I’ve got some very nice positive feedback about my activities on the forums in the past days and that really motivates me, it’s always nice to learn that some of the things you do are appreciated by others. So thank you for that!
Now, this weeks post is going to be a little bit different 
This is a ‘share your tips’ thread after all and today I’d also like to share some other kinds of tips.
Know how
When I need to know something about Visual Paradigm then these forums are the first place I turn to, next to the official manual. This may even apply to you, random reader. But did you know that the Visual Paradigm team also maintains a ‘Know how’ section, a bit comparable to a blog?
It is somewhat easy to overlook I think but if you’re interested in learning more about Visual Paradigm then you should definitely check this out as well, VP shares some very interesting and diverse information there. From helping us getting started with the Visual Paradigm OpenAPI right down to giving us some clarification on how the licensing scheme works.
Better yet: if an article isn’t fully clear to you then all you need to do is ask in the comments, and they’ll get back to you in no time.
Web diagrams
If you’re familiar with VPository then you may already know about this: you can use the VPository website to create online diagrams. VP has explained this concept a few times already on their Youtube channel, something which I think is also really worth checking out. You may even learn something new there.
I’ll be very honest: some of the older video’s can be a little… “peculiar” (weird background music for example) but their latest videos are definitely worth it. Very good stuff.
Know what?
(sorry, I’m also playing with the forum features a bit )
Now, I think this is a very nice video. And as you can see: #2 online drawing tools…
But there can be so much more to those diagrams!
Please note: the following is staged (I kind of borrowed a friend and their account) but we do think it can make an interesting showcase.
So… my project resides in my VPository and I just added a new use case called “share information”. But how should I share this? So I decided to use PostMania and ask my friend AyanamiKun for feedback, you can see the conversation in the screenshot.
Due to reasons not shared because it would make little sense and spoil this example I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. So instead of writing a 12 page letter Aya went to the online diagram option, made a use case diagram within the project I had shared and then informed me about it (as you can see).
Here I have 2 options: I could select ‘Open’, then it would have taken me to my browser and open the diagram after which I had ‘online access’ to the diagram, same as Aya had. The other is much more interesting I think: ‘Import’. Now VP will analyze the online data and actually try to add this to your current project.
Here is what things looked like in Aya’s browser:
And here is what it looked like after I imported the diagram:
Please note: My friend Aya does not own a Visual Paradigm license, she doesn’t even have VP installed at all. All she did was use a browser.
Sure, the connectors in my import don’t fully match the original but that can be solved with only a few mouse clicks. You can easily fix this manually which is a small task in comparison to having to redo an entire diagram I think. Quite frankly I consider this a very impressive feature.
You can find the ‘Import web diagram’ option on the team toolbar by the way.
Diagram spotlight
This is something I just thought of
VP supports a lot of different diagrams, mostly within already defined standards (think UML, BPMN, etc.) but the VP team sometimes also applies a bit of their own creativity and provides us with something fully specific to Visual Paradigm.
So I figured this might be a good topic for the moments I risk running out of ideas
Business Concept Diagram
Despite its name this is actually more of a “free for all” kind of diagram. The working screen mainly consists of the stencil pane (I did not add this myself) as well as the diagram palette which only shows the Freehand and Common categories.
Now, although I have added a bit of silliness in there (this diagram was made on the fly) I do hope you can see the potential it has. I think the best way to description a business concept diagram is that of a freehand scribbling tool. You can freely add anything you’d want in there without limitations.
And as you can see I even added a user story, that is how far this thing can go.
These kind of diagrams are at their best when you want to quickly visualize a certain concept in a non-standard way.
And there you have it…
Another set of tips. Thanks for the positive feedback and I hope this was useful for some of you.
