Screencast: Flow Diagrams and Overlays

In this post we will look at the new Flow Diagrams features introduced as part of Waltz 1.34.

Flow Diagrams

Flow diagrams have been part of Waltz for several years. In the 1.34 release we have taken the opportunity to rework their interface and add an overlay feature.

UI Rework

The UI rework focussed on making diagram usage more web-friendly. We removed the in-place context (right click) menus and have replaced them with an ‘always-visible’ context menu on the right. The new menus have been streamlined to offer more guidance and inline help to assist users.

Overlays

The new overlay feature allows users to select multiple taxonomy elements (or app groups) and visually indicate which apps exhibit those elements or belong to those groups. It does this by adding small markers to each node in the diagram. As you hover over the overlay items in the context menu the associated nodes on the diagram are highlighted.

Demonstration

Conclusion

This is a first step to an overhaul of flow diagrams, we hope to add more features in coming releases.

If you have any suggestions for future enhancements please contact us via our Github Issues pages.

You may also be interested in checking out the complete Waltz playlist on YouTube.