Personal Training for your diagrams

We’ve all seen it – a bad diagram. One that is overcomplicated with lots of symbols and text (and, dare I say it, emojis), where it’s not clear which direction the process flows, the start and end are not easy to distinguish, and what the diagram is actually supposed to represent went missing long ago.

Can you spot all the mistakes?

Diagrams are meant to convey complex information quickly, clearly and concisely. They lose their intended message when they are cluttered, have poor layout, are ambiguous and inconsistent, and don’t provide enough context.

Whether you’re creating a simple flowchart, or more complex ERD and UML diagrams, in this blogpost we’ll show you how to make your diagrams, faster, more accurate, and more powerful, while avoiding common mistakes when building them.

1. Know your diagram goal

Before you start building your diagram, it’s important to first determine what the goal of your diagram is. Is it to show a process from beginning to end? Is it to show the relationships between employees in an organization?

Knowing the goal of your diagram allows you to choose the best diagram type for your needs. It also helps you initially refine ideas, so that the scope of your diagram isn’t too broad.

All steps within the process should be sketched out with this initial goal in mind.  You may find at this stage that you have multiple processes that link together. In this case, it is helpful to break these down into processes and subprocesses.

To avoid trying to display all of the processes together and cluttering up your diagram, it is a good idea to separate them out across different pages. draw.io enables you to have multipage diagrams, where you and your team can see each subprocess on an individual page, while the entire process is stored in one central diagram embedded in Confluence.

A multipage diagram

2. Know who your spectators are

Another key question to consider beforehand is: who will be accessing your diagram? Will it be developers, project managers, internal or external stakeholders? Your diagram should be tailored to your audience, and their level of specialist knowledge regarding your diagram content.

For example, it is likely that a UML diagram you create will not be appropriate for project managers or other non-technical departments. In this case, it is helpful to present the information in a different way in a separate diagram, to make this accessible to these groups.

The same diagram with varying levels of detail

3. Only the highlights: choose the right level of detail

Following on from defining your diagram audience, one common problem when creating diagrams is overcomplication, and including too much information in one go.

However, the opposite is also true: oversimplifying your diagram can lead to misunderstandings. For example, in a user flow diagram, what happens when the user doesn’t perform an action? Without a decision split in this case, it’s unclear what happens in both eventualities: when the user does perform the action, and when they do not.

Use decision splits to show paths a user can take, depending on whether or not they perform an action

The key here is to be aware of which information your audience actually needs to know, for the diagram to make logical sense.

In draw.io, you can use layers to manage the level of detail your diagram displays. This makes your diagram interactive, allowing viewers to toggle layers on or off, depending on whether they need to view more or less information.

For guidance on how to add layers and a template for you to download, see Interactive diagrams with custom links and actions.

4. Consistency: The real MVP

Consistency is key with diagrams. Having a uniform color scheme, even and sufficient spacing between shapes, appropriate connectors, and a clear structure, all contribute to your diagram expressing exactly what you want it to.

Knowing which shapes to use and when is also a critical factor in order to represent things like delays in a process and decision splits. These are often signified by the shape type themselves, saving your diagram from becoming inundated with text. For information on which shapes to use for a standard flowchart, see How to create flowcharts in draw.io.

If you want a headstart on a clear and consistent layout, draw.io’s templates will get your diagram up and running in no time. When you create a new diagram, the template library will open by default. Use the search bar on the left to locate a specific diagram type, or use our Smart Templates to add your specifications and produce an AI-generated diagram.

Use the search bar to quickly locate diagram templates

If you are building technical diagrams, UML, ERD, and BPMN for example all have specific notation and shape conventions to follow. Luckily, draw.io has extensive and up-to-date shape libraries that conform to these notation standards, including UML 2.5 and BPMN 2.0.

UML 2.5 and UML shape library

5. Instant diagram replay

Last but not least: it’s vital to keep your diagrams up-to-date! This ensures anyone in your Confluence space accessing the diagram knows that they’re viewing the latest version.

draw.io’s Revision History, and Confluence’s Page History, will do a lot of the work for you. Anyone with the correct permissions can go into a draw.io diagram on a Confluence page, and see when this was last updated. If they go into edit mode in the diagram itself, the revision history will show them when it was last modified.

draw.io Revision History

Confluence Page History

A great idea is to set a reminder in your work calendar to periodically check on those important diagrams that other teams and stakeholders are actively using as a reference or collaborating on. Depending on the diagram, this could be set as a monthly or quarterly reminder.

Game, Set and Match

Employing these tips will ensure your diagrams have a clear purpose, a defined audience in mind, the right level of detail, are consistently formatted, and are up-to-date. This will make your diagrams even more powerful and convey the exact message that you want to get across.

For more industry-specific on how to optimize your diagrams, see:

• I draw.io – Three ways to improve your UML diagrams
• 3 tips to improve patient workflows with draw.io

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.

Get your head in the game

Team Playbooks are a great way to orchestrate workshops, and get colleagues on board and involved in discussions. Their purpose is to provide a framework for teams to work on specific areas, such as holding retrospectives, and dependency mapping.

