Inspiration

If you are using Lucidscale, take a look at a sample AWS, Azure or GCP model by navigating to the Data Hub > Select your Provider > New Account/Subscription/Project > Explore Sample. How do your models differ? What tips and tricks do you use to optimize your cloud infrastructure?

More and more software solutions come out every day claiming to improve remote and hybrid work whether by making it more accessible or more efficient. Often times these tools only lead to more complexity.  The concept of “the best tool” doesn’t exist in a vacuum; what’s far more important to figure out is what mix of tools will drive collaboration efficiency and impact—not just activity—on your team. Here are three non-negotiables for your collaboration tech stack:  1. Single sources of truth Few things are more frustrating than looking for a critical piece of information and being unable to find it. Teams need to know which pieces of technology in their stack are reliable stores of knowledge for their team and business and which tools assist with other collaboration functions (like ideation productivity or evaluation). 2. Living documentation Work is never linear and cross-functional collaboration is messy; teams often have to go back to the drawing board or bring new

Make informed decisions that produce actionable insights with Lucid's Visual Activities! Here are 6 ways to use Visual Activities to fuel stronger alignment and more efficient collaboration. Lead planning sessions  Bring focus and efficiency to the meeting planning process. Effectively set ideas in motion with everyone on board. Strong visuals to accompany activity results will give your team a clear path forward coming out of your planning meeting.  Incorporate Visual Activities in your next planning session to track milestones assess risk and prioritize business initiatives. Prioritize next steps Prioritize ideas and determine actionable next steps. Collaboratively prioritize tasks or order a product backlog to easily get started on any project. Visual Activities naturally keeps a record of what decisions were made so any team member can come back to the board later and gain a clear picture of what was decided on. Unsure of what tasks to start on first? Use th

Share your favorite Lucidspark board with the Community by commenting with a photo and description of your work below! Helpful Tip: Become and expert in the fundamentals of virtual whiteboarding with our Whiteboarding Foundations Training Lab.

I had an idea at work but I'm unsure how best to develop it. I need to know the best way to quickly create a dynamic graphic map that shows connections between different organizations with filters to show their disparate characteristics.  Im trying to create a resource for nonprofits to know who does what so that if they are at capacity they can refer clients rapidly to another entity.There is a ton of Lucidchart and lucidboard tutorials but what template would be best for this?  My vision is pretty much a tagged filterable directory and when you click on an entity it pops out into more info.  

Imagine this: Your team has to come up with new campaign ideas. You gather the team together and start a timer but the ideas don’t flow.  It might be time to shake things up. Here are three brainstorming templates that can help revitalize your brainstorming sessions and lead to fresh ideas.  1. World explorer The world explorer template encourages your team to think expansively about different aspects of a company industry or subject that are different from their own to come up with new ideas. Investigating how other fields are problem-solving can inspire your team to come up with new ways to address their challenges. 2. 6:1 idea tool The 6:1 idea tool template is a fun way to narrow down many ideas to just the very best ones. Each team member starts by doing their own brainstorming. Then team members meet in pairs to share those ideas and agree on the best idea. The pair then brings that idea to the larger team. 3. Random words brainstorming Random word brainstorming is wh

Have you ever felt indecisive? *everyone raises a hand* ✋ We've all struggled to make the right decision at the right time and that's often because we didn't have the tools or resources we needed. Lucid is an incredible antidote to this common pain point! Visualizing your decision-making process in a collaborative environment makes all the difference when it comes to making choices quickly and strategically. Let's jump into three specific ways Lucid helps teams make decisions with confidence! 1. Centralizes vital resources Creating documentation in Lucid naturally forms an innovation repository—a centralized place for ideas. Innovation repositories come with a long list of advantages but one of the most noteworthy is that your business now has a single source of truth. This prevents searching through numerous tools and resources to inform your decisions and speeds up the process altogether as a result.  Want to create a home for your team's documentation? Then you have t

Lucid makes everything easier including onboarding and hiring! Check out this easy-to-use onboarding flow that helps you and the new hire visualize the onboarding experience.  Click here for a copy of this template! How have you used Lucid to streamline a process? Feel free to share screenshots or ideas in the comments  below.

