluttered work space, Google image search integration, one click access to templates, 1-click create and connect of objects are just some of the features which makes Creately very easy to use.

2) Availability: With more of the actual work across today’s startups done from home, opposite coasts or off-site location, availability of these tools has become particularly important. What good is a collaboration tool if it can only be used in singular space and time? Where’s in the past – before the digital age – all collaboration pended on space and time constrictions, today’s business world does not wait.

Today’s startups depend on instantaneous access and deployment of information – whether to customers, coworkers or the digital space. In the past it may have been perfectly fine for a process or project to wait on the analog collaboration, today’s digital world takes no prisoners.So, think about how your collaboration tool can be accessed, how it will link vital processes and how you can spend less time finicking with access issues and just GET THINGS DONE.

Creately uses Amazon web services to ensure their web application is readily available to our users. Also they are the only web based diagram application to provide a desktop version of their software so users have offline access. With Creately you always have access to your diagrams.

3) Real-Time: The final component of raved-about collaborative tools, apps and software is the ability for real-time collaboration. Whether it’s collaboration for a creative process, decision making and meetings or even hard-data driven teamwork – real-time is essential.

Creately supports real-time collaboration so teams can be more efficient and productive. With real-time you can see each others changes instantly which leads to faster decisions and less confusions.

Just as in the case of availability, real-time collaboration aides, apps and cloud-based tools free us all from the primitive-past – allowing us to successfully move beyond the day-to-day wait on project or process completion. Obviously, if you have the choice between a tool that works in real-time and one that does not, use your millennial judgment and go for the gold.

This is a guest post by Zach Kremian, who writes about collaboration tools for Marketing Weekly.com. Check it out for more
information on cloud-based collaboration for startups and beyond. If you think you have great idea to share with our users contact us and with the topics.