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First look: MindManager Pro 6 breaks new ground in mind mapping software
By Chuck Frey
With over 100 new and improved features, MindManager Pro 6 from Mindjet continues to extend its position as the leading visual mapping program for capturing, organizing and sharing information and ideas.
In this “first look” product review, we will focus on the most significant of the more than 100 improvements that Mindjet made to this latest version of its flagship business mapping program, and how you can utilize it in your business.
What’s new in MindManager 6 Pro
The primary design goals of Mindjet’s development team for MindManager 6 were to extend the types of information it can integrate with – so business users can incorporate more of the day-to-day information they work with directly in a MindManager map – and to give users an expanded set of tools for managing large, complex maps.
Here are some of the new and improved, productivity-enhancing features of MindManager 6 Pro:
Microsoft Excel Linker: This new feature enables you to display a dynamic view of an Excel spreadsheet within your visual map. The process is quite simple: First, select the topic in your map where you want your spreadsheet to appear. Next, open a spreadsheet in Excel, highlight the range of cells that you want to appear in your map, and click on the MindManager icon in the Excel toolbar. This section of your spreadsheet will then be placed in your map, attached to the topic you selected. This is a live link, which means any changes you make in the Excel spreadsheet will be immediately reflected in your view of it in your map, and vice versa. You can even create a basic spreadsheet in MindManager Pro 6, without opening Excel.
This “real-time window” could be especially useful if you need to monitor changes in sales figures, stock prices and other frequently-changing data. You can also right-click over the Excel icon in your map to access additional capabilities, including viewing your Excel data in several chart formats.
Considering the amount of corporate data that is stored in spreadsheets, this capability to visualize your data within your maps is quite significant!
Internet Explorer Linker: When you install MindManager Pro 6, it adds a blue map icon to your Internet Explorer toolbar (actually, this icon wasn’t immediately visible on my laptop; I had to go into the browser’s customize toolbar window to make it visible in my IE toolbar). When you click this icon while viewing a web page, the page and its corresponding URL are immediately added to your map. Considering the amount of web-based research that many knowledge workers do, this feature is a welcome addition to MindManager!
Microsoft Visio Export: If your job involves business process mapping and improvement, you’ll really like this new feature. It enables you to export map topics, relationships and notes from your MindManager maps to Microsoft Visio. It accomplishes this transition from map to flowchart by enabling you to select one or more Visio stencil libraries from within MindManager, which then appear on your list of map markers. You then drag these stencils onto your map topics, which tells MindManager what stencil shape should be used to replace each topic during the export process. This is an ingenious way to integrate these two popular business tools.
While Visio excels at helping you to visualize existing processes, it isn’t really designed to do the front-end thinking of process improvement (assessing how the current process is working and brainstorming where improvements may be needed). That means MindManager Pro 6 give you a big head start on rethinking your existing business processes.
Editable outline view: In past versions of MindManager, the outline view was static. That is, you could view information from your map as a hierarchical outline, but you couldn’t manipulate it. In version 6 is the outline view is now editable, giving you full access to any attached documents, web pages and files. Any changes made in the outline view are immediately reflected in the map view.
Topic alerts: Often, when you’re using MindManager to manage a project, your map will contain action items. To help you keep track of these important “to-dos,” MindManager Pro 6 now provides “topic alerts” – customizable pop-up windows similar to Microsoft Outlook’s task and appointment alarms – which appear on your desktop whether MindManager is running or not. If you are an Outlook user, you’ll feel right at home using this valuable feature.
This new capability enables you to utilize MindManager Pro 6 as your “executive dashboard” – an all-in-one view of their most important data and information, Significantly, you don’t have to switch contexts or programs to see these alerts. You can continue working within your project map, and see these alerts pop up within the context of it.
By the way, if you share a map with your colleagues, any topic alerts you have created won’t be sent with it – they’re your personal alerts, which only you can view on your PC.
Attaching files: In past versions of MindManager, you could easily create hyperlinks to external files – documents, spreadsheets and web pages, for example – but those files could only be shared with others using the program’s obscure “pack and go” feature. Also, if the files referred to in your map got moved or renamed, these links would be broken. In MindManager Pro 6, Mindjet has simplified this process: Attaching files to your map causes them to be stored within it. That means when you share a MindManager 6 file with your colleagues, they will also be able to view all of the attached files – very cool!
