Looking for a way to move your floor plan diagram? Here is the best way to move your diagram from one page to another without having to reference another page:

With the diagram you’d like to move open:

1) Decide the items you’d like to move
2) Click on one shape you’d like to move, then hold shift key and select additional shapes to move
3) Then select copy
4) Open the file to paste the diagram into
5) Select Paste

If you’d like to move the entire diagram, at step 2, choose select all, copy. Then open the new file, select paste.

Certainly easier than packing boxes!

–The Gliffy Team

Looking for ways to present your Gliffy diagram in a clear, professional manner?

We suggest, to increase the quality of exporting formats, export as SVG, which can then be imported into Visio or Adobe Illustrator. These applications can give more options for higher quality formats.

Gliffy Diagrams are a great way to represent ideas and concept with a picture. At your next business meeting, present a UML diagram or SWOT analysis using Gliffy for professional results.

Happy Exporting!

–The Gliffy Team

Ever wonder if you are the only one with this question?

You’re not. Here is the quick and easy way to move your Gliffy organizational chart, flow chart or other Gliffy document into Word.

With Gliffy Diagram Open:

File, Export as JPG

Hit Ok, Save to Desktop

Then, within your word document: Insert, Picture, From File

You will browse to the JPG file on your desktop, Select the JPG file, Click Insert and you are ready to go!

This may not be news to some, but we hope it is relief for others. Enjoy~

As Mike mentioned in the recent post about our new web site and logo, we’re now using JIRA for customer support which is helping us respond to customer queries more quickly.

Where JIRA really shines, however, is in the issue/bug tracking department. We’ve now moved all of our bug and feature request tracking into JIRA which is helping us keep better tabs on the many feature requests we receive on a regular basis.

At this point you may be thinking…. that’s nice… but why do I care?

Part of our goal as a company is to keep you as informed as possible about what we’re working on, and make it easier for you to tell us what is important to you. To this end, product issues are now publicly available for you to view, create, vote on, and watch.

Take a peek at the issues currently logged in our system:

http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY

If you log into JIRA, you’ll be able to perform several different operations with issues:

Vote on issues - If a feature or issue is is important to you, please vote on it. By voting on an issue, we’ll know that issue is important to you, and that will help us know to implement that feature first. Watch issues - Again, if an issue is important to you, you can ‘watch’ an issue in JIRA. When the status of an issue changes, you’ll be notified. Create issues - Is there something you’d really like to see in Gliffy? Create a feature request, and we’ll look into it. Browse - Are you interested in finding out if a feature is on our radar? You can browse or search for issues that are important to you. Comment - Do you have an idea or more information about a feature request or issue? Comment on an issue to provide us with your ideas.

Search for answers

Another new feature we’ve added to our support portal is the ability to search all of our content. By simply entering your search terms, you’ll be able to find related information on our web site from a variety of sources including JIRA, FAQ, forums, and of course this blog. Try it here:

So you got that cool background image in your Gliffy diagram you want to start decorating with shapes and text. But, as you start dropping things onto the image and moving them around, you accidentally move the background image around too. Now you have to re-position it again. This can be painful and annoying and may cause swelling of the brain.
Thankfully there is Lock Shape. Yes, Lock Shape. Just select that background image or any shape you want to lock into place and click the Lock Shape check box in the right-side properties area of Gliffy. The shape overlay will now have red handles, signifying the shape is now locked. Yes, no more re-positioning those background shapes and wantless Undo-ing.
(Warning: Lock shape can cause extreme excitement and spontaneous ogling at your diagram)

Sometimes when great things happen, people often use the statement “the planets must be aligned”. Well the same thing can be true when you create that jaw-dropping Gliffy flow chart diagram with nicely aligned shapes. Can your boss say, “promotion”? So how do you align shapes quickly and easily? Just drag select or CTRL-click multiple shapes. In the right hand properties area you will then see our shape alignment buttons. You can align shapes by edges or by center lines. So now you want to adjust all of those shapes by 10 pixels? Easy! With those shapes selected, just hold down the shift key and then hit one of the arrow keys in the direction you want to move the shapes.

Many people have heard about the power of ESP, but Gliffy users might find ESC to be more powerful. The Escape (ESC) key can help you be more productive when creating your earth-shattering flow charts, floor plans, or network diagrams. Here are some ways you can use the ESC key:

1. When you are finished drawing a line and want to turn off the line tool, just hit ESC instead of finding and clicking the button with your mouse.

2. When you are adding text to a shape or with the text tool, when you are done typing, just hit ESC to bring focus back to the object you are adding text to. Hit ESC again to deselect the object or turn off the text tool.

3. If you have an any object selected, hit ESC to deselect the object.

4. Hit ESC to cancel out of any Gliffy Dialogs (where applicable).

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 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.

Tired of small diagrams? Is 576px width by 754px height cramping your style and limiting your creative juices from spilling out on the Gliffy canvas (clean up on aisle 7 please!!)? Is your house bigger than the Gliffy floor plan page will allow? Would you like to include all steps of the process but your flow chart ran over the page? Well, worry no more! Just use our handy Page Properties on the top right of Gliffy to change the page width and page height to whatever you need. Want to print to a Landscape layout? No problem. Click the File menu and select Print Setup, then change the Printer Paper to your paper size and select Landscape. Click OK and then with the page breaks turned on (small checkbox also in the page properties area), increase your page width and height until you see the thick blue lines. These lines let you know where the printer page edges are. Then just click the print icon and make sure your printer settings are set to print to landscape mode. It’s that easy! (OK, maybe not that easy, but we’re going to work on making it easier in the future)