What makes a great diagramming tool?

The right tool for the job

There are a lot of diagramming tools on the market, but what makes a good diagramming tool a truly great one?

Deciding on the right diagramming tool is especially important when you’re an Admin choosing on behalf of an organization of various teams, with different visualization needs and use cases. Your product developers will require beautifully precise technical diagramming, while HR and business development are looking for easy, intuitive whiteboarding to collaborate as a team and spark ideas. So a versatile tool that caters to multiple use cases is a must-have.

In this blogpost, we’ll look at five key factors that make a good diagramming tool a great one.

What makes a great diagramming tool?

1. One where you can diagram seamlessly in your single source of truth

A great tool is one that keeps your company’s visualizations in one central place, without the need for colleagues to keep switching platforms.

If you are already using Confluence across your organization for documentation and knowledge sharing, then good news! draw.io is natively integrated into Confluence, offering a smooth and intuitive experience for creating, editing, and embedding diagrams. This means diagrams are right where your teams need them to be – securely stored in the same place as the documentation they relate to.

A draw.io diagram embedded in a Confluence page

2. One that prioritizes user security

When choosing a diagramming tool for an entire business, you’ll want the most secure solution. draw.io for Confluence provides enterprise-level protection for diagrams, and the company data contained within them.

Your diagrams are stored as page attachments in Confluence, nowhere else. For more information, see our blogpost, Your diagram data is private and secure with draw.io.

Confluence also provides strict access and user permissions, allowing Admins and designated colleagues to manage who can view or edit diagrams within a space. Confluence’s page history lets you track edits, which is perfect for maintaining audit trails and working towards ISO and other certifications. draw.io also has its very own built-in revision history, allowing users to see who changed what and when. It also means users can revert changes made to a diagram, without affecting the Confluence page history.

Use space permission settings to quickly add or remove individuals and groups to your Confluence site

3. Is customizable and intuitive

From fun icebreakers to detailed UML diagrams, one requirement shared by colleagues across all teams is the need for an intuitive diagramming tool. It shouldn’t be rocket science to get started visualizing, and draw.io offers plenty of features to help users along the way, including drag-and-drop functionality, and standard template and shape libraries for business, software, engineering, and HR use cases, to name but a few.

Intuitive by design: when you add new shapes to a preset container shape, the container adjusts automatically

An additional strength of draw.io is customizability. You can build custom shape libraries, say for your company logo and icons, as well as employee headshots for the company org chart.

An org chart with custom employee headshots

4. Designed for collaboration in and across teams

If you’re looking for a visualization tool for your organization, it would be a darn shame if colleagues couldn’t collaborate live on diagrams, mind maps, etc. Fortunately, draw.io for Confluence Cloud enables teams to work on diagrams together in real time, with any changes made appearing instantly. The autosave feature keeps track of changes as and when they happen, and once an individual publishes the diagram, it will capture all other edits made by collaborators at that point in time.

Collaborate with colleagues in real time

5. Contains all the features you need

A diagramming tool, especially one that you are purchasing on behalf of teams, that’s just “good enough” isn’t going to cut it. You want a sophisticated tool that goes above and beyond, and contains everything your teams need to create a wide range of diagrams and visualizations.

draw.io offers advanced capabilities like AI-generated diagrams (Smart Templates), multipage diagrams, layers, custom links, animated connectors, and tooltips, for enhanced diagram customization. Lastly, depending on the needs of the team, there is the choice to use either the diagram editor or whiteboard editor. Both editors offer the same powerful draw.io features, the difference is the board editor has a minimalist interface, giving users a whiteboard look and feel.

Generate diagrams using AI with our Smart Templates feature

The one tool for every team

Finding the perfect diagramming tool can feel like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. A truly great tool seamlessly integrates into your workflows, prioritizes security, is intuitive and customizable, fosters collaboration, and offers advanced features to meet diverse needs. Catering to a wide range of use cases and diagramming and visualization requirements, draw.io is the one tool for every team.

Whether you’re clarifying technical processes, brainstorming as a team, or creating extensive org charts that map out the interrelations between teams and departments, draw.io for Confluence checks all the boxes. By facilitating colleagues to visualize the way they want within their single source of truth, draw.io for Confluence enables teams to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

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.