Mindjet Extends Mind Maps to Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce.com

Mindjet, a maker of visual mapping software to improve team collaboration among knowledge workers, is forging ties with third-party applications Microsoft SharePoint and Salesforce.com.

Mindjet lets users create "mind maps" where users chart their ideas and information, starting with a central topic surrounded by subtopics arranged on lines. Think of the topic as the trunk, with the subtopics as branches of the tree.

Mindjet essentially offers an alternative for users to visually collaborate at a time when businesses are tired of traditional collaboration solutions from Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and others.

Available Feb. 23, MindManager for SharePoint lets businesses inject Mindjet's mind map technology into SharePoint supported Web sites, letting individuals and teams render SharePoint content in the interactive idea trees that have lured 1.5 million users to Mindjet. 

The solution is meant as a salve for users who find their document glut overwhelming to sift through manage. Workers and their colleagues typically generate so much content in SharePoint that they sometimes end up unnecessarily recreating the content they're trying to manage, Michael Deutch, director of product marketing for Mindjet, told eWEEK.

To wit, MindManager for SharePoint lets users search, sort, filter and update information stored within multiple SharePoint sites and lists.

Mindjet-SharePoint views can include documents, tasks, issues, calendar items, announcements, images and links. Content connected through both platforms can be edited and refreshed on the fly.

Users may then choose the dashboard map option to see their tasks, issues and calendar events for one or more sites.

The application also hooks into Microsoft Office and Outlook to let users can outline and export their writing into Microsoft Word, put their ideas into PowerPoint presentations or even create Microsoft Project plans.

MindManager for SharePoint is available today for $499 per person through Mindjet. It is available in English, German and French and can be purchased through Mindjet.com for $499 in the U.S. Deutch said this per user price will drop for larger deals with hundreds and thousands of seats.   

Mindjet's business application tendrils extend to Salesforce.com, whose sales representatives see list views for accounts and opportunities.

Reps working on a major account may have hundreds of contacts within a given account. This list is often difficult to manage for the sales rep trying  to track contacts involved with the deal he is trying to negotiate.

Traditionally, sales reps have created organizational charts for management review, but these are tedious and cumbersome, with charts easily going out of date.

To ameliorate these issues, Mindjet has created Mindjet Deal Navigator as a SAAS (software as a service) application that lets users put their Salesforce.com contacts and other app content in a mind map, Felicity Wohltman, vice president of product marketing for Mindjet, told eWEEK.

"We've enabled automatic org-chart creation in Salesforce.com," Wohltman said, adding that Mindjet worked closely with Salesforce.com for this solution. Deal Navigator was built on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, meaning the app's data is always hosted on Salesforce.com. 

With this app, users can see what roles people have in a contract and process workflow, along with which way they are leaning on certain decisions. Changes and annotations are made in Deal Navigator and written back to Salesforce.com.

This SAAS app will cost $300 per user, per year when Mindjet launches it in March. It will be marketed through the Salesforce.com AppExchange, which will point users to the Mindjet site to purchase.

Going forward, expect Mindjet to integrate with IBM Lotus, business intelligence applications other solutions that need a fresh way to render data.