A fairly large percentage of our users are educators or students, and we’re happy to see that we beat out two of our competitors to be named as one of the Top 25 Web 2.0 apps to Improve a Student’s or Professor’s Productivity by the Online Education Database. Cool stuff!
Written by Chris KWe’ll post more about what happened shortly, but in case you’re wondering, we did have a significant downtime event this morning which is now resolved. More soon….
UPDATE:
Here’s a rundown of what happened and how we plan to prevent this issue in the future. We’ve been growing pretty quickly, and unbeknownst to us we hit an upper limit in our database that started causing all sorts of problems. Unfortunately, this led to a situation where no additional diagram data could be saved. Even worse, when we attempted to alter the database structure to remove the upper limit that was causing us problems, we inadvertently corrupted the database. In our rush to get things up and running again, we also managed to pull a rookie move by not backing up the database before we performed the alternations. Umm, yeah, nice one, eh? Honestly, backing up might not have helped since the data become corrupted once we started hitting those upper limits, but either way we should have done it anyways. So…. if you’re still reading, that means we lost all data since our last complete backup which was performed around 11PM PST last night. Egad, not good.
We know your data is critical, and the fact that we lost a chunk of it is definitely not cool. In the short term, we want to make it right, so if you were affected by the recent downtime, shoot us an email to support@gliffy.com, and we’ll give you 3 months of free access to our new Premium Gliffy Online service. If you’re already a paying subscriber (thanks!) we’ll tack on an extra three months to your current paid period. This offer is good until Monday March 26th.
Now, the silver lining: Some of you likely noticed that we quietly launched our Premium Gliffy Online service just a few days ago. We are VERY grateful to those of you who have signed up for a subscription. Thanks to your contributions, we’ll be able to begin some upgrades to the service which will enhance reliability and help ensure that the sort of issues we had today will become a distant bad memory. We’re still putting together an action plan, but overall you should be aware that our next release will be light on features, and focused on improving overall application quality and reliability.
We are VERY sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and all that we can ask is that you hang in there as we work out the kinks and create a highly reliable service.
thanks
Chris & Clint
Written by Chris KThat flowchart you made in Gliffy Online is getting too big. Plus, you want to give an nice flowing presentation of it to your boss so you can get that shiny new Bugatti Veyron as a bonus. This is where embedding links in the off-page-connector-flowchart-symbol and public diagrams comes in. In your Gliffy flowchart, instead of including the sub flows in the main flow, create a new diagram for each sub flow, and use an off-page connector symbol (in the flowchart symbol library) to show the link to the sub flow, just use text for now. Now, go ahead and publish each diagram, recording the public URL’s to each sub flow diagram. Finally, in the main flow diagram, for each off-page connector, add text that is a link to that sub flow diagram. You now have a way of easily presenting a large process flow, with clickable links to each sub flow. You can also create links in the sub flow back to the main flow or other sub flows.
Written by Clint DicksonNext time you have an idea, try drawing it out using Gliffy instead of writing it out. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!
In this issue:
Gliffy Online Premium Now Available
After 10 months of collecting feedback, fixing bugs, and adding improvements to Gliffy Online, we’ve removed the ‘beta’ sticker and now have Basic and Premium versions:
Gliffy Online Basic:
- Free
- Create up to 3 private diagrams, and unlimited public diagrams
- 2MB Image upload limit
Gliffy Online Premium:
- 1 Year plan: Sign up before March 30th and get 1 year for $20 ($30 regular price)
- 2 Year plan: Sign up before March 30th and get 2 years for $35 ($45 regular price)
- Unlimited private diagrams
- Ad and nag free
See that discount before March 30th? That’s our way of saying THANK YOU to all our existing users for helping us make Gliffy Online what it is today. To take advantage of this discount, simply log into Gliffy Online and click one of the upgrade banners.
Gliffy Online has a new symbol library: ERD (entity-relationship diagram)
Once again, you’ve asked for a feature, and we deliver. This time we’ve added the Entity-Relationship symbol library.  No, these symbols are not meant to help you work out your differences with spirits from another world. These symbols are representative of the notation which is used for creating data models. If this doesn’t get you excited, you’re probably not a computer nerd like us, and I suggest just searching for ‘puppies’ in the image search…. that’s a lot more fun. 
Gliffy Online has a new look
If you haven’t already bounced on over to Gliffy Online to take advantage of the discount, here’s another reason to take a peek. Gliffy Online now has a new look. We’ve removed a lot of the extra ‘chrome’ to enlarge the drawing area and make it easier for you to get work done. Love it? Hate it? Let us know by emailing us: support (at)gliffy (dot) com. Either way, check it out:
Clint’s Drawing Tip o’ the month:Â Using the Off-Page Connector and Linking in public diagrams
That flowchart you made in Gliffy Online is getting too big. Plus, you want to give an nice flowing presentation of it to your boss so you can get that shiny new [Bugatti Veyron|http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/uploads/bugatti-veyron-big.jpg] as a bonus. This is where embedding links in the off-page connector flowchart symbol and public diagrams comes in. In your flowchart, instead of including the sub flows in the main flow, create a new diagram for each sub flow, and use an off-page connector symbol (in the flowchart symbol library) to show the link to the sub flow, just use text for now. Now, go ahead and publish each diagram, recording the public URL’s to each sub flow diagram. Finally, in the main flow diagram, for each off-page connector, add text that is a link to that sub flow diagram. You now have a way of easily presenting a large process flow, with clickable links to each sub flow. You can also create links in the sub flow back to the main flow or other sub flows.Â
Gliffy Plugin for Confluence
See! Exciting diagrams in your favorite Enterprise Wiki, Confluence:
’nuff said
Gliffy in action: Some of our favorite diagrams
Is one of these yours?
Green and Good stuff: Terra Pass
There’s been a lot of talk about global warming these days. Given that many people own cars, fly in planes, and use electricity which are all contributers to global warming, it’s hard to know what to do. Certainly driving and flying less, and also reducing your electricity use is one way to help reduce your personal impact, but now there is another way. TerraPass helps you reduce your carbon footprint to zero. From the web site:
“When you buy a TerraPass, your money funds renewable energy projects such as wind farms. These projects result in verified reductions in greenhouse gas pollution. And these reductions counterbalance your own emissions.”
Consider purchasing a terra pass today.
Well, that’s it for this month of the Gliffy Newsletter. See you next month!
Chris, Clint, and the rest of the Gliffy team.
Written by Chris K