With Atlassian’s Roles and Responsibilities Playbook, at the click of a button you have a Confluence Template loaded and ready for your team workshop on defining roles and responsibilities.

In this blogpost, we’ll show you how adding draw.io diagrams to your Playbooks will take them to the next level, and provide the platform for an efficient meeting that keeps a full track record of what’s been discussed and decided as a team.

draw.io and Team Playbooks: a perfect match

When you add diagrams to your Playbook Confluence Template, you provide your team with everything they need to participate in a workshop that is visual and productive. Here’s how:

• Everything is stored in your single source of truth: your draw.io diagram, along with the documentation from your roles and responsibilities workshop, is all stored centrally within the Confluence, available for anyone to access and edit at any time.

• Empowering real-time collaboration: you and your team are able to work on the diagram simultaneously. This is particularly useful for Playbook workshops with remote and hybrid teams working across the globe.

• Revision history keeps a record of all changes: consult the revision history in your draw.io diagram to see all previous versions of that diagram. Here you are able to see what’s changed and when, for example, if you want to locate information that went missing during the collaboration process. Plus, the good news is that if you revert the diagram to a previous version in draw.io, the Confluence Template and page history it is stored within will remain unaffected.

How to add a RACI Chart to your Template

The example below shows a RACI Chart that has been created at the top of the Roles and Responsibilities Confluence Template. This RACI Chart was the outcome of a roles and responsibilities workshop, and all the information that was used to inform the Chart is available below in the Confluence page.

To add a RACI Chart to the Roles and Responsibilities Template:

1. In your Confluence space, click on Templates, locate the Roles and Responsibilities Play, and then click Use template.

2. The Confluence Template looks like this:

3. Gather your team and follow the Instructions for running this Play.

4. When you want to add a draw.io whiteboard to the page, in the Confluence edit mode, start typing “/draw.io” and select draw.io Board.

5. To create a table, head to the plus (+) icon in the left sidebar, hover over Table, and choose the number of columns and rows you wish to have.

6. Invite your team to collaborate on the diagram, in real time or asynchronously.

Teammates collaborating on the RACI Chart in real time

7. The example below shows the finalized RACI Chart, built from the outcome of the team workshop.

The completed RACI Chart, embedded in the Confluence page

Recording the highlights

The Roles and Responsibilities Confluence page now serves as a full record for your team: capturing the workshop discussion, and the resulting RACI Chart that will be used to further define the individual roles within the team.

Tip: If you want to save this diagram as a template to use time and time again in future meetings, see our related blogpost, Add draw.io diagrams into Confluence page templates.

By seamlessly integrating draw.io diagrams into your Confluence Playbook Templates, you empower real-time collaboration and ensure that all team members are on the same page at every step of the way. With draw.io’s revision history, you can track changes and refer back to previous versions as and when needed. What’s more, everything is securely collaborated on and stored in your single source of truth: Confluence.

So, what are you waiting for? Take your Playbook Templates to the next level with draw.io diagrams!

Kick off your draw.io journey

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.

Adapting to your teams’ needs

If you’re planning on migrating from Server to Cloud or Data Center, this is the time to consider your options and reevaluate the current tools you are using. Maybe you are paying a lot for an app that isn’t delivering enough value for you and your teams, or you have a legacy app lying around that is no longer used, and no one’s quite sure what it does… The key is you want apps in your toolset that are intuitive and adapt to the needs of your team, so that you’re not faced with having to create more and more workarounds to achieve exactly what you want.

In this final blogpost of our migration campaign, we look at the process of migrating from Gliffy to draw.io. We look at how easy it is to make the switch, and provide information on determining which app is right for you, specifically regarding how the two apps compare.

Migrating from Gliffy to draw.io is simple

Let’s face it, it’s often a pain to migrate from one system to another, whether that’s from Server to Cloud, or from one diagramming tool to a new one.

We understand this at draw.io, and with this in mind we’ve designed our Gliffy mass import tool to be as straightforward as possible. Our troubleshooting guide will see you right, plus, we’re always on hand to support if you have questions or run into any stumbling blocks.

If you have decided to migrate to draw.io from Gliffy, our mass migrator tool will convert all your diagrams in a few simple steps.

Pre-migration

Some key things to check, before you begin:

• Have the latest version of draw.io and Gliffy installed.
• Ensure the Administrator performing the migration has the necessary write permissions across all spaces beforehand.
• Perform the mass import in a test instance first!

During migration

Once you’re ready to migrate, it’s best to perform the actual migration outside of your company’s working hours, to keep diagram and Confluence page edits to a minimum during the process.

Post-migration

Once you have migrated, all of your data is preserved in Confluence. A new page version is created, with Gliffy macros replaced by draw.io macros containing the converted diagram. The original files are still attached to the Confluence page and remain unchanged, meaning even after migrating and converting your diagrams, the page revision history where the diagram is embedded is still preserved.

For a full step-by-step guide to follow as you’re migrating your diagrams, see our related post, Mass import from Gliffy to draw.io.

Which app is right for you?

