XMind

Collaborative Minds!

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

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

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

Interested in it? Please fill this form.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, please enjoy our XMind Pro XMAS family package!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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