Mindjet Increases SharePoint Productivity with Visualization Tool

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Feb 23, 2010 Comments

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SharePoint is a good productivity tool, but it has its disadvantages. Partners, like Mindjet make it their business to resolve those disadvantages through integrated tools like MindManager for SharePoint.

Another Way to Look at Information

Mindjet is a provider of information visualization tools, the most well known one being their MindManager solution. MindManager is a tool that lets you see, in graphical format, all the information you are working in. It's a high level view with the ability to dig down into details where required.

CMSWire spoke with Felicity Wohltman, VP of Product Development and Michael Deutch, Director of Product Development for Mindjet to get a bird's eye view of this new SharePoint tool and how it can resolve some of SharePoint's shortcomings.

Resolving SharePoint Shortcomings

What exactly is Mindjet trying to help with here? One of the primary uses of SharePoint is to manage documents and lists of information. This information can be related to projects, departments or other group — or individually — focused work.

Often a user works within many different projects or team sites at the same time. But to get to the information they need to do their jobs, they have to go to different areas — team sites, document libraries, lists — and often need to click around a lot. When they do this, they are loosing focus of where they are in relation to other work they are doing.

Mindjet is attempting to resolve this issue with MindManager for SharePoint. They are providing SharePoint users with a big picture view of the work they are doing, while retaining the ability to manage the details.

MindManager for SharePoint - MyDashboard

Oh the Things You Can Do

Now it looks pretty interesting doesn't it? You get the functionality of SharePoint through a MindManager view that lets you see all your information in a visual format. You can then dig down into the details of your work, while still retaining that larger, overarching view.

Click on a specific piece of information in your mindmap and you can immediately update SharePoint via a built-in browser view. MindManager for SharePoint respects both SharePoint workflow and permissions, so you never get access to information you aren't allowed to see.

There are a few ways you can map your SharePoint information:

View everything in a SharePoint team site or set of lists
View all information assigned to you — tasks, documents, etc…
View all information assigned to your team members — a manager feature

You also aren't limited to the default view of your information. You can sort, filter and update information that includes documents, list items like tasks and issues, calendar items, images and more. Included is the ability to add your own personal notes and comments to each piece of information. This information isn't added to SharePoint, but is retained in the mind map — kind of like your own notebook or to-do list notes.

It's also not a one time view of your information — it is automatically refreshed so you can be sure you always have the most update to date view.

SiteMaps and Searching

A couple of other features of MindManager for SharePoint are sitemaps and search. MindManager provides the ability to create a sitemap, showing you a real-time visualization of everything in your SharePoint environment, including the details.