When switching diagramming apps, you want to make sure that your decision to switch to draw.io is the right one.

We are known and trusted in the Atlassian Ecosystem as the number #1 diagramming app for Confluence and Jira. We are the top-reviewed Confluence app in the whole Marketplace, and in the current year 2024, we have over 68K installs of draw.io for Confluence Cloud (in contrast, Gliffy has less than a third of this, with just over 22K). We also offer a competitive price-performance ratio.

We are constantly innovating and updating:

• In addition to our diagram editor, customers can use our whiteboarding macro at no extra cost. This gives you the choice to diagram using the classic editor, or the whiteboard editor for a more streamlined interface. This is ideal for processes like brainstorming ideas, as well as Agile frameworks like check-ins, and Inspect and Adapt.
• Last year also saw the advent of:
  • Smart Templates, empowering users to generate custom diagramming templates using AI and machine learning. Specify your parameters and build custom diagrams in seconds: flowcharts, ERDs, Sequence Diagrams, and more.
  • Dark mode, enabling users to diagram the way that they want – to reduce strain on the eyes, save some battery, or simply for the aesthetics.

For an extensive comparison of draw.io and Gliffy that covers features and usability, see our guide here: Diagramming in Confluence – A comparison of the two leading diagramming apps draw.io and Gliffy.

As a consequence of this innovation, we have seen sustained growth. Recently Contegix assessed which apps have grown the most over the past month in order to, “…shine a light on products that more and more customers are finding value in while also acknowledging the outstanding vendors fueling this vibrant marketplace.”

The numbers speak for themselves:

Source: Contegix, Fastest Growing Paid Atlassian Marketplace Apps – February 2024.

What our users have to say

Last but certainly not least, we look at what our users say who made the switch from Gliffy to draw.io:

“We used Gilffy for 10+ years and as of January 2021 we decided move to draw.io. We migrate all our 6000+ Gliffy diagrams in our Confluence workspaces to draw.io and we are ready to go – very fast, smooth and transparent migration path. There is a number of reasons for this decision and we are happy that we are making this move. Its not just much more friendly pricing for large teams but also excellent support, rich features, stability and good performance with large diagrams what we are going to benefit from in the years to come.”

– Peter Kobes

“We were missing some important features when using Gliffy. To create diagrams that included our corporate identity font, we had to use Visio. Using two applications at the same time was too cumbersome and too expensive. So we looked for a solution where we could store our font, our icons and our company colors. To be considered, a replacement application had to perform more efficiently.”

– Nina Breu, Senior Software Engineer

Weighing up the pros and cons

Ultimately, the apps you decide on need to work for you. When switching diagramming apps, it’s important to weigh up the factors for and against each tool, to make an informed decision on which app is going to benefit your teams the most in the long term.

draw.io stands out because:

• We hold the top position in the Atlassian marketplace, earning the trust of numerous users.
• We consistently innovate, e.g. introducing features like whiteboarding and Smart Templates.
• We offer the highest diagramming security and customer support.
• Users who have made the switch know and love draw.io, and have never looked back.

Once you’re ready to make the switch, our mass importer will quickly get all of your Gliffy diagrams converted to draw.io.

If you’re thinking of making a switch and want to compare, start your free 30-day trial today, and discover how draw.io’s enables teams to visualize the way they want.

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.

The Number #1 rated app

draw.io has a number of impressive feats, including:

• 99% of the Fortune 500 use our app;
• We have more installs and more users than any other Atlassian app;
• We are the #1 rated diagramming app on the Atlassian Marketplace for Confluence and Jira.

The underlying reason for this is that people know and trust our app: they know that their data is in safe hands, and expect a versatile tool that delivers, as well as high-quality support with their diagramming and visualization needs.

If you’re thinking about switching tools and are looking for a solution that can do it all, then read on! Below, we take a look at why so many users choose draw.io in Confluence and Jira over other diagramming tools that are not in the Atlassian ecosystem:

Visualize in your single source of truth

The primary reason that many companies use Confluence and Jira is not just because they are powerful knowledge and project management tools, but because they abide by high security standards. For organizations looking to ensure their data remains secure, and to maintain audit trails for compliance purposes, Confluence and Jira offer the perfect solution.

When using the draw.io app, your diagram data is stored as attachments within Confluence/Jira. This keeps all your diagrams secure, embedded within your single source of truth. It also saves you time and money in the long run by eliminating the pain point of having multiple apps to fulfill a purpose.

If you want to visualize within your Confluence/Jira space, and keep these visualizations within the Confluence documentation or Jira issue that they belong to, you can. Your colleagues will thank you too, as it cuts out the frustration of having to locate diagrams stored elsewhere on other platforms or webpages.

Choose to create a new diagram from scratch, or embed existing diagrams that you have created in other Confluence pages.

Choose to create a new diagram, or embed an existing one

If you embed an existing diagram in multiple Confluence pages and want to make changes, you will be taken to the original version of the diagram, and any changes will automatically apply to all the other embedded versions.

