Perspective is everything

Humanity has come leaps and bounds with advanced technology, medical breakthroughs, and artistic and cultural revolutions. Over the course of history, pioneers have accomplished spectacular achievements, setting the stage for us today and paving the way for advancements that infuse every possible aspect of life.

In our last blogpost of the In-Shape series, we have curated 5 diagrams that have revolutionized the way we think, feel, and visualize, and discover their continued impact on humankind today.

Enter: draw.io’s Diagram Hall of Fame!

1. da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man: A symbol of harmony

Considered to be one of the all-time iconic images of Western civilization, da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man represents the “perfect man”, inspired by the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius.^[1] The drawing captures the concepts of balance, harmony, and the perfect ideals of the human form. Its enduring popularity since its creation captivates and inspires people even today, and has ensured its place in our Diagram Hall of Fame.

Due to the fragility of the original drawing, it cannot be exposed to light for extended periods of time, and it is usually kept in a climate-controlled, locked room on the fourth floor of the Accademia Gallery in Venice.^[2] In 2019, there was even a petition to ban the drawing from being transported to The Louvre, to mark the 500-year anniversary of the death of Leonardo.^[3] (Fortunately, your draw.io diagrams are expertly preserved and showcased in Confluence, safe from the perils of time, oxygen, and light from spoiling their pristine condition!)

The Golden Ratio

Balance and harmony are often subtle, but essential aspects of visualizing effectively. Get the proportions wrong or inconsistent, and it detracts from the central focus of your diagram.

With draw.io you are able to maintain aspect ratios of your shapes while resizing them. Simply click on a shape, head to the Arrange tab in the right side menu, and check the box, “Constrain proportions”. For an even quicker way to do this, see our shortcut video, How to keep shapes proportional and centered while resizing in draw.io.

2. CO2 Scrubber from Apollo 13: Accounting for every eventuality

When we hear “Apollo 13”, one of the first things likely to spring to mind is the 1995 movie. In the movie, as in real life, an explosion cripples the Apollo 13 spacecraft, resulting in the three astronauts using the Lunar Module for much of the return flight. The problem? The Lunar Module was designed only for two astronauts, adding a third to the spacecraft would result in a fatal overabundance of carbon dioxide.

Mission Control and the crew had a seemingly insurmountable challenge: to keep the three astronauts alive on their return voyage. Complicating things even further was that Mission Control based in Houston was unable to send pictures to the crew. They therefore had to describe everything in detail verbally, and hope the astronauts got the picture. NASA’s engineers put their heads together to come up with a workaround, using command module scrubbers available in the lunar module.^[4]

Key learnings

In business as in life, nothing is plain sailing, and things can and do go wrong. Accounting for all eventualities helps mitigate the risks to an extent, but equally important is learning from critical incidents: what went well, and what can we do in future to reduce risk, prevent repeating mistakes, and improve?

Our blogpost, draw.io for Agile Retrospectives, provides a variety of templates for you to use. They will help guide your team retrospectives, ensuring these are productive meetings where no stone has been left unturned, no man left behind as each colleague has had their voice heard, and your processes are optimized to be absolutely out of this world!

3. Copernicus’ Heliocentric Model: Turning what we know on its head

Copernicus (1473–1543) was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun, which remains motionless at the center of the universe. This is a fact that is taught in schools, and few would question today. However, it was highly controversial at the time, going against everything we’d understood before, namely Ptolemy’s geocentric model that placed Earth at the center of the universe. As a result, most astronomers remained unconvinced by Copernicus’ model for centuries, right up until about 1700^[5].

Fortunately, later on, with a little help from our friends Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, the heliocentric model gained wider acceptance and eventually became the foundation of modern astronomy that we know today.

Challenge your way of seeing things

It’s good to challenge the status quo and our usual way of thinking. This exercise can test the robustness of ideas we would like to go ahead with, as well as ensure what we are currently doing is up to scratch. For a fun, “flipped” way to brainstorm that will challenge the way you approach tasks, check out our template below: 6-3-5 Brainwriting.

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.

