(Pour mes lecteurs réguliers, ce billet parle d'applications et services web que j'utilise)
(For my regular readers: this is a special post about some products and services that I use)


This week the company Mindjet has released MindManager 2017 and during the last few weeks prior of the official announcement they have published several blog posts introducing the upcoming feature. I think they did an excellent Marketing job in describing in advance some of the key features and for this reason I was very curious to test some of them. Please refer to their blog for more detail (http://blog.mindjet.com/), and more particularly the post announcing MindManager 2017 (http://blog.mindjet.com/2016/10/mindmanager-2017-for-windows-is-here/). Oh, if you are a Mac user, check this update too since the HTML 5 export discussed here has been introduced on Mac too in MindManager for Mac version 10.5 : http://blog.mindjet.com/2016/10/mindmanager-for-mac-version-10-5/ .

Since we haven`t yet received at the office the new license files for MindManager 2017, I have followed the recommandation from Michael Deutch from Mindjet: install the full trial and use it until we receive the official licences... I think he knows we wouldn`t want to wait to start using this new version!

Among the list of features announced, 2 of them really grabbed by attention :
  • HTML 5 Export
  • Zapier integration

Actually it is the HTML Export that really interested me initially I must admit, as I didn't think I would use the Zapier integration. The HTML export appeared to me the biggest feature they have implemented inside of MindManager 2017 for Windows since sharing maps content with others was always hard, particularly when others were not MindManager users. The previous tool provided was a dynamic PDF file that was so unpleasant to use that I alway prefered to share my maps content as images instead.

The Zapier integration didn't much appeal me initially as I don't use MindManager for real project management tasks. But after setting everything up I decided to try it with my favorite personal task manager Remember The Milk (RTM) and then I saw new possibilities for me.

If you are interested only on a real demo of the HTML 5 Export and not at all about the Zapier integration, go directly to the last section entitled "HTML 5 export" where I have shared the test map I have created for this testing.

Using MindManager 2017 with Remember The Milk (RTM) and/or Pocket through Zapier

Note: This doesn't seem to be available on Mac yet.

Zapier is an internet service integrator, where you can create "zaps", or recipes, that allow different services to work together. I wasn't interested to Zapier until very recently as I use another similar service named "If This Than That" (IFTTT:ifttt.com). Meanwhile one of the IFTTT "recipe" involving Instagram that I was using become no longer supported inside of IFTTT, but is working with Zapier and for this reason I have start to use zapier recently. This is the kind of services that geek people like to use, that is slowly becoming mainstream.

Between Mindmanager 2017 and Zapier exist two kind of interactions that could be enabled using some "Zap" :
  • Push : MindManager 2017 would push task/topic related content to Zapier. This is what I have used for the RTM integration, similar to what has been used in the marketing presentation of MindManager 2017 with the Trello service
  • Pull : MindManager would pull information from Zapier, information previously received from other services, and create map topics from the information received. This is what I have use in my little demo to store inside of a MindManager map the articles that I have favorited inside of the service "Pocket".

I will not go in the detail of setting up Zapier and MindManager as this is already part of the online user documentation available at http://onlinehelp.mindjet.com/help/Mindmanager/17/EN/mindmanager_help.htm. Simply do a search for "Zapier" in it and you will get a small list of articles on the subject.


Using MindManager with RTM (or any task manager)

I dont' consider myself a MindManager poweruser as I don't use all of its task management functionalities. For anything related to my personal and professional task management requirements I rely entirely on RTM. Of course some of the tasks that I need to do appear inside of an email I receive in Outlook (work) or gmail (personal), but if the task mentioned inside of the email is more than a couple of hours of work then a corresponding RTM task will be created to be able to prioritize it against all the other things I have to do. For something that look more like a project, then a project note will be created inside of Evernote and the Evernote note will be synch in RTM where the note title will appear as a task name (I should probably write a blog post about this one day...). At work we use JIRA and Confluence and some of those JIRA tasks and confluence tasks will end up in RTM too to be able to prioritize them...