Clicking on the Go to containing page icon will open the Confluence page containing the original diagram in a new window

Secure diagramming

A big concern for users is ensuring their diagramming data is safe. For small and large enterprises alike, company data is precious. The risk of data mismanagement and security breaches increases the more tools you use. Therefore, the reassurance that their number one visualization tool is keeping their diagrams and whiteboards safe is why so many users choose draw.io.

We conform to the highest enterprise-grade security and privacy standards, so users can rest assured that their data is in safe hands. When you work on a draw.io diagram in Confluence/Jira, Data Center or Cloud, you have full control over your data, as this is stored as page attachments within the Confluence page or Jira issue that the diagram or whiteboard is embedded in.

Revision history

This is also a powerful feature for your audits. In addition to Confluence’s in-built page history, there is versioning in the draw.io app itself, enabling you to see exactly who made changes and when. You are then able to revert diagrams if someone has made unwanted changes to a diagram, without affecting the Confluence page the diagram is embedded in.

Revision history in draw.io

Access control

Another problem users face is controlling who they share diagrams with. Often, the platform they are using provides an “all-or-nothing” solution: either everyone has access, or no one does.

People want full control over their diagrams and the information that accompanies them. Especially on things like Confluence pages for example, which contain sensitive information that not everyone in the company requires access to.

Fortunately, with your draw.io diagrams stored on specific Confluence pages, you are able to control on a granular level who has access to which information. Choose who has editing access, or who only has viewing access, to the relevant Confluence pages and embedded diagrams – this can be done on an individual or team-wide level.

Control who has view/edit access to a specific Confluence page

Diagramming or whiteboarding? Why not both?

With draw.io, you don’t have to choose between diagramming or whiteboarding capabilities. When you use draw.io in Confluence/Jira, you have diagramming AND whiteboarding, all in one app. You have access to all the same features in both.

This suits teams across the board, from engineering and software development, right through to marketing and HR. Each individual in every team can use the editor that best suits them: the original diagram editor or our whiteboard editor, depending on their visualization needs and which interface they prefer.

The “classic” draw.io diagram editor

The whiteboard editor

Search for text within diagrams

Easily find your diagrams using Atlassian’s in-built Confluence Search function. Text you add to your diagrams is indexed and searchable, so you can use the Confluence search bar to locate diagrams using specific search terms.

Tip: use the advanced search and filter by Type > draw.io Diagrams to bring up diagram-related searches only.

Search for text in your diagrams using the Confluence search bar

Cloud-specific advantages

Data residency:

Atlassian has implemented data residency options for Confluence and Jira Cloud. This means that all of the primary data stored in your Confluence and/or Jira instance will reside on servers in your chosen region.

For more information, see our blogpost, Introducing Data Governance in our Standard draw.io plan for Confluence Cloud.

Lockdown data:

If you want to prevent all data traffic apart from that between your browser and your Atlassian Cloud server, you can use the Lockdown function in the draw.io configuration to do so.

Invite guests to Confluence:

Working with users outside of your organization? You can invite up to 5 guests per paying user to collaborate in Confluence.

For more information, see Invite guests to use draw.io with you in Confluence Cloud.

Collaborative editing:

Collaborate on diagrams with your colleagues synchronously. Any changes made by multiple teammates are saved automatically. “@-mention” your teammates on Confluence pages containing your diagrams, to add a comment and notify them.

Notify your teammates in Confluence pages using “@-mention”

Data Center-specific advantages

Everything behind your firewall:

If you opt for Data Center, your data is stored in a self-managed environment, behind your firewall. This gives you full control over everything like security controls, update releases, and infrastructure choices.

Control over updates:

You have control over what happens when, as you are responsible for manually installing any maintenance and version upgrades.

The one tool for every team

draw.io’s standing in the Atlassian Marketplace is very much built on the trust of its users. If you are looking for a solution for your company that:

• stores your diagrams and whiteboards within your single source of truth (Confluence or Jira), without needing to leave the platform you’re working in to access these;
• is a versatile tool that allows you to diagram, whiteboard, and visualize the way that you want;
• offers tight security, protecting your diagramming data while allowing you to collaborate with specific members in and outside of your organization;

then draw.io is the solution for you and your team!

Want to try draw.io for free?

Upside down, round and round…

When you’re a seasoned member of staff sauntering (or more likely speed-walking) through the endless corridors and departments, and hopping between floors, it’s easy to forget where you once started: trying to find a particular ward, or the right floor – hospitals are a complex maze when you’re just starting out.

Knowing whom to go to for what is an equal challenge, as hospitals have a myriad of staff with individual and overlapping responsibilities.

However, a well-designed floor plan, paired with an extensive org chart, will save your new staff a lot of time (and pain) of arriving at the wrong place, or bothering the wrong team with information for someone else.

The good news is draw.io can help you design floor plans from the ground up, and org charts from the central teams outward. The key with both is not to deliver all the information in one complex, messy diagram, but rather to start off simple, and then add layers of complexity gradually.

We’ll show you how you can use draw.io features like layers and custom links to give both a brief overview and signpost to the finer details, all within a single diagram.