4. Moses Harris’ Color Wheel: Putting theory into practice

Moses Harris (15 April 1730–1787) was a naturalist, entomologist, and engraver. He was also an accomplished artist, with his drawings of insects featured at the Royal Academy in 1785.^[6] All of these aspects of his life and career set the backdrop for the development of his color wheel, and was meant to serve as a practical guide for artists.^[7] Primarily, it represents how a range of colors can be created from red, yellow, and blue.^[8] The wheel consists of a circular arrangement of colors, typically six or seven, illustrating their relationships and organization.

Drawing on his knowledge of nature, Harris’ descriptions for colors were based on substances, fruits, or flowers:

Source: Lowengard, Object Studies: Hand-Colored Engraving

Although more modern versions of the color wheel have been developed since, Harris’ color model had far-reaching implications. It paved the way for the development of revised color systems, which continue to be used in art schools and artistic environments today.^[9]

Add a splash of color to your diagrams

In draw.io, there are plenty of text, image, and color customization options for you to play with, in order to create bespoke diagrams and whiteboards tailored to your and your organization’s needs. For more information, see our blogpost, Customise default colours, fonts, styles and the draw.io UI in Confluence Cloud.

5. Watson and Crick’s DNA Model: Laying the foundations

Last, but certainly not least, the final diagram featured in our Hall of Fame: Waston and Crick’s DNA Model. Plenty of scientists were racing round the clock to crack the compositional code of DNA and how it was structured, but it was ultimately Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins who co-discovered the double-helix structure. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery.^[10][11]

The double helix structure is synonymous with our understanding of the human genome and how life can exist, and has had a fundamental impact on modern science and medicine.

Scientific discoveries seldom tend to result in a clearly-defined, “eureka” moment, and it’s important to take a step back and consider how this revolutionary DNA model developed over time. “Scientific discoveries may seem like sudden breakthroughs — the work of a genius who just “sees” the answer — but new findings don’t come out of nowhere. Each breakthrough is made possible by the work that came before it. Some scientific discoveries are a bit like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.”^[12]

Building on strong foundations

Like scientific discoveries relying on a clearly defined model of DNA, the best diagrams are those that are clear to read and built on strong foundations. To avoid your diagram from becoming too confusing and cluttered, you can use layers to build up your draw.io diagrams from simple to complex. This also gives your diagram viewers the ability to choose the level of detail they need to see.

To find out how to build your diagram using layers, see our blogpost, Interactive diagrams with custom links and actions.

Your breakthrough discovery

These diagrams and visualizations were designed by innovators with a vision, and founded on countless breakthroughs and ideas leading up to their pinnacle discovery.

We hope the diagrams featured in our Hall of Fame inspire you to visualize something truly remarkable, and possibly even come up with the next big breakthrough…*

*And if you do, do make sure to give credit to draw.io when you become massively successful!

Resources

[1] Gorman, M. J., The Vitruvian Man

[2] Ruiz, C., If Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man goes on show at the Louvre, we won’t see it again for a decade

[3] Solly, M., Leonardo’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ Is Headed to the Louvre Despite Italian Scholars’ Protests

[4] Space Center Houston, Apollo 13 Infographic: How did they make that CO2 scrubber?

[5] Gringerich, O., The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus

[6] Natural History Museum, Moses Harris (1730- c.1788)

[7] Royal Academy of Arts, The Natural System of Colours

[8] Silvestrini, N., Moses Harris

[9] Briggs, D., The RYB hue circle or “artists’ colour wheel”

[10] Science History Institute, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins

[11] Cobb, M., and Comfort, N., What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

[12] Stuart, S., The right timing

En route to Victory Road

Button-bashing is fun and all, but in reality, game strategy is where it’s at. Whether you’re leading your team to victory in League of Legends, outmaneuvering opponents in Fortnite, or up against a particularly nasty raid boss in World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy, your success inevitably depends on the preparation and game plan you have put together beforehand.

Developing a winning strategy takes forethought, cunning, and careful planning. From obtaining that key loot you’ve wanted for so long, to climbing the precious League Elo ladder, it’s important to visualize the steps you will take on the path to victory, and what better way to visualize this than with draw.io!

