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Version 2.2 of FlowBreeze Flowcharting add-in for Excel has been released. It has several new features and many minor usability improvements. Two of the features have come from customer requests - a Style Wizard, and Insert Branch tool.
The Style Wizard (shown below) lets you quickly apply formatting to an existing flowchart. You can make bulk edits to the font, style, or connector style. Or you can use the drop down selectors in the Symbol and Style columns of the grid to change individual shapes. (The Style Wizard is not available in FlowBreeze Basic Flowcharting Edition.)
The Insert Branch tool (shown below) provides a easy way to add tree / org chart structures to a flowchart. It allows you to add standard, left-hanging, and right hanging branches. Optionally, you can specify a label for the connector line of each branch.You can also set the shape type for each branch element and the spacing between branches.
The form is optimized for quick entry. When you hit the Enter key, the branch text and label will be added to the grid without having to tab over to the Add button. If the branch text and label fields are empty, hitting Enter again will close the form and generate the branches.
The bulk of the other changes were small improvements to other forms and a number of minor (but annoying) bug fixes.
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FlowBreeze is now available in two editions Standard and Basic Flowcharting Software.
The Basic Edition was created in response to customer demand for a light weight version of the product at a reduced price. It still utilizes the same, highly productivity text-to-symbol engine. But the Basic edition has a simplified start window, is limited to black and white flowcharts, and uses just the 28 core flowcharting symbols.
FlowBreeze Basic Edition is perfect for creating process flowcharts to be used in business documents such as work instructions and training manuals, where simple design is preferred and color is unneeded. The differences between FlowBreeze Standard and FlowBreeze Basic editions are covered in detail in the feature comparison table. Also, the changes to the user interface are shown on the screen shots page.
For user convenience, the two editions are packaged in the same download. The different capabilities are highlighted in the the trial and, upon purchase, activated via different license codes.
The following are sample flowcharts of the 8D problem solving process invented at Ford Motor Company. The first flowchart was created with FlowBreeze Standard Edition, and the second flowchart shows the same diagram in black and white created with FlowBreeze Basic.
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Without much fanfare, BreezeTree Software released FlowBreeze v1.4 the other day. I’ll get to the fanfare bit later. The following is a summary of the changes.
New Features
- Apply Styles: Applies the default styles to all the flowchart symbols and lines in the drawing.
- Toggle Gridlines: By default FlowBreeze hides the gridlines. This simply lets you toggle them on/off.
- Extract Flowchart Text: Iterates through all the flowchart symbols and outputs the text to a worksheet - useful for assigning and tallying process metrics.
Changes
- The Toggle Toolbars feature has been replaced with integrated drop down menus, now with more symbols added.
- A fail-safe has been added to the toolbar loading. Occasionally Excel will hang when setting toolbar icons. If this occurs, the toolbar buttons will revert to all text. (Given all the cryptic icons out there, this is actually kind of refreshing.)
- The Smart Sizing feature has been extended to Decision shapes. Formerly, their height was set based on the text length, often producing short, squat diamonds. The new approach is to set the minimum height equal to the width for a uniform look.
Bug Fixes
- Yes.
[There were a number of fixes, most having to do with gracefully handling the changes to the Excel 2007 AutoShapes object model.]
Why No Fanfare?
The 3rd party licensing tool used by FlowBreeze has been causing a number of Vista compatibility issues. If you are running Vista and interested in trying FlowBreeze, please contact me directly and I will send you a Vista friendly version.
More to come on that issue …
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FlowBreeze build 1.3.42 was released today with the following fixes:
- FlowBreeze now supports symbols with over 255 characters.
- One character prefixes were being interpreted as node labels for circular Connector symbols. So, prefixes such as Q:, T:, and P: were incorrectly generating Connectors. The order of evaluation has been changed so prefixes are detected before applying other rules.
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FlowBreeze build 1.3.40 has been released. The following bugs were fixed:
- Bug: Turning off prompt for start terminator still resulted in being prompted. Fixed.
- Bug: Turning off prompt for stop terminator still resulted in being prompted. Fixed.
- Bug: Clicking Cancel on terminator prompt locked up Excel. Terminator prompt turns off Excel screen updating for faster rendering. Clicking Cancel bypassed turning the Excel screen updating back on. Fixed.
- Annoyance: New symbols added next to Decision shapes crowded the downward branch label (text box). Cursor is now positioned one more cell down.
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If you’re one of the early adopters of Excel 2007, then FlowBreeze is ready for you. The flow chart add-in for Excel is now Excel 2007 compatible. Excel now has a Ribbon replacing the classic menus and toolbars, but the FlowBreeze toolbar is still accessible under the Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon.
More info (and pictures!) will be posted soon.
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(P.S. Vista compatibility is still in process.)
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Just a quick announcement … FlowBreeze 1.2 has been released, with the set of features list in the previous post. The press release is coming soon.