Floor plans

To get started with your own floor plan, download our XML template here:

1. Open Confluence.
2. Open draw.io (blank diagram).
3. Drag & drop your XML file into your blank drawing area.
4. Use it as a custom template if you like.

This floor plan template uses layers so anyone accessing the diagram can choose to show and hide different layers, depending on the level of detail they would like to view.

For more information on features like clickable actions and custom links for your hospital floor plan, see our blogpost, Interactive diagrams with custom links and actions.

In addition to providing basic information about the physical layout of a hospital, floor plans can also be used to convey important safety information. For example, they might show the location of emergency exits, fire extinguishers, and other safety equipment.

A wide range of floor plan symbols can be found by going to + More Shapes > Other > Floorplans.

Org charts

To get started with your own circular org chart (aka peach diagram), download our XML template here:

1. Open Confluence.
2. Open draw.io (blank diagram).
3. Drag & drop your XML file into your blank drawing area.
4. Use it as a custom template if you like.

An org chart provides a clear overview of a hospital’s hierarchy, showing the relationships between different departments and individuals. This is helpful for understanding who is responsible for what, and who to go to for specific questions or concerns.

With draw.io, you can add metadata to individual shapes, so that if someone hovers over a team name for example, they will see a brief description of what that team does.

Like with our floor plan example, you are able to add custom links, for example to Confluence pages that contain more detailed information on a particular team, its members and their responsibilities.

For more information on how to structure your org chart, see the blogpost, How to build a circular organizational chart in draw.io.

Getting settled in

Your floor plans and org charts will provide new starters with key information in a digestible way, which they can customize to suit their needs in the preview version, i.e. without editing the original version.

This information is a staple in any hospital. It informs new staff of what’s what, helping them feel comfortable and confident to navigate their way as they settle in.

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.

The gold standard

The world of medical device compliance is a tricky one to navigate. At the top level, you have regulations from the FDA in the US, and the MDR/IVDR in Europe. Broken down, you’re then looking at sector-specific requirements like 21 CFR Part 820 in the US, and ISO 13485 + ISO 14972 internationally. Although not always a requirement, ISO 13485 certification is the gold standard, and having this certification allows companies building medical devices to operate in markets across the globe.

The good news is that there are tools out there that can help you along the way. In this blogpost, we’re diving into the world of MedTech, and how to make achieving certification like ISO 13485 and 14972 a much easier, faster, and overall better experience for teams in the industries of digital health and software as a medical device.

We’ll be looking at SoftComply, a QMS platform that seeks to automate regulatory compliance for medical device start-ups by integrating it into Atlassian Confluence and Jira.

We’ll also see how draw.io in Confluence and Jira allows you to create, edit, and customize the process flowcharts and visualizations you need, directly in your QMS space.

If you’re already using Atlassian tools like Confluence and Jira, SoftComply and draw.io are native Marketplace apps that operate seamlessly within your instance, enabling you to be more efficient and focus on the important stuff. They keep all your QMS documentation, templates, and graphic visualizations accessible and secure, as all your data stays directly in your Confluence or Jira instance.

Use SoftComply for all your QMS needs

SoftComply provides several tools for Confluence and Jira to simplify and automate compliance:

1. The SoftComply Document Manager is the only Document Management app on Atlassian Confluence Cloud with all the necessary modules. With the Document Manager app you can approve, sign, process, track and manage your electronic documents. The Document Manager has easy-to-use FDA 21 CFR 11-compliant e-signatures for document approvals.
2. The SoftComply eQMS has a Quality Manual, a Quality Policy, 25 SOPs and 77 document templates pre-filled to fast-track the development and implementation of your QMS. The SoftComply eQMS is compliant with both the FDA and the MDR regulations.

These tools cover the minimum needs of any company operating in the MedTech sector: a Quality System content and an Electronic Document Management system with electronic signatures.

Your QMS is your single source of truth

ISO 13485 itself is a process-based standard:

Source: ISO 13485:2016(en) Medical devices — Quality management systems — Requirements for regulatory purposes

And when you talk about processes, inputs, outputs and interactions, a graphical visualization is the best way to describe them.

Fortunately, you never have to leave your QMS to create the visualizations that you need: draw.io has you covered. Quickly and intuitively build and store your process flows, diagrams, and any other visualizations you can think of, directly within your single source of truth: Confluence or Jira.

The biggest advantages of creating and storing your diagrams in Confluence and/or Jira are convenience and compliance. Instead of resorting to an external app for your QMS needs, SoftComply keeps everything within your Atlassian tools. This same advantage applies to your draw.io diagrams stored within Confluence/Jira.

Having all your quality documents and diagrams stored within your QMS isn’t just a “nice-to-have” – it’s a must-have from a security, provisioning, and collaborative point of view.

Let’s take a look at some of the specific features below:

Diagramming in Confluence

Control your data and access permissions

You are in control of your data and privacy. The diagrams you create in your browser are saved in Confluence and/or Jira only – not on draw.io servers.

Customize your access levels, depending on your needs. SoftComply provides you with advanced document access control, and whichever documents you provide full, partial, or restricted access to, your draw.io embedded diagrams will follow the exact same settings.

