Collaborating on mind maps

Mindomo lets several people work on the same mind map in real time, from anywhere in the world. Whether you are brainstorming with colleagues, planning a project with your team, or reviewing ideas with a client, everyone works on one shared version of the diagram, so there are no copies to send back and forth.

This page explains how to:

• choose the right setup for your collaborators: team folders for your organization, guest editing for external partners, or private sharing for a few Mindomo users
• work together live, see who else is in the diagram and what they are editing, and chat with them
• know which emails you get when you are mentioned, assigned a task, or invited to a diagram
• review what changed, who changed it, and replay how the diagram was built
• work offline with Mindomo Desktop and sync or share your diagrams afterwards

To discuss a topic without being online at the same time, use comments.

Team versus External collaboration

Depending on your workflow, you can choose between a Professional license or a Team/Business license:

Professional license: Best for collaborating with external partners. Your collaborators can use premium features on the maps you share with them, even if they have free accounts. They can also use the guest-editing link without needing an account.

Team/Business license: Best for internal teamwork in a company or organization. Both licenses include team folders: any diagram created in a team folder or moved into it is instantly available to everyone in that group, with no individual sharing. Every member you enroll gets a premium license and can create unlimited diagrams, and one or more admins manage the accounts, add or remove members, and decide what each group can view or edit. For example, a marketing department can keep its campaign plans in a Marketing folder, so new members of the department can see them from their first day.

• Team covers collaboration inside your organization.
• Business includes everything in Team plus the Professional features, such as guest editing, so your team can also work with external partners on the same diagrams.

Info

To collaborate on a smaller scale with other Mindomo users, you don’t need a Team or Business license. As a Premium user, you can share a mind map privately and give people editing rights: in the Share dialog, add their email addresses and choose Can edit. See Private Sharing.

Collaborating within a team

If you are part of a team and want all members to contribute to the same mind map, use a team folder. Team folders are listed under Team Folders (1) in the Dashboard sidebar. Every team starts with one, Team Folder, shared with the whole team. Mind maps created in a team folder or moved into it are available to everyone in its group, with no individual sharing required. What members can do with them, such as view or edit, depends on the folder’s access rights.

Info

Team folders are available with a paid Team or Business license. Both include a team administration interface where you can add or remove members and create a team folder for each group. See Team Folders.

Working with external collaborators

You can share your mind map with external collaborators and turn them into guest users with premium editing rights (modify maps, attach personal files, upload web images, download as PDF, print, etc.).

Note

A guest user is an external collaborator whom you allow to access and edit your mind map using all of Mindomo’s premium features.

To enable guest editing, click Share, then click Change under General access. Choose Anyone with the link (No login needed · can edit) (1) and click Save (2). Then share the link. See Guest Sharing for the details.

Info

Guest editing is available only with a paid Professional or Business license. You can share your mind map with an unlimited number of guest users. Up to 5/10/15 guests can work at the same time on the same mind map, depending on your package.

Real-time collaboration

Everyone you share the diagram with can work on it at the same time, as long as they have an internet connection. Changes appear for everyone as they are made.

The people in the diagram appear as avatars in the bottom-right corner, next to the zoom controls. Click them (1) to see the In this diagram list: each person’s name and what they are doing, Viewing or Editing a topic. Each person has their own color, and the topic someone has selected is framed in their color.

Note

Undo and Redo options are enabled when you are working with other users simultaneously on the same map.

Real-time chat

Chat with everyone who is in the diagram while you work. The chat is available with all licenses, including free accounts.

The Chat button appears in the bottom-right corner, next to the avatars, as soon as two or more people are in the diagram. New messages show as a red count on it.

Click Chat to open the conversation. Type in the Message everyone in this diagram field and press Enter.

To delete the conversation, click the trash icon (Remove Chat History), then Clear chat. The messages are deleted for everyone in the diagram, and this can’t be undone.

Email notifications

You don’t have to be in the diagram to know what your collaborators are doing. Mindomo sends you an email when:

• someone mentions you in a comment by typing @ and your name. Only the person who is mentioned gets an email. See Comments.
• a task is assigned to you, is starting, is due or overdue, or is completed or reopened. See Task notifications.
• someone shares a diagram with you. See Private Sharing.

You only get emails about changes made by other people, not about your own.

To choose which emails a diagram sends, such as a daily digest of changes or a daily list of due tasks, see E-mail Notifications.

History of changes

To see what has changed in the diagram and who changed it, click History (1) in the top bar. The panel lists the changes from newest to oldest, grouped by day. Each change shows who made it, what they did (for example inserted, moved, commented, or updated due date), the topics involved, and the time.

• All shows every change in the diagram. The tab next to it, named after the selected topic, shows only that topic’s changes.
• The person filter (2), set to Everyone by default, shows only the changes made by one person, with their number of changes.
• The play button (3) replays the diagram as it was built, one change at a time. See Playback below.

Playback

Clicking the play button opens the playback viewer in a new browser tab. The viewer replays the diagram’s creation process, one change at a time. Each modified topic is tagged with the name of the person who made the change.

• Contributors (1) shows everyone who has changed the diagram. Click someone’s avatar to see only their changes. You can also use the name buttons at the top of the list of changes.
• All changes (2) shows or hides the list of changes. Click a change to jump to it.
• Make a copy (3) creates a copy of the diagram as it was at the revision you are viewing.
• The player (4) has Play / pause, previous and next change, a speed menu (½× to 4×), and Jump to latest to return to the current version. It shows the revision number, who made the change, and when. The timeline above it has one segment per revision.

To go back to the diagram, click Exit playback (5).

Working on the go (online & offline)

Effective teamwork requires the ability to work both online and offline.

Mindomo allows you to create a mind map locally and upload it online using the Cloud sync feature. Once synced, you can make the map public or keep it private and share it only with selected collaborators.

You can also work offline on a local copy using the Desktop version of Mindomo. Whenever you regain internet access, you can sync your changes online and merge them with your colleagues’ updates.

Add your registration email and password, then click Log in. If you don’t have a Mindomo account yet, you can create one from the Sign Up page.

With Cloud sync, you can upload your local map and all its attached files to the Cloud. If your map is already synced, use Cloud sync to pull the most recent online changes.

During syncing, your local files are uploaded to the Mindomo server, while files attached online are downloaded and saved locally.

If you sync a newly created diagram that hasn’t been saved on your computer yet, Mindomo first asks you to save it. Click Yes to save your changes.

Then choose a location and a file name for your diagram, and click Save. The sync continues once the file is saved.

Pack Diagram functionality

To share your mind map with collaborators who use Mindomo Desktop, use the Pack Diagram feature. It compresses your mind map and all its attached files into a single .pmom file saved on your computer.

To pack a mind map, open it in Mindomo Desktop and go to File > Pack Diagram.

The Pack Map dialog explains what packing does. Click OK.

Choose where to save the file, keep or change the file name, and click Save. The file is saved as a Mindomo Pack (.pmom).

Share the .pmom file with your collaborators, for example by email or through a shared drive.

To open a packed mind map, your collaborators go to Open in Mindomo Desktop and click Browse.

They select the .pmom file and click Open.

Mindomo unpacks the mind map and all its attached files and saves them to a new, empty folder of their choice.