Software Reviews

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creately

Project Management Software

Founded

2008

Languages

English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, More languages – check website

Software Objective

creately is a powerful visual collaboration and diagramming tool designed for various professional and educational purposes

Best suited for

Educators and small teams, but can support any sized organisation or business types

What does the software offer

User Expertise

Creately is a fabulous tool that will help businesses to create highly useful flowcharts, mind maps, charts, database structures, kanban plans and more. When starting a trial you may get a little lost in the examples as if you click on any of the help tools it will automatically create it as an untitled workspace, which you then need to either start again or edit the help template. The system gives you a legend, helpful tools and quick pointers to understand what to do with this type of template. As you get the hang of the system these won’t be an issue. This is like a testing space to get a feel for the template so when you are ready you would want to start a new untitled workspace, or remove all the template content. One of the best features of Creately is the ease of which you can work out which shape to use. Every step helps you to understand what different shapes are used for, and often this is not clear so this was wonderful to see in a product that often new users to project development will not be familiar with. This alone makes Creately a stand out system. It was clever additions such as stickers, you can add post-it notes for notes over your workspace, and even add your own images, embed videos and add different tools into your workspace. These are available on paid plans. There is some performance lag, noted mostly in reviews, so be patient with larger visual builds. There are sharing options and a link generated to a workspace, and the sharing option can be adjusted to give people the ability to view or edit without having to create a Creately account, which is fantastic for collaboration with a team or even clients where you just want to work on a specific workspace. Sharing isn’t very user-friendly on a phone to just to note you would be mostly working on a tablet or computer with Creately. There is a really helpful shortcut guide for quick use of the system, so it’s well worth getting to know how to use those if you are developing a lot of flow charts or databases. There are over 20 supported languages so it is designed for a global market.

User level technical knowledge to set up

Basic

Accessibility / Customisation

Tips / Guidance, Customised view

Ease of Use for a beginner

Okay

Customer Service

Live Chat Support, Email Support

Customer Service Notes

There is a useful chat option under the ? on screen, with some pre-selected questions available, or the ability to ask a question. There is also an option to Talk to a Person if you need. The help centre is extensive and well presented. They display how popular information is to readers which is quite a clever way of helping people to know what others are interested in. It is recommended to go into the Help Centre when starting out as there are a lot of features listed behind buttons which are not at first apparent. There is a history log on all workspaces if you need to check workflow, particuarly to duplicate, restore or log a specific action in a workspace.

Support options are package specific. Check the information provided by Creately within your package for what support is available – all acccounts will have access to the Help Centre.

Training

Online, Documentation, Videos

Data Migration

Ability to Export, Integrations

Data Management

A great feature of Creately is the ability to easily export your workspaces as png, svg, jpeg, csv or pdf (some only available on paid plans). It wasn’t clear how to add a solid background in order to print to png without the workspace being transparent. It provides the ability to link data sources and sync to Github and Jira, which for complex and highly technical projects would be incredibly useful. There are a number of integrations with Microsoft, slack and other products. It has a lot of smart options, many are only available on the premium package so be aware of the limitations of the package you are on. For instance, on a free plan you cannot add multiple images, so building an org diagram would need to be without the amazing features Creately has, so check your requirements against the packages available. There is a handy usage table under Pricing to hlep you make decisions on what you need.

Does it offer a free trial?

Yes

Does it have an App?

No

Keywords

Visual collaboration, diagram, project management, tasks, collaboration, strategy, planning, diagram, whiteboarding, visual intelligence, org chart, process, flow chart, workflow