Keep a clear path on your audit trails with revision history

draw.io assists you with your auditing and compliance requirements with its in-editor revision history. This lets you quickly see who edited what and when, and revert your diagram to a previous version if required.

Every change (or reversion) in Confluence and draw.io is captured, effectively providing a timestamp of each version of the page and the embedded diagram. It also ensures that revision history in both Confluence and draw.io are always telling the same story.

Real-time editing in Confluence

draw.io supports real-time collaboration and editing. In the same way that you can collaborate in real-time in Confluence pages, you are able to join your team members in the diagram editor and work together on a particular diagram.

A CAPA SOP. Diagram created in draw.io
Source: SoftComply eQMS

Diagramming in Jira

If you are using both Jira and Confluence, we recommend you try the draw.io app for Confluence, to take advantage of features like revision history, collaborative editing, and our whiteboard editor, which Jira doesn’t support.

If you are using Jira only, you can add and embed diagrams directly in Jira issues. This is ideal for cases where you want to store your visualized processes somewhere central. For example, you might want to store a risk management process (like the one below) in a Jira epic, for anyone working on that project to refer to, to ensure all steps in the process have been adhered to.

Cybersecurity Risk Management Process. Diagram created in draw.io
Source: AAMI TIR57: 2016 Principles for medical device security—Risk management

Export your diagrams as PDF files

By default, your diagrams exist as living files in your Confluence space. When you have finalized editing a diagram and wish to export this as an offline version, you can quickly convert your diagram to a PDF.

Export your draw.io diagram as a pdf

The best of both worlds

With the SoftComply Document Manager and eQMS, you will have all the required documents and templates to facilitate your QMS implementation, as well as the option to create your own custom forms, all within Atlassian Confluence Cloud.

For visualizations, draw.io is the perfect companion for managing diagrams in Confluence when compliance is required. No external storage and the ability to export to PDF and static versions of the diagrams are crucial to avoiding security and regulatory accidents.

In short, SoftComply and draw.io are two powerful and intuitive tools that will set you on track to achieve your compliance goals.

To find out more, you can get started with a free trial, or book a demo:

Hospitality works globally. My house is your house, mi casa es su casa, ma maison est ta maison… you could go on forever. In a business environment, hospitality can mean collaborating effectively with external stakeholders. You want everyone to participate easily, and feel their voices are heard.

Atlassian has listened and acted on this wish. From now on, you are no longer limited to collaborating only inside your company in Confluence Cloud. And if you think making Confluence accessible to external folks is superb – this rule also applies to all your installed apps, and thus, of course, to draw.io.

How does the guest principle work?

You can invite up to 5 guests per paying user to collaborate in Confluence. A few things to keep in mind:

• A guest can only be assigned to one space at a time.
• The maximum capacity of Confluence Cloud users (at the time of writing this article, this is 50,000) can be exceeded by paying users and guests. Assuming each paying user invites five guests, you could work with up to a maximum of 8,300 internal users in Confluence Cloud.
• There is no limit to how many guests can belong to a space, or how many spaces are shared with guests.

This is wonderful, but wait…!

My house is your house, that’s quickly said. But that doesn’t mean, “Please, feel free to go into my bedroom and search through my closets!”

That’s why the guest feature comes with granular options to limit access to Confluence meaningfully. By default, the space permissions for guests look like this:

Admins can customize the above settings. However, guests are restricted: they cannot be space admins, export a space, or set restrictions. In addition, guests cannot access Analytics, use Team Calendars, or Confluence Questions.

The following on-site functions are also blocked for guests:

• “@-mentions”
• the Teams tab in the navigation bar
• user search and user pickers

Atlassian has compiled a comprehensive security package for Confluence guests, including multi-factor authentication. For more information on securing your Confluence Cloud instance, please see the links below.

So what does all this mean for draw.io?

The time when diagrams could only be shared through the export function in draw.io is finally over! You can now collaborate in real-time with external parties in draw.io diagrams and whiteboards. Your guests can move around the tool just like paying users (considering the general restrictions mentioned above). Not only does this make collaboration a lot easier, but it also saves you a lot of time.

Therefore, all we can say is, “Spread the word!” Invite your business partners and show them your house… except your bedroom, of course

See the following Atlassian documentation for details:

• What guests can see and do in Confluence
• How to invite guests to Confluence

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.

Join Team draw.io as we explore the world of diagramming through the lens of a fantastic adventure story. Over the coming months this serialized tale of mystery will be posted bi-weekly, and we hope you find it a fun way to absorb diagramming inspiration. Let’s dive into the story:

It’s an unseasonably cold day in Austin, Texas, and a cool breeze is blowing outside the offices of Inatech, a game developer famous for the “Planet of Battlecraft” titles. Up on the 14th floor, four team members are gathered together for their least favorite task of the week – their regular status update meeting with their project manager. Little do they know that what seems like a regular 9-5 workday will soon become a struggle for life or death.