Balance map: Sometimes when I have worked with MindManager files in the past, it hasn’t been easy to move topics so that an equal number appear to the right and left of the central topic – a cosmetic edit that can make your map look neater. In version 6, Mindjet has added a “balance map” command that automatically does this for you. It’s a real time-saver!
Enhanced PowerPoint export: Past versions of MindManager have enabled users to export their maps to PowerPoint files, but this was often an time-consuming iterative process: You would first export your map, open it in PowerPoint and would usually discover that you needed to make more changes to it. You would then have to open your map once again, update it with the necessary changes, and then re-export it. Mindjet has streamlined this process in version 6 with an enhanced PowerPoint export feature. This new version includes a “Format/Microsoft PowerPoint Slides” command that opens a vertical pane on the right side of the screen and displays thumbnail-sized previews of your slides as they will look when you export them. This enables you to work with both views side-by-side, making it much easier to tweak your deck of slides before you finally export them to PowerPoint. MindManager Pro 6 includes an automatic export setting as well as a manual one, where you can decide which topics you want to export, which you want to ignore, set up slide numbering, footers, whether or not to convert topic notes to speaker notes, and more.
Defining custom properties on a topic: This neat feature enables you to create a rudimentary database record, attached to a topic. To use it, you first define the field names and data input types (text, number, currency, date, etc.) in a dialog box. When you click OK, MindManager generates an input box attached to your topic, incorporating the custom fields you created. You can then fill in the appropriate data. I can see how this could be used to capture many different types of ad hoc, structured data.
This new feature is easy and intuitive to use; I was able to set up a basic contact record in only a minute or two. It was, however, a little hard to find, because it wasn’t a right-click command, nor was it in the program’s “insert” menu. Instead, it was contained in the “format” menu – an odd placement for it, in my opinion.
Tablet PC enhancements: Mindjet continues to add support for ink functionality in more places within MindManager 6. In fact, ink-enabled features are now built right into MindManager – there is no longer a special Tablet PC version. This means that if you have a pen-based PC input device (like a Wacom tablet), you can utilize the program’s ink-enabled features. You can now add hand-written text to topic notes; a split window enables you to view any existing notes text and ink (hand-written) notes at the same time. Yu can also create basic sketches within your topic notes – a valuable feature for capturing new product ideas!
Other new and improved features: MindManager Pro 6 contains over 100 new and improved features, which are too numerous to list here. But here are several more that are worthy of mention:
- Topics and sub-topics can now be automatically numbered, using several different schemes.
- Powerful new map filtering and search capabilities, which enable you to search the contents of your maps based on multiple criteria,
- Multiple files can now be attached to a single topic (the program formerly supported only one attachment per topic),
- Improved treatment of floating topics,
- New topic boundary styles, including summary brackets, and
- Organizational charts have been added as a new map type.
Existing users: Should you upgrade?
If you are already a MindManager user, you may be asking yourself: Should I upgrade to version 6? There’s no question in my mind that the answer is a definite “yes.” The new and improved features of MindManager Pro 6 add so much productivity and efficiency that I believe it is a must-buy program.
Conclusion
The world’s most advanced business mapping program just keeps on getting better. MindManager Pro 6 contains a significant list of new and improved features, plus something more: The interface seems to be cleaner and easier to use than ever before, which should be very helpful to first-time users.
Part of Mindjet’s vision for MindManager 6, based on feedback from hundreds of users, is to enable them to manage more of their day-to-day work tasks within the program. With the addition of the Excel and Internet Explorer linkers, the developer has come much closer to realizing this ideal.
MindManager 6 is now available in 2 versions: MindManager Pro 6 costs $349 (same as MindManager X5 Pro) and includes all of the program’s advanced functionality, XML and collaboration tools. A basic version is also available for $229. Existing users of MindManager X5 Pro can upgrade to the new version for $174 ($129 before October 31, 2005). A 21-day free trial version is available for download from the Mindjet website.
Significantly, Mindjet has designed the installation process for version 6 so that it can co-exist on PCs with the previous version, MindManager X5. So if you’re an existing user of MindManager, there’s no need to fear the trial version of MindManager Pro 6 – it won’t mess with your existing maps or program!
Published on 10/3/2005
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