MindManager Shortcuts: 1 – selecting topic levels

Posted on 17 March, 2018 by Alex

MindManager is an incredibly versatile and useful program but it has its shortcomings, so I thought I’d start an occasional series of articles on how to overcome some of these. Many of these posts are based on solutions I’ve suggested in response to questions on the Mindjet community forum. Welcome to the first in the series, on selecting topics by level.

UPDATE: I’m very pleased that this feature has been added to the latest version (3.8) of the MAP add-in from Olympic Limited. This has a wide range of features that I’ll be reviewing shortly, but it offers a simpler way to access topic selection than using WordX2 (which obviously has other uses).

One of the puzzling aspects of MindManager is the lack of any provision to select topics automatically at the same level across branches. Apart from Main Topics (which I will come to in moment), MM does not appear to offer an easy way to do this – or at least none that I can find.

MM obviously “knows” about its own topic levels – it automatically allocates the appropriate level whenever you add a topic or sub-topic. In addition it also matches the topic level to the relevant heading or paragraph style based on the template used when a map is exported to Word; this information is also available to third-party add-ins.

However MM does not extend this facility to end users, despite the many other selection options provided. Topic level selection is not provided as an option for filtering or searching, nor can it be used as a trigger in conditional formatting or as a range in formulas. The only “official” ways to select topics (besides Main Topics) at the same level manually are using the shift or control keys, or highlighting them with the mouse.

This is frustrating as there are many situations in which the ability to select by topic level throughout a map would be very useful, for example, if you want to quickly change the appearance of a whole layer of topics or to add an icon or tag to them. It would also be helpful to be able to specify topic levels in formulas, so that you could sum or average a numeric topic property at the same level across branches.

I don’t know why MindManager’s creators have made this so difficult, but I can suggest a couple of workarounds to make topic level selectable. The first one which applies only to Main Topics is more of a neglected command than a workaround, while the second can be easily applied at any topic level but requires the use of an add-in. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, Shortcut, Viewing, Filtering and Formatting | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Strong growth in Sociamind visits

Posted on 18 January, 2018 by Alex

While I would like to claim all the credit for the strong growth in the number of site visitors and page views for the Sociamind website in 2017 I suspect that part of the story is an increasing interest in MindManager itself, especially since the 2017 release.

There were 3,190 visitors to the website with 5,929 views, an increase of 21% and 31% respectively over the 2016 figures (2,630 and 4,516). Apart from the Home page, by far the most views were of two articles on the new dashboard map and HTML 5 export features in MM 2017. Geographically, over half the views came from the US, with the UK and Germany running a distant second and third respectively.

Whatever your reasons for visiting Sociamind and regardless of where you come from, I would like to thank all my Sociamind visitors for your continued support.

Posted in Mind Mapping, Software, Statistics | Tagged , | 3 Comments

See Sociamind articles on MindManager organised by category

Posted on 17 January, 2018 by Alex

In addition to the new online map of Sociamind posts on MindManager, all articles relating to MindManager can now be accessed by category. Simply select Posts by Category from the main menu to access the drop-down list.

Posted in Mind Mapping | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Explore MindManager Articles in new Sociamind Map

Posted on 16 January, 2018 by Alex

Almost all MindManager-related posts on Sociamind since early 2014 have been incorporated into a new map, available via the Sociamind menu or here.

The new map also demonstrates the Publish feature which has been further enhanced  with the release of MM 2018. This allows users to publish fully-featured interactive mindmaps hosted on Mindjet’s own servers which are available on most browsers either via a link or embedding in the user’s browser.

The map has been organised into key themes and sub-themes with the MM version used in each original article shown in brackets. Click on the hyperlink icon next to any topic to access the relevant article. Please note that articles which discuss several key MindManager features may appear in the map more than once.

 

The map will be updated and amended over time to incorporate new articles as they are published. Please note however that the material in some articles may not be relevant to later versions of MindManager or the specific commands required may have changed from those described. For this reason no responsibility is taken for the accuracy of the information provided.

Posted in Mind Mapping, Project Management | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Getting On Track with MindManager 2018 – part 2: tracking in sub-project roll-ups

Posted on 10 January, 2018 by Alex

Like my previous post on how to show the degree that tasks in a MindManager project map are “On Track”, this article was prompted by a query on the MindManager Community Forum.

In this case the question was whether it is possible to highlight parent topics based on the specific attributes of sub-tasks; for example, whether any of these sub-tasks are yet to begin, if they are falling behind schedule or whether they have (or don’t have) other characteristics. The answer is a qualified yes – it is possible to show at the parent topic level if one or more of its sub-tasks meet certain criteria, but not how many sub-tasks are involved, nor which ones they are. However even this information can be very useful, especially when a map is collapsed so that individual tasks can’t be seen.