Double latte in hand, Product Marketing Manager Caroline strides into the meeting room, finding herself listening to yet another argument; Project Manager, Bill, is once again sparring with Lead Software Engineer, Pauline. Sitting down in her usual spot at the table, she shares a knowingly glance with her already-seated teammates, Product Manager Angie and Agile Coach Marcus. It’s clear it will be ‘another one of those’ meetings.

“I’m just saying, Bill, we can be more efficient in these meetings if we used a digital whiteboard. We could collaborate better, keep track of ideas better, and if someone was away they could still contribute remotely.” sighs a frustrated Pauline. She’s got her laptop open to a Confluence page, where she’s showing off a retrospective whiteboard.

Bill holds up his hands, “oooh, yeah, well I’m not considering a new tool right now. If we could, uh, go ahead and stick with our normal tool, e-Plan2000, that’d be great.”

“That’s the brilliant part!” says Pauline. “There are already whiteboards built into our diagramming product. We don’t need another tool!”

Shaking his head, and pushing his glasses back up his nose, Bill says “yeah, I’m going to have to ask you to use e-Plan2000. And I see Caroline is here, so we can get started, m’kay?”

Bill turns towards his flip chart, and the room can see he has prepared nearly 30 charts. Caroline looks down at the cup in her hand, silently cursing that she didn’t go for a triple latte.

Just then, the lights in the room start to flicker. Slowly, the team becomes aware of a dull rumbling sound, and it’s building in volume. Before long, the blinds are rattling in the windows, and dust is falling from ceiling. The floor itself begins to vibrate, and soon the team is having problems even standing up. “Earthquake!” someone yells. A brilliant flash fills the room! Suddenly, a blinding rainbow of colours bursts out from the center of the conference room table. As though grabbed by an invisible hand, a mysterious force pulls Caroline, Marcus, Angie and Pauline towards the portal, and in an instant they find themselves materialized onto a cold stone floor.

Acrid smoke hangs in the air. Disoriented, Caroline blinks her eyes a few times to clear her head, and soon she perceives a murmur of voices around them. A hand reaches down, offering to pull Caroline to her feet, and when she rises up she sees an elderly man dressed in a long luxurious robe, a golden crown perched on his head. Behind him rises an ornate throne, flanked by what looks like the most dedicated Robin Hood cosplayers she’s ever seen. As she comes to her sense, she hears Marcus’ familiar voice behind her say “uh, guys…why am I so small?”.

Caroline turns to see an amazing sight – her three co-workers are human beings no longer. Somehow, Pauline has the long pointy ears of an elf, Marcus is a short and bearded dwarf, and, shockingly, Angie is now some kind of humanoid cat. For herself, she is shocked to find her previously unimposing frame is now rippling with muscles.

It’s all too much. As her team members begin to panic, Caroline feels her own fear begin to rise up in her throat. Is it a dream? A nightmare?

The presumed King claps his hands loudly, then raises them to calm things down. “Please, Caroline, Pauline, Marcus, and Angie, be at peace. You are safe here, and the disorientation of your journey should abate soon. I can explain everything.”

Breathing heavily, the team turns their attention to the wizened old man.

“I am King Gaudenz the Elder, and I welcome you to my home. I apologize for your traumatic journey, and that you were taken without permission, but circumstances do not permit me the usual pleasantries.” The king leans in close, his eyes growing sad. “You see, I had no choice because the very lives of my people are at stake. There is a darkness on the horizon, one that I can no longer battle alone. And the only thing standing in its way…is you.”

This week’s diagramming inspiration

No one likes painful meetings. Using digital whiteboards, like those inside draw.io, help keep meetings on track, and your team more productive. As Pauline mentions in our story, a side benefit to draw.io’s whiteboards is that remote team members can easily contribute at the same time as those working in a physical office.

Want to power-up your next meeting with a draw.io Whiteboard? You can try draw.io for Confluence or Jira free for 30 days, just visit the Atlassian Marketplace to start your evaluation.

Need more inspiration? Check out these resources:

• Blog – How to Collaborate with draw.io’s Whiteboards
• Blog – Use the draw.io Board Macro in Agile and Scrum meetings
• Video – How to use whiteboards in draw.io
• draw.io Whitebaords Landing Page: https://drawio-app.com/draw-io-whiteboard/

Do you like to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on Social media and learn how others use draw.io and hopefully pick up some tips and tricks.

Hilfswerk Salzburg is a division of Hilfswerk Österreich, one of the largest providers of social services in Austria. To guarantee standardized and always up-to-date documentation of IT services and visual communication with external partners, they use Atlassian Confluence and draw.io.

Revolutionizing project management with Confluence

Hilfswerk Österreich, a non-profit organization, employs over 11,000 people worldwide. Their largest areas of operation are nursing and care for the elderly, childcare and youth work, social work, and counseling and education. Hilfswerk is the market leader in the field of mobile care at home, while Hilfswerk International is active as an aid organization in crisis areas around the world.

With such important work on their shoulders, we were grateful to sit down with Adnan Reh, the head of Hilfswerk Salzburg’s IT department, to talk about Confluence and draw.io.

