Mindjet Catalyst

If you’re looking for a way to get your team on the same page when they’re in different places, Mindjet Catalyst could be the answer. Mary Branscombe investigates.

HardCopy Issue: 47 | Found In: Business | Published: 01/02/2010 | Last Revision: 07/07/2010

There are plenty of online collaboration environments, and plenty of Web applications that let you share documents, but there aren’t many tools that let you do both. Mindjet Catalyst has the usual online meeting tools like video, VOIP, text chat, application and file sharing and a whiteboard – but it also has a Web version of Mindjet’s mind mapping tool, which is much more like collaborating on a physical whiteboard. Put it together and you get a tool for online meetings that lets you do real work. Mind mapping is a cross between making lists and drawing diagrams: instead of headings and lines of text you create hierarchies of topics and sub-topics laid out on the map and connected by lines. The Mindjet Web app tool has a rich set of tools for creating mind maps: you can include documents, images and hyperlinks as well as text; and you can flag elements with various symbols and icons, or choose different colours and shapes for individual topics. You can draw a boundary around one section of a map or create relationships between sections of different hierarchies, add topics that ‘float’ outside the hierarchy and insert ‘speech bubble’ callouts to label elements. Catalyst has a simple user interface with a toolbar of key tasks across the top of the screen, a task pane of more detailed options on the right and a collapsible navigation pane on the left that lets you use Activity templates to start specific types of mind map, manage maps and the workspaces you store them in, or start or join a Web conference. It also has links to a large range of guides and video tutorials that cover pretty much the full range of Catalyst features. You can close the navigation pane and task pane to get more space for editing and viewing, and even though it’s a Web app there are keyboard shortcuts and context menus for many commands so you don’t have to keep going back to the toolbar. The Activities cover planning projects, running meetings, brainstorming, working up marketing plans, doing strategic planning, or managing a to-do list: click an activity and you get a mind map based on a template with the key elements already in place ready for you to work on. Whether you start with a template or from scratch, you can invite other Mindjet users to collaborate on your mind maps with you, either using Catalyst or the desktop MindManager application to work on the same map at the same time.

Share and enjoy

In Catalyst you get live, real-time collaborative editing, so you can be working on one area of a map while a colleague checks, edits or creates a different section. When one person is working on a topic or sub-topic it’s locked and replaced by a label telling you they’re editing it. Hover over an element on the map to see a pop-up telling you who created it and if anyone has edited it. If you’re both working in Catalyst, you can use text chat to discuss what you’re doing. If you’re using your map to run a meeting then the optional Web conferencing tools, which require an extra subscription, let everyone join in the conversation, and collaboration usually works a lot better if everyone can talk about what you’re working on.

Create collaborative mind-maps in Catalyst, with resources and schedules for tasks.

You start by inviting other users to your account, adding them to the workspace and then sharing the mind map with them. You can have multiple workspaces with different users invited to each one, you can share different maps in each workspace with different people, and you can choose whether colleagues can see maps, create and edit them with you or manage the whole workspace. You can also upload files to workspaces without attaching them to a mind map first. Open a file that’s not a map and it downloads through your browser and opens in whatever application the file type is associated with. You can also share maps with people who don’t use Catalyst or MindManager, as interactive read-only maps: they can expand and minimise sections, explore the map and follow links, but they can’t add or delete information. The sharing options cover not just the usual email, Twitter and Facebook but Linked In, Plaxo and over 200 other social and blogging services, or you can download a copy to distribute however you want. With maps that you share directly from Catalyst, you can choose whether people can keep their own copies and you can delete the shared map if it’s out of date or no longer relevant. Mindjet Catalyst is a unique combination of mind mapping and Web conferencing: think of it as a lightweight mind mapping tool that’s available on any computer (Mac or PC, Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, as long as you have Adobe Flash 9); as a collaborative tool for creating mind maps in a group; and as an optional conferencing system for talking about the map you’re creating. If everyone joins in, you get a self-documenting meeting.