For more info on RTM:

Normally I use MindManager to keep a higher level of visualisation about the ongoing projects and future orientation (planning). Some of the things appearing in my maps sometime were copied manually as an RTM task in order to be worked on, and this is where the new Zapier integration will make the process automatic.

While setting up the Zap with RTM I have applied the following settings/decisions:
  • In Zapier, the "Zap" I have created will make sure to add to the RTM task all the "Tags" assigned to the original MindManager topic. Also, a common tag to identify that the task is coming from MindManager will also be added (Tag:FromMindManager).
  • Since there is no way from the RTM task to know from which MindManager map the task is coming from, each maps will get assigned a special tag that I will attached to the map topics before I send them to Zapier. I wish it would be possible to set something in the Map settings directly that could be use for such purpose. Each of my maps that will be Zapier/RTM ready will get a topic such as this one to remind me of the tag to be use in the corresponding map:



What is interesting with the RTM integration is that it is instantaneous, no Sync required. Inside of MindManager we select the topic(s) we want to send to Zapier, and within 2 seconds of doing so they will appear inside of RTM. To send a topic it is very easy, just right-click after selecting the topic(s) and select "Send Topic(s) to"->"Zapier":


And then go to RTM to see the newly created task :



Some limitations:
  • Such "push" support is only one way. Once the task is completed/updated inside of RTM the information will not be sync back to MindManager, you will need to do a manual update in MindManager.
  • It is hard to link a RTM task to the original MindManager map. That`s why I will be using a special unique tag for each Maps. I think such limitation could be improved somehow by mindjet.
  • The Zapier RTM integration doesn't have a "Start date" entry. Not sure if it is RTM or Zapier responsability but this is something missing. MindManager provides the Start Date information, and it would be valuable to be able to use it.
  • In the documentation on setting up Zapier, the screenshot show the application "Mindjet MindManager" while the only one I could find was named "MindManager Enterprise" (which worked too, obviously):


Using MindManager to receive data from other internet services such as Pocket

This one is more a proof of concept for me as I don't think I will use this Zap with MindManager as I already have another one doing the same thing but with Evernote. Any article that I favorite in Pocket are added to Evernote. But the concept is good to demonstrate the integration.

The biggest difference with the RTM integration previously demonstrated is that we need to synch at 2 places to eventually get the final result appearing inside of the MindManager map: (1) inside of Zapier we need to force the Zap to execute and (2) inside of the MindManager map to pull the information. The first synch is optional meanwhile as Zapier will periodically perform the synch, but if we want everything to be available now we can force the sync.

Once the configuration completed, we need to right-click on the zapier icon to force a pull operation. If new things are found, they will be added to the map topic as sub-topics:

If you try the demo HTML 5 export below, you will see that the information received in this demo contains some information about each articles I have favorite as well as the web link of the original article.

For more info on Pocket:


HTML 5 export

For me the biggest feature will be the HTML 5 export and I can't wait to share the information about it to other colleagues who are using MindManager. The export works the way I was hoping: a single HTML file is generated containing everything. I was afraid the export would generate a multi-file HTML environment, which is much harder to share and use.

The exported file can be expanded like a normal map and the topics contains all the information assigned to the original topic, such as web links, notes,etc. We don`t seem to have full control on the initial appearance of the map meanwhile, i.e. almost all the topics automatically appeared as expanded, which is something I would like to control somehow to let the people using my export file expand what they really want to look at.

The export feature is under the file menu:


Tip: If you have a big map but only want to share a part of it using the HTML 5 export feature, you can do so with a 2 steps process:

1) right-click on the top topic you want to share and send it to a new temporary map that will be exported. Make sure not do "delete original" and not "create link from exported topics to original topics"


2) Export this new temporary map


I have exported the MindManager map that I have used to test the RTM and Pocket integration with Zapier into a google drive file, so if you want to look at the outcome simply access the following file. You will need to download it first and open it with your browser. I have tested it with Google Chrome on Windows 10: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ZPM3LZDF0db280Qzk5OVJqMDQ/view?usp=sharing