It’s been a great experience working with the folks at Atlassian creating the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence. After working with this great bunch of folks, it’s clear why they have been so incredibly successful: They really go the extra mile.

I’ve worked quite a bit with Jonathan Nolen, the Director of Developer Relations at Atlassian, and he’s been instrumental in getting the plugin off the ground. Jonathan helped us solve a lot of the challenges we faced converting Gliffy into a Plugin, and even helped by making The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence page in the Confluence Extensions area a 1000% better. Thanks Jonathan!

Good Links:
* A great write-up about the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence on the Confluence developer blog
* The Gliffy Plugin for Confluence page in the Confluence Extensions area

We have been working very hard lately ( especially Chris, remember surprise #2 ? ) on getting the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence released. Confluence is the world’s most popular Enterprise Wiki made by one of Australia’s fastest growing companies, Atlassian. Wiki’s have swept through the business community as of late as a key tool to allow colleagues to collaborate documents and other knowledge capital. Up until now, it has been impossible to dynamically create rich diagrams within a wiki. Gliffy Inc. has seamlessly integrated our beloved Gliffy Diagram Editor into Confluence, to take collaboration within Wiki’s to the next level. Showing great looking diagrams inside a wiki has never been so easy. Take a look at the example below:

So stop typing all those words in your business’ wiki. Download and try the Gliffy Plugin for Confluence today, because a picture, or diagram, is worth a thousand words.

Learn more about the plugin here: http://www.gliffy.com/products/confluencePlugin/index.shtml

–Announcing the Gliffy Monthly Newsletter–
Hello Gliffy users! You’ve probably been waiting in eager anticipation, wondering if we would ever send out a newsletter. The wait is over, your wish has come true: Welcome to the Gliffy Monthly Newsletter! The purpose of the Gliffy newsletter is to keep you informed about our latest propaganda…. or…. umm.. Features! Products! All that good stuff. And don’t forget… use www.gliffy.com for all your drawing and diagramming needs!

–Attention Computer Geeks like us: Gliffy now supports UML–
In the mid 90’s, competing groups of computer nerds did something we wish more people would do: They put aside their differences and decided to work together for the common computer geek good-ness. The results of their efforts became known as UML (The Universal Modeling Language). Many of our users asked for UML symbols to make great UML class diagrams, and in September, we gave it to you. Gliffy released support for UML and now YOU TOO can be a part of the computer geek happiness. Of course, all good things come to an end… will AgileDraw awake the sleeping giants? (www.agiledraw.org).

–Gliffy User of the Month–
We’ve seen lots of great drawings and diagrams created with Gliffy by you, our GREAT users. Have you created a drawing you are particularly proud of? Did Gliffy help make your life a little easier than it would have been otherwise? Tell us your story! Each month in our newsletter, we’ll feature a drawing and/or story of one of our happy users. While we can’t offer you riches if we select your story, we can offer you a little fame. (We have over 30K subscribers to our newsletter) Send your submissions to: support (at) gliffy (dot) com with the subject: “Gliffy User of the Month”

–Green & Good Stuff–
In the ‘Green & Good Stuff’ section, we will highlight an organization, company, or interesting idea which we think promotes making the world a better place.

This month: GreenDimes
Does all that paper junk mail get in your way? Does looking at all that wasted paper make you feel ill? Well now there is a nifty company known as GreenDimes who aims to help rid yourself of your junk mail nightmare. For just a few bucks a month, GreenDimes will do their best to remove you from as many mailing lists as possible. Not only that, but GreenDimes will plant one tree a month as a part of their low subscription fee. What a great idea! (www.greendimes.com)

Well, that’s it for this month of the Gliffy Newsletter. See you in December!

Chris & Clint, your friends at Gliffy

We’re always on the look out for how Gliffy is being used out there in the real world. We love to find examples of Gliffy helping people share their ideas with others, no matter how big or small. We’ve already seen a number of uses in the business and educational spaces. Thus, we are going to start sharing some of these with you, our blog readers and Gliffy fans.

For this issue, we found a blog for the study of case-based curriculum of clinical medicine (http://casesblog.blogspot.com/). In there, a blogger was discussing DPP-4 Inhibitors for the treatment of diabetes. The blog posting goes into a detailed view of a new medication called DPP-4 Inhibitor that helps create higher levels of the Glucogin-like peptide (GLP-1), which in turn increases insulin secretion and inhibits glucogen release. This is key for people with diabetes. Now if you’re like me, reading much of the article with my fear of chemistry I got from high school was no easy task. Thankfully, the writer has included a nice easy-to-understand Gliffy flow diagram in the blog to visually show the process of how DDP-4 inhibitors work.

If you have a shiny example of how Gliffy is helping others collaborate ideas, please write me at clint (at) gliffy (dot) com.

Also, if you’d like to use Gliffy to add a live image to your blog or web page, you can use our publish feature. Once you’ve created your diagram, just use Share –> Publish, and Gliffy will provide you with instructions on how to embed your diagram.

In the meantime, thanks for using Gliffy!

- Clint Dickson, Co-founder