In the following example I’m going to demonstrate how to do this with the On-Track status I discussed in the last post. However, the technique can be used with a range of task information items (for example, progress) as well as with any topic properties created by the user. As with the previous article you will need MindManager 2018 and if you are intending to use On-Track status you will also need the MAP add-in from Olympic Limited and to have set up the On-Track formulae and extended properties using the techniques I described in the previous post. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, Project Management | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Getting On Track with MindManager 2018 – updated

Posted on 22 December, 2017 by Alex

Update: since posting  the first version of this article I discovered that the MAP add-in Extended Properties feature which this approach relies on counts task days differently to MindManager. I’ve developed a workaround which is incorporated into this updated version.

I was prompted to write this article by a query on the Mindjet Community Forum about whether it was possible in MindManager to highlight which tasks in a project are “On Track” – in other words, those tasks in which the proportion of each task completed matches the time elapsed since the task began.

MM actually already has a very simple version of showing lagging tasks in the form of the at-risk and past-due indicators. The at-risk indicator is applied when a task duration is more than 75% elapsed but progress is less than 75%, while the past due indicator appears when the due date has lapsed but the task is incomplete.

Neither of these addresses the broader issue of showing tasks which are either lagging or ahead of schedule at other times – or indeed those tasks which are exactly on track. In my response to the query on the Mindjet forum I provided a brief example of how all this could be done using several new features in MM2018 and critically, a couple of functions in the MM MAP add-in.

In this post I’ll describe in more detail how this approach can be developed and how the resulting information can be displayed in a variety of ways. More broadly this example demonstrates the extent to which the powerful new features in MM2018 and the MAP add-in can be integrated to provide additional tools for information analysis and presentation. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, New Version Overviews, Project Management | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Corel and MindManager 2018 – adding the new, transforming the old (part 2)

Posted on 1 December, 2017 by Alex

In this series I’m exploring some of the new features as well as a few improvements to older ones in the recently-released MindManager 2018. In the first part I looked at improvements to a recently-introduced feature, Map Roll-ups, as well as the revival of a feature which was last seen as an add-in for MM 2012 – Conditional Formatting. This time I’ll examine changes to MM’s filtering facility and the completely new Priority and Schedule Views.

Filtering and SmartFade

It’s a long time since there’s been any major change to the filtering facility in MM, so the introduction of SmartFade is a pleasant surprise.

However, I’m still getting used to how SmartFade works. In MM2018 there is a new Filter – Fade icon on the Status Bar and a similar Fade button on the Filter tab on in the View ribbon. These show only task-related filtering, like the “Show” button (more on that in a moment). Furthermore, use either of these options and you will most likely fade out the topics you are filtering for. This may be your aim but I suspect that most people want to do the opposite – to fade out all the topics other than the ones they are filtering for.

To do this consistently you have to delve into the MM Options dialogue box. Click on Filter and you will see there is a new option – “fade non-matching topics”. Tick the box and when you attempt to use SmartFade in future the unwanted topics should fade (rather than vice versa) and will always fade rather than disappear. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, New Version Overviews, Software, Viewing, Filtering and Formatting | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Corel and MindManager 2018 – adding the new, transforming the old (part 1)

Posted on 2 November, 2017 by Alex

While the specific impacts of Corel’s new leadership on the evolution of MindManager since it purchased the program in August 2016 are hard for an outsider to quantify, they seem to have been considerable. The process of change started with MM2017, which I described at the time as delivering “a number of unexpected but mostly pleasant surprises”. These included HTML5 export, Zapier integration, horizontal and vertical timelines, Gantt critical path and simplified file management.

It could have been argued at the time that many of these features were probably in the pipeline when Corel took over, but this was a harder claim to make in relation to the subsequent release of MM2017.1. Even though this was “just” a point release it contained so many new features that Corel could almost have justified calling it a full upgrade, especially on the strength of one addition alone: Map Roll-up. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, New Version Overviews, Viewing, Filtering and Formatting | Tagged , | 5 Comments

“Mind map your way to a successful strategic planning day” series completed

Posted on 21 September, 2017 by Alex

The final part in my series on how organisations can use mind mapping to support their planning activities, Mind map your way to a successful strategic planning day, has just been posted on the Mindmapping Software blog.

Hypothetical organisation planning day map (source: author via Mind Mapping Software Blog)

I’d like to thank Chuck Frey for inviting me to write this series, in which I explain the advantages that mind mapping has over the traditional whiteboard as a tool for managing and recording strategic planning sessions, particularly for smaller and non-profit organisations. I also describe in detail some techniques to prepare for and then run a successful mind-mapped planning day. Continue reading →

Posted in Meeting tools, Mind Mapping, Project Management | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

MindManager 2017’s new features in action – 3: researching with reusable tags (part 2)

Posted on 20 July, 2017 by Alex

In the first part of this two-part series I discussed the use of MindManager as a research tool and specifically the benefits provided by the addition of reusable text tags in analysing interview and survey data. I also provided two approaches to copying text tags. In Part 2 I’ll outline some data entry techniques and research approaches. I’ll also examine some of the limitations involved in using tags and MindManager more broadly as a research tool.

Data entry options

I could write an entire post – indeed a series of posts – just on data entry, but I’ll try to condense my comments. Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping, New Version Overviews, Polls and Surveys, Research and Writing, Statistics | Tagged , , | 3 Comments