In this blogpost, let draw.io be your trusty steed, speedrunning you to the Winners Circle. We’ll show how you can take your gaming strategy to the next level, and make your future gameplay better coordinated, more collaborative, and more efficient.

1. Hone your game plan with swimlane diagrams

Unlike Leeroy Jenkins, you probably don’t want to run into battle headfirst, with no plan on how to execute your strategy, or who will be responsible for what.

Swimlane diagrams are a great way to visualize complex strategies in a simple and organized manner. They’re ideal for mapping out rotations that involve multiple players or stages with different responsibilities. They enable you to plan ahead, and ensure everyone on your team is aligned and knows their role in the upcoming fight.

Use swimlanes to represent different players or roles in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, and symbols to depict the actions and interactions between them.

A swimlane diagram for planning a WoW boss fight

2. Develop your game sense with Fatality flowcharts

Game sense is not as simple as “practice makes perfect”. While this will help your reaction time and increase the speed with which you make decisions, analyzing your previous games and comparing them with how others compete will take your gameplay to the next level. The deeper you develop your understanding of a game’s mechanics, along with your objectives, strategies, and interactions, the more you will increase your game sense.

draw.io empowers gamers to craft diagrams depicting potential flank routes, chokepoints, and optimal ultimate ability combinations. You can use visualizations to dissect replays, and highlight crucial instances where game sense played a pivotal role, from predicting enemy pathing to anticipating an opponent’s strategy.

A flowchart is ideal for illustrating the decision-making process and the sequence of actions. Use different shapes and colors to highlight certain actions, like movement or abilities. Connectors will guide those viewing the diagram through the steps that will signify the flow of gameplay. Things like decision splits, branches, and conditional actions can also be depicted in your flowchart.

A flowchart depicting the Overwatch fatality gameplay loop

3. Collaborate with your teammates on your strategy map

In games like WoW, FF Online, ESO, etc., teamwork is absolutely essential, and collaboration is everything. The more in-tune you and your teammates are, the better your chances of a coordinated effort resulting in success. That’s what gaming headsets were developed for in the first place, right? (Not to badmouth everyone because you’re sore your group wiped).

Create a strategy map in draw.io that you can quickly share with your raiding guild, for everyone to add their ideas to. You and your team are able to collaborate on your strategy in real time: simply jump on Discord, share your diagram with your group, and get visualizing! Everyone has the chance to capture their ideas, suggestions and comments, and see and interact with what their teammates are adding. This truly synergizing experience with your team means no one is left behind on your journey to success.

A multipage diagram here is perfect for this: on one page, you have your strategy map, on the next, you have your schedule and roster for your guild, all stored within one central diagram.

Page 1 of a multipage diagram depicting a strategy map: player vs. player battleground

Page 2 of a multipage diagram depicting the team roster

4. Use Foresight to create mind maps for community engagement

You might have recently begun your content creator journey and are starting to stream your games on Twitch. Or you might be a seasoned coach, providing tips to gamers on an international playing field to help them get good. In either case, fostering community engagement is often a pain point for gamers. You try and reach viewers, but your channel just isn’t growing.

Fear not! With draw.io, you can create stunning mind maps to provide your followers with valuable insights into your gaming tips and tricks. By actively and regularly sharing loadouts, strategies, game sense, spawns, etc. with your audience, you give them exclusive access and privileged insight that will allow them to learn from you, and from each other.

Not only will you inspire your viewers to use and share these resources themselves, you will ultimately cultivate community engagement and create an enriching gaming experience for everyone.

A mind map to come up with ways to boost community engagement

A Paradigm Shift in your game strategy

The four diagrams above are just a glimpse into the versatility of visualization that is possible with draw.io. From refining tournament strategies to fostering community engagement, draw.io offers a suite of tools and features to elevate your gameplay, along with a shift in your way of imagining, planning and executing your strategy.

Embark on your journey to glory, with draw.io by your side!

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.

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.

Your one-stop shop for templates

You should already be familiar with building custom diagram templates in draw.io, but what about incorporating diagram templates within a Confluence page template or blueprint (very meta), to use time and time again?