Earlier this year we introduced Team Spaces as a key capability of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite. Team Spaces is a virtual home base that brings together the resources that teams need to initiate work coordinate progress and stay aligned from start to finish. Now we want to share our best tips for setting up and using your team’s space to maximize collaboration! Tip 1: Include a team resources section One of the most valuable sections to include in your space is a spot that houses all team resources and documentation. By linking to resources directly in your space you ensure everyone has immediate access to the most up-to-date information.  Wondering what to include? Make a list of information everyone on the team needs to access frequently—and be sure to ask for your team’s input. Some common examples include agile boards project or brand guidelines team research or process documentation.   Tip 2: Document team goals and timelines in your space Your space should

These days we’ve all had to get a little creative when collaborating at work. With many people working remotely your team may rely heavily on video conferencing software. The good news is you can host your Lucidspark breakout sessions alongside video conferencing. Let’s walk through the how-to. Here’s the scenario. Your team is logged on to a video conference meeting and it’s time for the brainstorming session to start. You instruct everyone to open the Main Board in Lucidspark. First let’s get everyone into the right Breakout Board. As soon as you start the breakout session a panel appears for all participants. You tell each individual to join a Breakout Board before moving on to the next step of assigning them to the relevant video conference breakout room. Here's what the panel looks like to participants: Now you’re ready to start the video conference breakout rooms. With everyone in their Lucidspark Breakout Boards you assign each participant to a corresponding video confere

Using basic shapes and simple styling features you can build a mind map out of lines in Lucidchart to brainstorm about a topic or explore a question! The Benefits of a Mind Map of Lines: in addition to being cool to look at mind maps made out of lines allow you to have more control over the shape and arrangement of your ideas. When you create a mind map out of lines the lines themselves represent the different branches of your concept map rather than merely serving as a way to connect an idea to its parent node. You can use the lines and their styling properties (eg. color thickness style and path) to visually display meta-information about your ideas. In this example line color is used to differentiate between the children of the central node of the mind map. Line path and arrangement is used to cluster related children branches together and line thickness is used to show the relative importance of different children branches. Build Your Own Mind Map of Lines! You can easily create y

Once you finish building your perfect Lucidchart document (you’ve  visualized processes added custom shapes and even linked data) there are two final steps before you’re ready to showcase your document to others: Make your document beautiful. Present your document directly on Lucidchart with Presentation Mode. Read on for a detailed guide on how to make your diagram aesthetically pleasing so that it is ready to be shared with the world. Design matters. See for yourself: which of these flowcharts would you prefer to follow? The one on the right immediately catches and keeps my attention – what about you? Both diagrams contain the same information but the second diagram uses color and other styling features to make its content attractive and easy to follow. Win win! We’ve collected a few sneaky tricks to help you transform your document from a black and white compilation of shapes to an intelligently designed aesthetically pleasing presentation. Check them out! 1.) Color color an

Group projects are the perfect way to keep students engaged at the end of the school year!    Lucidspark allows teachers to organize and manage different group workspaces from one place using Lucidspark’s breakout board feature.      Watch this quick video to learn more about using breakout boards for group projects:     Don’t forget to help inspire other teachers by sharing in the comments below how you use Lucid to facilitate group work. 

