More layout options for org charts

I have a few ideas for making org chart layout more flexible:

Rather than having the “across” or “down” layout option for reports apply to the whole chart, be able to select a box and have the layout apply to that stream. So we can have reports shown horizontally generally, but for certain people show their reports vertically.
As an extension to this, sometimes you might have 2-3 reports for most people but then you get to someone with 20. Both vertical and horizontal layouts cause massive blank areas, so being able to specify a grid structure would be great. In InDesign I’d lay these people out in something like a 4 column layout with 5 per column
Be able to choose whether we want boxes to line up vertically or just have consistent spacing between them. If we have half the chart with boxes that are large, the other half looks too spaced out. I’d rather not have different columns lay themselves out according to the largest box in a neighboring column
Being able to click a person and have them and all their reports show within a shaded box. Although you can conditionally format individual shapes, showing a “group” within a shaded area is visually stronger. Sure, you can draw a box manually, but as it doesn’t move with the chart items it’s not that helpful.
Sometimes you have one role with many people in it. Say, “Developers” and then 5 names. Being able to have them as separate items in Excel yet show as one box in Lucid (one role title, five employees on a separate line each) would be amazing. I can do them all in one line on Excel, but then you can’t capture attributes for each person such as “company”, “gender” etc.

Page 1 / 1

Hi Andrew, thank you so much for such excellent feedback!

Hi All -

I need to be able to have multiple levels tier with the vertical hierarchy on all levels - and Lucid Chart does not give me that option as far as I can tell. I have tried redoing my charts multiple times - but every time it reformats my chart horizontally on all levels but the lowest oner ...when there is a second tier of leadership under the primary tier the vertical goes away on the previous levels. I can do the Main Leader (Level One) & their direct reports (Level Two) going horizontal - with their direct reports (Level Three) all going vertical. However if one of the Level Three direct reports also have direct reports (level four), the chart swings back to horizontal on all previous levels except the last one which goes vertical. I need all of the levels going down vertical. Not sure if Lucid needs to create another ‘HYBRID’ type org chart template that allows for multiple levels / tiers to be able to go vertically or not - but I cannot figure out how to get it to happen with the current designs available. (See below picture). If we use the current formatting options in LUCID with my needs - it makes the chart way too large horizontally and messes up the tier structures. I use this formatting style so we can add/change not only leadership details but assign teams to projects under this structure. It would be super helpful. I can do this formatting style within VISIO but cannot in LUCID - which is our company’s main charting program. Would be super helpful if I could find and use this structure layout in Lucid too.

@Tdietz92131 Thank you for taking the time to describe what you need in detail! It is definitely possible to create your multi-level vertical hierarchy hybrid chart in Lucidchart using regular shapes + lines, but unfortunately Lucidchart’s org chart tool and its automatic rearrangement feature will force a horizontal layout for higher tiers when lower tiers do have direct reports. I certainly understand how more flexibility here would be useful, especially to prevent a very wide org chart, and we’ll be sure to pass this feedback along to our development team as they prioritize improvements.

Perhaps I am dreaming, but I remember an earlier iteration of Lucidchart provided a different way of working with org charts, providing a group of shapes that would allow, for example, combining multiple employees into one container manually and varying the layout to, for example, splitting 16 people that all report to one manager into two columns. Sure, you lose some of the auto-layout advantages, but I should have a choice to, say, “detach” shapes from the template and organize them how I see fit - like a regular flowchart.

Am I conflating this with another tool? I’ve been using Lucid for org charts for years - but I’ll admit I haven;t touched it for this purpose in several. Is this autolayout new? if so, it is very limiting to me

Attached is the problem I have. Some of the managers have supervisors under them as well as employees with no direct reports. The supervisor and their employees show up vertically and look fine but the other employees go horizontal and make the org chart VERY wide.

The only solution I have found is to a fake “supervisor” so the layout looks decent. The below screengrabs show what it looks like both ways. The one without the fake supervisor looks terrible to me.

Hi @Jordan Marshall, thank you for providing this detailed example and sharing your feedback in this thread. I can certainly understand why more layout options would be important to you. Our product teams are regularly reviewing feedback in this space of the community as they continue to research product enhancements and new features. We’re very interested in your feedback and committed to continually improving our products.

We encourage anyone else who’s interested in this to upvote this post and share any additional details about your use case or what you’d like to see in this experience. For more information about how we manage feedback in this community, please take a look at this post:

Create an account in the community

Log in to the community

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded