draw.io

Commentaires: It has been extremely useful in my work to display the workflow of a mobile application to people who are not very acquainted with technology. It was indeed very easy and quick to create personalized diagrams of any size, especially because there are many templates to choose from. All those templates are crafted professionally and give you a great starting point for any kind of project. It is also superbly adapted to suit businesses, as it can import from many services including Dropbox, OneDrive, GitHub, Google Drive and Trello. This makes it simple to share a file with anyone in the office, especially considering the many export options available. Because it is a reliable and fast software, I ended up designing quick projects for my company and it has worked flawlessly since the first time I opened it to try it out.

Avantages: It is very easy to style any diagram to your needs, but the default templates look great out of the box too! I don't play much with styles, but I use the other integrated tools quite a lot, including those for aligning, resizing and distributing elements. There are in fact many different elements to choose from and it's easy to find what you are looking for because everything is nicely categorized. I particularly enjoy how easy it is to position and connect the pieces together in the grid: you can quickly duplicate boxes, draw arrows between them or insert text that are perfectly aligned with everything else. Because of the underlying technologies it uses behind the scenes, the software is available on the web (online or offline with an extension) and it also offers desktop applications, which work equally well. When working with larger diagrams, the outline view comes in very handy. The software allows to export to many useful formats such as PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF, HTML and others and provides options to get the code to embed the diagram as an image (including SVG) or even inside Google Docs and Google Slides. It is so intuitive that I never had the need to follow along the nonetheless excellent tutorials available on their website.

Inconvénients: There isn't much to be said against such a well designed piece of software. I will point out, however, that even though I'm usually a huge fan of using the dark theme in as many applications as possible, I found it very distracting with draw.io. The contrasts weren't accentuated enough to my taste and I found it hard to see clearly the outline of the boxes in the diagram when working with a grid. The other themes (Kennedy, Minimal and Atlas) are fantastic, but I like using the default theme most.

Commentaires: Draw.io helps me to create user interface models, UML diagrams, class diagrams, mind maps and flow charts, whether I do it alone or with my classmates, resulting in a great advantage for when you want to submit a project, since I only have to go to my storage provider from anywhere.

Avantages: I love this online tool because it allows it to be simple, fast and intuitive to create diagrams, it is possible to design individually or with other people and this is because it is executed in real time allowing the design simultaneously, it has a wide Integration with other tools such as Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive, OneDrive so that the user when completing the diagrams can store them in these so that when he needs them he can access them from anywhere, on the other hand to further facilitate the design of diagrams It gives the user the option to choose whether to do it from scratch or through templates such as mind maps, models, network diagrams or schematics resulting in an even faster process.

Inconvénients: Its templates are somewhat limited because the variety of them is very small, however considering that it is a free program, it is worth it, in addition the appearance and feeling especially of the prospective UI could be improved.

Commentaires: I began to use this software on my Mac when I needed to edit or create a diagram. It was my alternative because the MS Visio doesn't have version for macOS. But, due to the compatibility problems with some files with special metadata, I finally changed to use MS Visio in a virtual machine.

Avantages: It is full web software to create diagrams of flows. Has a lot of templates and objects libraries similar to the MS Visio than help to create the draw.
It is compatible with the Visio files.
Also, you can use your OneDrive or Google Drive storage to work inside this.

Inconvénients: Despite you can open Visio files not always the metadata of these are open well. This generates compatibility problems between both applications.
Also, I found problems using some Visio templates from my colleagues in the software.

Commentaires: overall a good experience, easy to pickup. Customer service response however is poor. Takes a long time to get back. Had a few incidents of lost maps, customer service took 4-6 weeks to respond, and at times didn't even respond

Avantages: Easy to use, Easy to search. Ability to have collaboration between users. Workflow enabled to have process approved

Inconvénients: Hard to maintain from an enterprise perspective. To an extent hard in create a standard within an organization, Hard to Audit and update versions Lost maps on occasion

Commentaires: draw.io has helped us massively in cooperating on concepts and ideas that needed to be visualized. Generally this is a great tool, even better when integrated into a Wiki or Ticket system. I would time and again recommend it.

Avantages: We used draw.io to get rid of graphic files full of diagrams and schematics to be mailed across in order to visualize things or drawing in graphic Programms while in Video Conferencing. The integration of draw.io into our cooperative workflows and documentation enabled us to work more effectively on visualization tasks and develop once visualized diagrams and flows further whenever required and once documented. Draw.io enabled us to save a lot of time and get rid of a lot of hassle in this regard.

Inconvénients: The interface sometimes is clunky. When you start with draw.io and it suggests to you a host of libraries and templates it can be overwhelming. When integrated into a Confluence-wiki for example the names of diagrams are visible beyond the protection set of restrictions per user roles. You can not see diagrams or flows themselves embedded in restricted areas but you can see their names. These are all no deal breakers, just some rough edges, that would feel better when removed.