Originally, I didn't run out and get a copy of MindManager to become a Customer Evangelist. I don't like to admit it, but somehow I've become one, at least locally and with a very small 'e'.
That's evangelist, sotto voce, not a gadfly Evangelist, or the embarrassing EVANGELIST, which is followed by fanfare, distant cheering, divine imperative commands, luminous messages written on the inside of your forehead, insidious menacing opposition, ale with dwarves and elves, hordes of orks crossing the plains at a lope, talking trees, enslaved masses, battles with darkness, etcetera and so on.
It's just that people keep asking me questions about how to do something in MindManager, even if I'd rather talk about guitars. Or beer. Or software architecture. Or rocket surgery and brain science, or surgery science and rocket brains, or even rocket science and brain surgery, though I don’t normally dissect my personal problems in casual conversation.
Despite these qualms, this week I found myself in two different conversations with two different co-workers on the general tangent of "I have this MindManager software, how do I use it to ..." One person is trying to organize a piece of a large business process integration project, while the other is trying to capture, summarize and publish department activity status reports over time.
The interesting thing is that one MindManager feature turned out to be useful in two different contexts - Topic Text Markers. And I didn't have to write code to obtain a good outcome.
A Problem of Integration
The Integration Project person has a mass of details to deal with. This is raw material for a potentially large map or set of maps, organized around structural elements of the project - stakeholders, customer data-sets, legacy systems, upgrade procedures, enterprise system rollouts, etc. But there were a number of themes running through these structural topics and areas. For example, how to connect the stakeholders using legacy system X, maintaining data-set Y, with the two different-but-related enterprise applications meant to replace X, but that will become available for adoption at different times? This person wanted to pick a main topic and have the map re-orient around that topic, sort of like the Personal Brain presentation discussed on the map navigation thread in the MindJet User Forum. The number of these kinds of connections made map Relationships among topics unwieldy.
But when I demonstrated the Text Marker search feature on a trial map, shazam, a dubious user became enthusiastic. We invented a Text Marker (I think we used the word "Slugs") for a phase of the integration project, tagged everything that cared about that phase, and then searched across the 50 or so Topics for that Text Marker. Generated by a Topic Text Marker search, the navigable list of Topics tagged as "Slugs" was what turned the tide. The idea that sets of Text Markers are completely user defined and a given Topic can have several Text markers from the same or different sets was icing on the cake. This user suddenly had a sense of control over a morass of details that had seemed overwhelming.
So if you haven't yet, check out Text Markers and the Search task pane. Beat it up a little, Text Markers are under the Options link in the Search task pane. If you have several Map documents linked to a master Map, the Search for Text Markers works across them in Multi-map view. Trick, very trick.
Meetings, Bloody Meetings
The Status Summary problem belonged to a different person with different goals. This person attends department management status meetings, but was unhappy with the flat Word documents used to capture the meeting results. To paraphrase, the problem goes something like this: "This meeting minutes Word format thing is fine the day of the meeting, but I want a larger picture, one that shows progress on action items over time. I don't want to dig through a pile of documents to find out who did or didn't act on action items for improving how we do process X or whatever it is we're working on. I want to generate some content to post on the SharePoint site without doing a lot of cut-paste-point-click stuff, and I want it organized by subject, not date."
Since there's usually a number of activities going on in parallel, some sort of status meeting to ride herd over the work seems needed, at least to the management folk involved. Each meeting report has the same three major sections: Attendees (who's at the meeting), Discussion Items (what they talked about), and Action Items (what they did or are going to do about some subject area). Part of the reason for the meeting is to provide senior management with a sense of what is happening on a given subject. Who took what Action Items and did they get it done yet?
Since there are direct and indirect lines of reporting in this case, a phone conference is more comforting to management than reading e-mail or discussion thread posts and generating a mental picture of progress on a given subject. And meetings are, after all, the practical alternative to work.
Well, the meetings happen weekly. Seems to make sense to have one Map document to hold the meeting minutes info, a Map Part to provide the three main common Topics for each week, and to add subtopics to each of the three meeting Topics to capture individual bullet points. But how to produce a summary rolling-up the details for a given set of related action items? This user is starting to wonder if this MindManager thing is really all that useful after all.
If you thought Text Markers on Topics, maybe you're psychic. That's what jumped out at me. By tagging individual Action Item topics with a Text Marker giving the controlling subject of the action item, a once skeptical user was able to generate a complete, chronological action item list, on a given subject, using the Power Filter to hide all Topics not marked with a given Text Marker. With the desired content visible and the rest hidden, it is only a few mouse clicks to generate Web, Word or HTML Help documents giving the actions and results. Automating this by creating temporary summary topics for each Text Marker in the Action Items group is only a macro away. And I won’t have to write it. Maybe.
Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String....
So Text Markers on Topics, coupled with the Search task pane and the Power Filter, is my favorite MindManager thing this week.
Two different user problems solved by the same product content filtering features, leaving the user in control of how filtering is performed and the identity of the filtering terms, that's a good thing.
Two people feeling more effective in dealing with their seemingly endless problem data, that's a good thing.
One reluctant customer evangelist wondering "How did I get here? Where's the men's room?" well, I guess I'll have to live with it. To paraphrase Will Rogers, stupidity might have gotten me into this mess, but it won't get me out.