“We are very happy to be able to use your plug-in in such a cost-efficient way,” Adnan said of draw.io. The IT department is currently running a Confluence Data Center instance, and uses draw.io mainly for IT service management, creating workflow and network diagrams.

Adnan’s plan is to extend Confluence to the entire organization, and revolutionize project management throughout the company using Jira and Confluence. This is a daunting task given the size of the organization – every province in Austria has its own Hilfswerk, and Hilfswerk Salzburg alone has more than 1,400 employees in almost 160 teams. Many of our readers will know what a challenge it can be to roll out Confluence in such a large organization: adopting Confluence for internal documentation, relying less on email, working with skeptical people who haven’t used an internal wiki or intranet before, and so on!

But Adnan and Hilfswerk are up for the challenge. Hilfswerk’s strategy is to provide its employees with the best possible tools for easy digital collaboration across teams. Adnan’s department aims to make the digital workplace as efficient and intuitive as possible in order to ease the burden on employees.

Adopting draw.io across teams

At the same time that Adnan will be rolling out Confluence to the rest of the organization, he also plans to extend draw.io to other departments. So far, because other teams do not yet have Confluence, and thus draw.io, diagrams are only created within the IT department and exported for viewing by other teams, for example in management presentations that show IT roadmaps.

Once Confluence is fully rolled out, Adnan can well imagine collaborating with other teams on draw.io diagrams – from diagrams for the customer portal to org charts for the HR department. The application is so diverse that it won’t be hard to find a helpful place for draw.io in every team.

From Visio to draw.io

Today most departments of Hilfswerk Salzburg use Visio for their diagrams, since the teams are currently using Microsoft office suite. The plan is to migrate the Visio diagrams into draw.io as the organization switches over to Confluence.

Migrating Visio diagrams to draw.io is an intuitive and technically simple process, so the IT department shouldn’t have any problems. But just in case they do need help, our team at draw.io is always ready to offer support!

Exploring draw.io features

As part of our conversation, we asked Adnan if there were any features his team had found missing from draw.io.

“No, nothing is missing,” Adnan said, “maybe some IT icons and the app for Android and iOS.” Luckily, the integration of custom libraries into draw.io is so easy that we were able to quickly show Adnan how to import them himself with just a few clicks. We also explored draw.io’s whiteboard feature, which further enhances the kind of collaborative work done at Hilfswerk.

Finally, we talked about some other apps from Seibert Media that Hilfswerk Salzburg might also be interested in, including social intranet app Linchpin, Aura and Blueprint Creator. And as a true IT guy and Jira user, Adnan was also interested in the documentation for Agile Hive.

“I am grateful for this brilliant software,” Adnan said of draw.io. “Thank you so much for letting us use it!’

Of course, we would like to thank Adnan even more for the interview, and the whole Hilfswerk Salzburg team for the trust they have put in our tool. It’s a pleasure to help an organization that puts helping others as its number one goal.

We wish you good luck in rolling out Confluence and have fun diagramming with draw.io, Adnan!

Do you like to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on Social media and learn how others use draw.io and hopefully pick up some tips and tricks.

• Have you ever had to revert a change in Confluence?
• Does your company operate under standards like ISO, FEC or FDA guidelines? In other words, do you need to track changes to content and processes?
• Would you like to be able to track content changes in Confluence over time to monitor the evolution of individual decisions?

If you answered “Yes!” to one or more of the questions above, then you probably already know about the Page History in Confluence. This feature is a powerful tool for tracking the progress of your Confluence page in a timeline, and to show you at a glance who made changes in your Confluence instance at which time; even better, you can undo those changes as necessary. Today, we are looking at the topic of revision history from a different perspective, namely, from the perspective of an app embedded in Confluence. Since visualized content is often an essential part of a Confluence page (visualizing process flows or architectures as diagrams, etc.), this dynamic data should also be traceable at any time. Short side note: We are using a diagram example from our Boston Consulting Group Matrix blog post.

Click on the horizontal dots in the upper right corner to access the More actions menu and choose Page history

Native Confluence Page history

For several years now, draw.io has been integrated into the page history of every Confluence page. What does this mean in concrete terms? From the moment of creation, every draw.io diagram version is tracked in the page history (see screenshot). Every published change to the diagram, including comments, is stored as a new page version in Confluence. Of course, data such as creator/worker and time of editing can be viewed at any time. This information ensures transparency and is therefore (not only) essential for audited companies.

This is already great, but…

What do I do if I discover an error in a diagram version, which is followed by further published versions with changes to the page’s text? In this case I would lose my textual changes when jumping back to the earlier version. How can I prevent this? No problem at all! Our engineers have added a second layer, which is even more powerful than the Confluence Page History. We call it Revision history and it can be viewed in the draw.io editor.

Here you can also see the activities of everyone who published changes on the diagram or whiteboard. You have a visual reference via revision history of what specifically was changed in the visualized content. But the best part is that you can use this feature to reset individual versions of the diagram or whiteboard WITHOUT resetting entire versions of your Confluence page. With this feature you have the flexibility to adjust your written content at the same time, or independently, while the history of the edits are maintained. This is something only a Confluence embedded solution like draw.io can offer you.