This is particularly useful for things like holding brainstorming or retrospective meetings with your teams. Often, as time goes by, you develop a routine for these meetings, optimizing the process and storing the knowledge and resources gained to apply to future meetings. Confluence and draw.io are the perfect combo for you to record what’s going well in your brainstorming and retrospective formats, to access in future meetings at the click of a button.

Here’s how it’s done:

Note: You must have already created and saved your draw.io diagram templates and stored them in a Confluence page, before creating a Confluence page template. To find out how to do this, see Leverage your draw.io user experience with custom templates.

1. To start building your Confluence page template, head to the Settings icon at the top-right of the page, click Global Templates and Blueprints, then Add Global Template.

2. Add any relevant text to your Confluence page template. You might want to add a meeting agenda for example, or include some explanatory notes on how the retro process works.

3. Add your existing draw.io diagram template by typing /draw and select either draw.io Board or draw.io Diagram.

4. Use the search bar to locate the draw.io template you wish to use, then click Create.

5. Once you’ve added the diagram, it will be stored in the Confluence page template. When you are finished, click Save to save your changes.*

*In the template view, you will not see a preview of your diagram. However, when you create a new Confluence page and load the template you have created, the diagram will display as expected.

6. Once saved, your template will display in the list of Global Templates and Blueprints. It’s helpful at this stage to add a description about the template for others who may want to use it in future.

When you’re ready to use your template

When you’re ready to use your template:

1. Create a new Confluence page in your team space.

2. Locate the template page you wish to use. If it’s a template you have created, click on My Templates to bring up a list of the ones you own. If it’s been created by someone else, browse through the list, or use the search bar to locate a specific template.

Hover over a template, to preview its contents.

3. Once you click on the template you wish to use, the Confluence page template containing your diagram will be loaded and ready to use:

Tabula rasa

After you have filled in the diagram for your retro and published the page, the changes you’ve made to the diagram and the Confluence page are preserved only on that specific page. When you create a new page and load the same template again, a new version of the Confluence page and diagram are created. So, no need to worry about overwriting your previous retro meeting notes, or the original Confluence template itself!

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.

Optimizing your patient workflows

If you’ve been working with the same patient workflows for a while, consider: when was the last time you reflected on them? Are they still meeting your teams’ needs, as well as those of your patients?

As a healthcare provider, it’s important to re-evaluate your patient workflows regularly, and to question why the current processes are the way they are. This allows you to pinpoint what is going well, and what can be improved.

In this blogpost, we’ll provide you with some key tips on how to optimize your patient workflows in draw.io. Plus, we will help you ask the right questions to re-evaluate your current processes. This in turn will reduce inefficiencies and thus save you time and money. It will also improve the patient experience, and ensure your processes are the best they can be.

1. Identify pain points and inefficiencies in your workflows

Creating your patient workflows in draw.io allows you and your teams to view entire processes at a glance, but also to zoom in on specific steps in your patient workflows that you want to discuss.

You can collaborate as a team on your current flowcharts to:

• identify pain points and inefficiencies in those flows, such as missing or redundant steps;
• quickly edit your flows accordingly.

In order to identify these pain points, it is a good team exercise to view your current processes through a number of key questions.

Overview of the entire patient appointment scheduling flowchart.

Zooming in on a particular section of the flowchart.

2. Ask the right questions

Asking the right questions to scrutinize your current processes is a great way to test if they are robust enough, and continue to meet the needs of your teams and your patients.

Questions to raise while discussing your workflows and processes include:

1. What is the desired goal of the patient workflow?

The goal is the crux of your workflow, and all steps within the process must be written with this goal in mind. The goal should be in line with the overarching mission of your healthcare organization.

For example, your goal could be, “implement an easy-to-use, intuitive scheduling system for patients to book their appointments.”

2. Who is responsible for this process?

Once you’ve identified your goal, it is important to determine who within your team owns a particular workflow. This person will be responsible for overseeing the process, and regularly re-evaluating to see if it still meets your requirements. If it doesn’t, it’s time for the process owner to organize a team meeting to discuss the process and ways to further optimize it.

