Working with boxes

Adding a box

From the column header, use the + Add box control to create a new empty box at the bottom of the column. The box opens for editing immediately.

Editing a box

Hover a box and the edit controls appear. Click Edit to open the box panel. There are three text areas:

• Heading. The main label. Always rendered in bold. Keep it short, six words or fewer is a good rule of thumb.
• Sub-text. Optional supporting line under the heading. You can stack multiple sub-text entries to create grouped sub-headings inside one box; this is the trick to reducing the total number of boxes on a map.
• Alignment. Left, centre or right alignment for the box text. Mix-and-match alignments tend to look messy; pick one for the whole map and stick with it.

Box colours

By default a box inherits the column’s box colour and text colour. Override them on the box itself when you want it to stand out: a critical input, a dependency, a risk. Recently used colours are remembered, which keeps a map’s palette consistent.

Spacing

Each box has a top and bottom spacing override. Use these sparingly to balance column heights: increase spacing in a short column so it visually matches a tall one next to it. For most boxes the column default is enough.

Reordering and moving boxes

Drag and drop a box up or down within its column to reorder. You can also drag a box across to a different column when you decide it belongs at a different stage in the chain. Any arrows already attached to the box follow it to its new home.

List mode

Toggle List mode on a box to render its sub-text as a bulleted list. Useful for showing a small set of options or sub-items where the order matters less than the membership.

Deleting a box

The box edit panel has a delete control. Be aware that deleting a box also removes any arrows attached to it, on both ends. If you want to preserve the relationships, redraw arrows to a replacement box before deleting the original.