Textografo

Textografo is a powerful and inexpensive online tool for creating diagrams, mindmaps, and complex flow charts. It has a lot of possible business uses, but I use it mainly for outlining long posts and articles, plus designing email sequences (I work in SEO and content marketing).

The tool's unique approach (text-to-diagram, as opposed to drag and drop) will surely appeal to developers and everyone that's already familiar with using any simple markup language.

However, don't be afraid of that. Textografo's syntax is as easy as it gets. Even if you've never written or read a single line of code in your life, it will take you 5 minutes to learn what you need to know to create your own diagrams and flowcharts. After those first 5 minutes, everything will be totally intuitive and smooth.

The best part, at least for me, is the ability to share the mind maps and diagrams you create, plus the ability to show it to others as a step-by-step animation. Basically, I can now accomplish in just two minutes what would take me hours of going back and forth with PowerPoint and custom generated graphics!

Worth trying it if you work with mind maps or flow charts on an ongoing basis.

I came across this tool a few months ago in one of the LinkedIn discussions and have been trying it since then. As an experienced Business Analyst, one of the biggest challenges I usually face during elicitation process is that I am frequently tasked with having to facilitate, elicit, take notes, and document at the same time - I don't care how good of a multi-tasker you think you are, one of the tasks always suffers in quality as a result. This tool actually gave me an opportunity to combine several actions in one - I can capture process description in a rather intuitive structured text-based form, while simultaneously generating visual representation of the process and getting real time feedback from stakeholders. Compare that to having to first separately capture notes while facilitating a meeting, then going back to my desk to transfer my notes into some structured form of documentation, then working all that into a Visio diagram, and on top of that having to chase my stakeholders afterwards to get them to review and provide feedback on the resulting document. I view this tool as having a huge potential to improve efficiency and effectiveness of my processes.

Disappointing doesn't cover it. They are unresponsive an do not deliver a usable product.