Often, this meeting doesn’t require the whole team’s involvement, but primarily the stakeholders, i.e. anyone actively applying specific steps of the process.

In our example, the scheduling system is regularly used by reception staff and the shift manager.

3. Is the current patient workflow comprehensible to everyone involved?

It’s easy to assume that everyone is on board and understands a given process, particularly if you’re responsible for that process. However, it might be the case that colleagues are following workflows that they don’t fully understand.

Flowcharts by design are meant to be intuitive and break down complex information in an accessible way. So if it doesn’t make sense to all stakeholders, this needs to be addressed before the current process is optimized.

Before editing a workflow, an initial check-in goes a long way. Ensuring that everyone collaborating on the workflow understands the process as it stands, and has the opportunity to raise any questions they have, will save a lot of misunderstandings and frustrations later down the line.

4. Does each step in the current process contribute towards this goal?

Once everyone is on board and understands the process, it’s time to evaluate the steps of the process themselves. Deciding on which steps to keep and which to drop can be a challenge in itself; it can therefore be helpful to apply lean principles at this stage.

If a specific step in the process is called into question, the first thing to address is: is it a necessary step? If it’s not, it’s probably time to discard it. If once you’ve updated the process, you find that the step you took out was in fact useful, this can always be added back in. Later on, we’ll see how draw.io’s revision history allows you to easily revert changes that have been made to a flowchart.

5. How regularly should a patient workflow be revisited?

The process owner normally decides this. Ultimately, it depends on the workflow and the steps involved. Some processes are unlikely to change regularly, whereas others might need frequently updating in light of new information.

3. Top draw.io features to use when building your patient workflows

The questions above will enable you to optimize your workflows through a critical lens.

The next step is to build out your workflows and give the right access levels to teammates, so you can jointly work on and edit these together. Below are some features that will give you the flexibility and security you need to truly collaborate on and optimize your patient workflows:

Editable diagrams

Using draw.io in Confluence allows you to create and embed flowcharts, diagrams, and other visualizations your teams require, that can be edited again and again as required.

Embed an existing draw.io diagram in a Confluence page.

The final, embedded diagram.

Revision history

See who edited what and when. If any changes were made to a process that weren’t agreed on within the meeting, you can revert the diagram back to a previous version.

Secure diagramming

Your draw.io diagrams are securely stored within Confluence, and are shared only with the internal collaborators and external guests that you choose.

Real-time or asynchronous collaboration

The teammates you share your diagrams with can collaborate on them quickly and easily. This might be in real time as a group, when brainstorming ideas to go into steps in a workflow for example, or asynchronously, e.g. when someone leaves a comment on a diagram for another collaborator to address when they are back online.

Real-time collaboration on a draw.io diagram.

Simply the best

Whether you’re optimizing existing patient flows or looking to implement new processes, we hope this blogpost will help guide your team discussions in a meaningful way.

By identifying pain points and asking the right questions, the result will be robust, working flowcharts and visualizations that have been informed by input from multiple colleagues. All of this serves to develop processes that are up-to-date, continue to meet the goals set, and ensure that they are the best they can be.

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.

Driving positive change

For administrators, improvement teams, and medical professionals in general, identifying an improvement goal and all the factors that will positively influence this outcome is crucial for improving systems already in place.

These systems can be on a micro level, such as changing a specific medical process or proposing change within one organization, or on a macro level, e.g. effectuating change in a number of organizations across regions or even countries. Whether you’re working on changing a micro-level or macro-level system, it’s key to understand how the components within the system depend on and influence each other.

Whatever change you are looking to influence, you want to implement specific strategies to achieve the goal set. Driver diagrams are the established method to define your system and visualize the change process. They achieve this by highlighting the causal relationships that influence the goal.

Working with driver diagrams

Driver diagrams consist of the following:

• The goal i.e. the outcome you are looking to achieve. This goal is driven by:

• • Primary drivers: a small number of factors that you believe will cause the outcome to occur.
  • Secondary drivers: even smaller factors that influence the primary drivers.
  • Change ideas: the projects or activities to put in place that will contribute to the primary and secondary drivers, and will result in improving the system overall.