When we met with Okta – the San Francisco-based identity management cloud software company – to learn about how they use Lucidchart in their day-to-day work our team was pleased to discover how deeply they value visualizations. Okta uses Lucidchart to create all types of visualizations. From wireframes to timelines to sequence diagrams Okta’s teams rely on Lucidchart to communicate the complexities of security software to their clients. Dan Marma a sales architect at Okta explained how “Lucidchart diagrams inspire confidence with the customer so they can say ‘Hey these guys have done this before. These diagrams look good. They make sense. They’re readable. What we’re doing is no longer this confusing thing.’ Remove that element of confusion and people feel better about their decision." Not only does Okta create custom templates to encourage the use of visualizations but they also take advantage of the extensive shape libraries available on Lucidchart. Specifically they use the UM

Lucidchart’s flexible mind mapping feature empowers you to organize your ideas through visualizations.First import and existing text outline to start or use keyboard shortcuts and create a mind map as you brainstorm. Mind maps allow you to keep an organized record as your creativity flows.This template demonstrates how mind maps can also help you organize the various components that make up a comprehensive digital marketing campaign.Large marketing campaigns – and most business projects – require collaboration across various teams. Yet sometimes it’s hard to remember all the departments teams and stakeholders especially at the beginning of a project. This template demonstrates how mind maps help you break down daunting projects or tasks to better understand each individual component.Let’s say you need to plan a budget for your new business venture. You’ve secured investors and feel excited to begin but you’re still unsure how to divide the business budget between departments. Instead o

One of the most important questions everyone is asking today is: how can I effectively collaborate with my team manage projects and run meetings in a hybrid work environment? We’ve got you! Learn How visual collaboration helps you connect in a hybrid work environment.    Lucid will help you: Collaborate with your team synchronously and asynchronously. Learn How 5 companies used the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite to transform remote collaboration and check out our Best team collaboration tools. Become an expert at Asynchronous collaborative project management for hybrid teams Learn best practices to strengthen hybrid teams and collaboration with our Hybrid Teams + Collaboration Quick Guide Manage projects expertly. Lucid is powerfully integrated with all of your favorite productivity tools to create a seamless workflow. Learn how to use Lucidspark for Microsoft Teams with this 4 minute video. Learn How to facilitate decision-making with a hybrid team Discover

Team alignment ensures that every member of a team is working towards a common goal with a shared understanding of the objectives priorities and responsibilities. It is the key to creating a cohesive and high-performing team that can achieve its goals efficiently and effectively.    Team alignment can provide: Improve communication: When team members are aligned they communicate better with each other avoiding misunderstandings and improving collaboration. Increase productivity: When everyone on the team is working towards a shared goal there is less duplication of effort and the team can work together to find more efficient ways to achieve their objectives. Enhance morale: When team members are aligned they feel more invested in their work and are more likely to feel a sense of ownership and pride in their accomplishments. Foster innovation: When team members are aligned they can work together to generate new ideas and approaches that can lead to better outcomes. Lucid has

Adding interactivity to your diagrams is a great way to engage your viewers, add depth and context to your documentation, and supplement your visuals with actionable next steps. Lucidchart makes this easy with several different tools—want to know which option is best for you? Read on to learn the differences between Hotspots, Actions, and Link Previews how they behave and how to use them effectively.  ActionsWith Actions, you can link to an external website or email, a page within the current Lucidchart document, or a different Lucidchart document. You can also use Actions to toggle layers and add conditional formatting rules. For a complete description of each of these options, please refer to the Add an Action or link to a shape in Lucidchart article from the Lucidchart Help Center.Actions can be applied to most objects and text in two ways. The first is via the Actions menu in the toolbar at the top of the editor.The second is from within the right-click menu by selecting “Add Actio

Visualization is often most effective when it is simple and clean but sometimes elements of your diagrams might need a bit of extra detail or context. By creating a button in your diagram you and other viewers can easily click it to reveal that additional information then quickly hide it again to keep the diagram clear and easy to understand. For example I’ve used Lucidchart to create an office floor plan in which there is additional employee information corresponding to each seat assignment. This diagram can then serve as a resource for others in the office to understand more information about your workplace and the people who work there. Below I’ve created a seating area of an office floor plan including desks chairs and computer setups. Now I want to turn each chair object into a button which upon clicking will reveal additional information about the employee who sits there. After creating the floor plan the next step is to create the corresponding Layers for each chair object. In t