These are the fundamental steps, but further layers can be added to the process where necessary, e.g. tertiary drivers, depending on the complexity of the system.

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.

The process

Start with your “why” and set your goal

Make sure the goal is something that is well-defined, measurable, and most importantly: realistic.

For example, “To improve the efficiency of healthcare provision at [organization]”, is too broad and would need to be narrowed down. Setting a SMART goal can help with this. Applying SMART criteria, we could rewrite our goal as, “To reduce the average waiting time in [department] at [organization] to [x] weeks by [date].”

Having a more specific goal allows us to benchmark against the current average waiting time. It also means that by the deadline we have set, we can see if the measures we’ve put in place have positively contributed to achieving, or being closer to achieving, our average waiting time goal.

Once your goal is set, it’s time to think about the drivers that will influence this.

Consider the potential drivers

What needs to be improved, in order to achieve this goal?

Continuing with the above scenario, primary drivers might include: patient bookings; appointment availability, and the hiring process. Drawing on these themes, secondary drivers might be: improve the booking appointment system, increase the size of the department, and so on.

To keep everything in one place, you can add a new page to your driver diagram to capture your and your team’s ideas for a list of potential drivers. That way, anyone accessing the driver diagram can see the outcome of the original brainstorming process and how the drivers were selected:

Once you’ve mapped out all of your drivers, see if there are any commonalities where you can group ideas together into a single driver. Like with the goal, you want drivers to be well-defined, and ideally measurable.

Think about your change ideas

Change ideas can be activities or projects. These are the actions that will drive the change you want to see, and that you believe will contribute to reaching the goal.

With the driver, “improve the booking appointment system” for example, a change idea could be “centralize the booking system”. While this change idea will need to be broken down further to specify who is going to centralize the system, how, and by what date, this is a concrete activity that will influence the corresponding driver.

Visualize your driver diagram

You are now ready to add your drivers and change ideas to your driver diagram, along with the links between the different sections.

By allocating primary, secondary, and even tertiary drivers in your diagram, you will gain a clearer view of which actions to prioritize that will most likely help you achieve your goal.

Helpful tips when customizing your connectors

The following features are useful when customizing the connectors in your driver diagram:

Choose between dashed and solid connectors

Solid connectors indicate a strong relationship between components, whereas dashed connectors indicate a weaker relationship.

To change a connector line type, click on the connector, or hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) to select multiple connectors, click on the Pattern option, and choose the line type you wish to use.

Change the connector endpoints

Driver diagrams can be read from right to left, from “cause”, (the change ideas and drivers), to “effect”, (the goal or aim). The connectors between the goal and drivers often, (but not always), have arrowheads indicating this right-to-left direction of cause and effect: the secondary drivers feed into the primary drivers, and the primary drivers feed into the overarching goal.

If you want to remove all the endpoints in one go:

1. Select all connectors by either:
   1. right-clicking on any blank space in the editor and click on Select Edges, or
   2. pressing Ctrl+Shift+E (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+E (Mac);
2. then click on the Line End option, and choose None from the top of the dropdown menu.

Change the waypoints

If instead of diagonal straight lines between the connections, you prefer orthogonal (great word, right?) aka right-angled lines between concepts: select all connectors using Ctrl or Cmd+Shift+E, head to Waypoints, and select the second option from the dropdown menu.

Customize your connection points

Customizing your connection points gives you complete flexibility: you can add connection points anywhere you want to on a given shape for your connectors to attach to. This also tidies up your diagram by evenly distributing your connectors going to and from a particular shape, depending on how many connection points you need for each side.

To change the connection points:

1. Right-click on a shape and select Edit Connection Points…

2. In the edit connection points modal you can then choose to delete each connection point individually, or delete them in bulk:

   1. To delete an individual connection point, click on the point, then click on the trashcan icon.

   2. To delete multiple default connection points, click and drag your mouse over some or all of the connection points, and then click on the trashcan icon.

3. In the number field, type in how many connection points you want for a side of the shape, and click Add, to apply the changes. Repeat this step for each side of the shape you want connection points for.

4. Once you are done, click Apply. You can then drag your connector endpoints to your custom shape connectors.

Be in the driver’s seat

Want to “drive” 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.

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.

Make it a masterpiece

Your dissertation or thesis is your academic masterpiece. It is your chance to deep dive into a topic of your interest and showcase what you’ve learned. Whether you end your journey here, or move on to the next step of your academic career, your thesis is a testament to the effort you put in over the years during your studies.

It’s a big project, and getting started can initially seem like a daunting task – where do you begin exactly?

In this blogpost, we’ll be looking at using draw.io in Confluence to consolidate all your ideas before writing your thesis, as well as to break down those ideas into chapters and paragraphs. After all, there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

Choosing a thesis topic

You may already have some idea of what you want to write your thesis on, or you may have no idea where to begin! Whichever situation you’re in, visualizing your options to weigh up the pros and cons of each topic will help with your decision.

Lists in draw.io are a great way to achieve this. Flexibly add, remove, or rearrange rows, depending on how many pros and cons you have for each idea. You’ll be left with a diagram that’ll indicate which idea is best to go forward with.

Use the List shape in the General shape library to get started. Customize the list by using colors, and by adding rows and columns as required.

To add a new row, hover over the last row in the table and click on the directional arrow that appears.

To delete a row, click on the table to select it, click twice on the border, then hit the backspace key.

To rearrange rows, click on the table to select it, click twice on the border, and then click and drag the row above or below the next row accordingly.

Brainstorming ideas for each chapter

Your ideas don’t need to be sophisticated when starting your thesis planning – it’s better to ensure you capture everything before any of it’s forgotten.

draw.io is a great drawing board to throw all your rough ideas into, which you’ll narrow down later. Create a blank diagram in an instant to get started, or for a more structured approach, choose our mind map template from the Maps category.

Everything is personalizable: customize the template by adding more shapes, editing the text in the shapes, using different colors for different topics, and so on.

Mind map template with customized text

When you have recorded all your thoughts, easily drag and drop the shapes to arrange them into groups that make the most sense to you. For example, cluster the key ideas together for each chapter, or group them into similar themes to tackle.

Drafting your thesis in Confluence

When you are ready to start writing your thesis, Confluence is an ideal tool to record and manage your progress. For example, you can create a Confluence parent page for your thesis, and add each chapter as separate child pages, to keep everything organized in one central place.

Every time you publish a Confluence page, a new version is saved. All older versions are preserved in the document’s revision history: if you want to compare two page versions, say if you want to view a version before you removed a specific paragraph that you’re thinking of adding back in, quickly compare these alongside each other to view what changes you’ve made, and which version you want to keep.

Confluence contains a wealth of features for drafting your thesis:

• Add new diagrams, or embed existing ones stored in Confluence, to clarify those tricky concepts.
• Share your thesis draft with your supervisor by giving them access to your Confluence pages, and using “@-mentioning” to highlight or ask questions on specific sections.

Managing your thesis project in Jira

While Jira is a project management tool more widely used in the business world, your thesis is essentially a large project. Like with any project, it is much more manageable when broken down into tasks and subtasks.

An example Kanban board for a group presentation

Using Jira to manage your thesis provides a visual overview or where you are at in terms of progress. It allows you to pinpoint areas where you are ahead of track, and where exactly you need to dedicate more time.

For more information on Confluence and Jira features, and to try them out for free, see Confluence, Jira, and draw.io: the ultimate student toolkit.

The finale

We hope these tools will equip you with everything you need to make your final thesis a masterpiece!

We’ve come to the end of our chapter on education. To find out more ways draw.io in Confluence and Jira can help you during your studies, see:

• Confluence, Jira, and draw.io: the ultimate student toolkit
• The student’s guide to group project greatness, with draw.io
• Visualizing an A+: diagrams for note-taking and exam prep with draw.io and Confluence
• Let your ideas flow with draw.io: designing a scientific experiment
• Don’t short circuit: use draw.io for your electrical diagrams
• 3 diagrams every computer science student should know
• 2 diagrams every business major should know

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.

Looking beyond the code

As a computer science major, you’ll be introduced to a vast number of diagrams, and you’ll quickly learn that designing and defining systems requires strong visual representation.

Your diagrams need to present complex information in a digestible way to an audience with varying levels of technological and programming knowledge. This is not only true for students tasked with presenting visualizations to their study group or teachers/professors; it is also true later on in the workplace, where you often present what you are working on to various stakeholders across the company.

draw.io’s versatility will give you a helping hand by enabling you to easily and efficiently create technical diagrams to suit your needs. Building your draw.io diagrams within Confluence will take them even further, opening up possibilities like embedding diagrams within pages of text, and collaborating with others on diagrams in real time.

Using draw.io in Confluence is free for up to 10 users: click the button below to try it today, or find out more about using what Confluence is in our related blogpost.

Today, we will be showcasing three diagram types that every computer science student should know, and how to build these in draw.io.

ERD – as easy as 1, 2, 3

Entity relationship diagrams (ERD), or ER models, show the logical structure of databases, and highlight the interrelations between specific concepts, or entities, (these can be objects, people, places, etc.) in a given topic area. These diagrams are commonly used to demonstrate business processes and are an integral part of many applications.

To build an ERD in draw.io, use our Entity Relationship Diagram template to get started.

Once you have loaded the template:

1. Head to + More Shapes at the bottom of the left sidebar.

2. Select Entity Relation from the side menu, under the Software category.

3. The Entity Relation shape library will appear in the left sidebar, ready for you to use.

Customize your ERD by adding table rows, rounding the corners of your table, and adding colors to emphasize certain sections.

For more information on entity relationship diagrams:

• Check out our dedicated article on Entity Relationship Diagrams with draw.io
• Follow our step-by-step YouTube video to Create Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) with draw.io

Network Diagrams – keep everything connected

Computer network diagrams document all the key components that make up different network types. These diagrams are heavily dependent on symbols that quickly show users the network layout, and how everything is set up and connected.

When building your own you can either start from scratch, or choose from one of the 13 network diagram templates.

We offer a diverse range of diagram shapes to visualize networking systems like AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and more. These are found under + More Shapes > Networking.

UML – U Might Learn something!

UML, or unified modeling language diagrams, visually represent object-oriented systems that outline system architecture, behaviors, and interactions. It’s a staple for software design and system engineering. Examples include class diagrams, sequence diagrams, and use case diagrams.

There are eight UML diagram templates to choose from, to get the ball rolling.

Our blogpost, UML diagrams – which diagram to use and why, contains links to key information, templates, and step-by-step guidance, depending on the type of UML diagram you are looking to create.

Once you have built your UML diagram, show your diagram some love. Our article, I draw.io –Three ways to improve your UML diagrams, provides all you need to know to make your UML diagram the best it can be.

User flows – take users on a journey

We mentioned we’d be showcasing three diagrams in this blogpost, but we’ve decided to be generous and throw in a bonus diagram!

With a future in computer science, understanding user flows is crucial, particularly if you are thinking about venturing into the realm of UX/UI design. User flows capture the steps an individual will take in your app or website, like purchasing a product, signing up for an account, or accessing a particular feature. You don’t want blindspots in your user journey – mapping out these flows can quickly show obstacles that customers face when using your software, as well as any missing or redundant steps in the process.

If you have a user flow in mind, save yourself a ton of time creating this by using our Smart Template feature. This will give you the building blocks you need, which you can then personalize further by adding in steps, applying colors, and changing the layout and connections as you see fit.

For more inspiration, our related article, Create user flow diagrams in Confluence, contains further use cases and customization examples.

Stay in the loop

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be showcasing more ways draw.io in Confluence and Jira can help you during your studies – so keep an eye on our blog!

Some of the topics already covered, and ones that we will be covering in detail, include:

• Confluence, Jira, and draw.io: the ultimate student toolkit
• The student’s guide to group project greatness, with draw.io
• Visualizing an A+: diagrams for note-taking and exam prep with draw.io and Confluence
• Let your ideas flow with draw.io: designing a scientific experiment
• Don’t short circuit: use draw.io for your electrical diagrams
• 2 diagrams every business major should know
• Eat the elephant: breaking down ideas for your final dissertation/ thesis