OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional

By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
January 2003

General Overview

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is a feature-rich, highly specialized organizational charting program that has been around for many years. In this newest version, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional continues to excel in its simplicity of use and built-in control over the specialized process of creating charts of organizational structure. With this software program, the user does not have to draw anything, but instead, uses the already built-in controlled drawing features that define OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional. This allows the user to focus on entering the necessary information about the people and their titles in the particular company. In effect, you are using a highly specialized program designed for the specialized output of an organizational chart.

With such a highly specialized targeted use, one would surmise that the need to draw organizational charts must be a very important concern in business and other organizations, which is true. While other drawing programs (e.g., Microsoft's Visio) will allow a user to perform this function along with other drawing tasks, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is singularly focused to support only this task. Because of this specialized effort, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional makes completing this task much easier to learn and complete than in these other programs.

Once the names and titles of the workforce or workgroup have been entered, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional does its marvelous work by drawing the chart for you. Using its formatting tools, you can change the look, page layout, background, font type, size and style to enhance the already professional appearance of the chart.

The OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional program was originally created by Banner Blue Software in 1992. In 1997 Banner Blue was sold to Broderbund Software, and in 1998 IMSI purchased OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional from Broderbund. By agreement with IMSI, the mission of HumanConcepts is to continue the development, support and sales of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, and to enhance and develop new technologies to serve OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional users in the future.

Now, over 500,000 copies of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional have been sold, making it the #1 selling organization charting software. HumanConcepts has dedicated engineering and management resources to ensure OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional continues to lead in providing the best solution for communicating organizational structures and human data across the enterprise.

As part of the HumanConcepts commitment, their new OrgViewer has been designed as an alternative to having to install a copy of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional on every PC in a company as the means to access current organizational data. Instead of running OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional on each desktop, OrgViewer is installed on the Intranet, and organizational charts are then accessible by clicking on a link on the Intranet. A small plug-in is automatically downloaded to the local PC and the user can then view the chart, subject to the rights assigned by the chart administrator. This process of accessing key information via a Web browser, versus running the relevant program on a PC, represents the next generation of computer applications provided by Application Service Providers (ASP) on servers outside the network.

Use in Organizational Change Management

Organizational charts are a rich and concise manner in which to visualize and communicate organizational structure and other employee and enterprise information. Organizational Change Management software provides an essential tool for the dynamic organization to plan for and communicate changes. OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is a specialized tool for creating, visualizing, communicating and manipulating hierarchical information found in the structures of any organization.

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is an important investment for companies to effectively manage their never-ending personnel changes. The software will provide the appropriate organizational information and tools to the relevant groups in an organization in an automated fashion, and facilitate operational efficiency, decision-making and planning.

Human resource groups or information technology teams can use OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional to create charts automatically from HR databases, or other organizational data sources, and distribute these charts to management. This process is totally automated using OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional.

The program will also support upper management's need to communicate organizational strategy to the entire organization, and show how the company is organized to meet its goals. OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional will also help define the available human resources, provide the data and tools for planning, and provide for planning and a feedback system for managers.

Managers can select the charts published by HR or IT specific to their departments and use them as a baseline for planning, budgets and scenarios. Managers may also need to communicate and solicit feedback from their employees to build a future plan. They can use OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional to provide scenarios back to executive management for approval. This may take multiple iterations, and OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional provides the perfect platform for collaborating on organizational changes.

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional also integrates with Excel to easily translate org charts into budgets. OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional provides the tools and data to create budgets, support interactive planning with what-if scenarios, and serve as the vehicle to communicate changes back to executive management, finance and human resources.

Both current and future charts can be communicated with employees - current charts on a regular basis, and future charts, when a change is imminent. This is achieved using OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional's publishing features to send charts to the FREE OrgViewer for web viewing, HTML, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, or in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional format, which can be opened using Microsoft Office applications.

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional can publish additional information such as telephone or contact lists, additional employee information, budgets and mission statements. You can use OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional to distribute timely information to employees, and enhance efficiency and productivity.

Using OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, a complete solution can be implemented to:

• Dynamically visualize the current organizational structure
  
• Communicate this information to managers for planning purposes
  
• Provide a tool to interactively plan for the future and feedback to management and finance
  
• Communicate to all employees and stakeholders

How It Works

The new interface in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is Windows XP-style, more intuitive than ever, and is built on a platform that is Windows 98, 2000, ME, NT and XP compatible.

You can begin by letting the program automatically transform a text, spreadsheet, ODBC, LDAP, or Oracle file into an organization chart. You make decisions that allow OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional to separate data into fields for you. Click the "FINISH" button to turn your data into an org chart in seconds. Choose from several professional-looking chart templates.

You can create different looks (colors, shapes, sizes, fonts, etc.) for different levels. Your charts are easier to create and are more uniform. You can also place gradients, textures or fills in your boxes, as well as backgrounds to lend a more custom and professional look.

Select your file and target, then click publish. You're no more than six simple decision screens away from getting your data out the way you want. The FREE, download OrgViewer gives everyone in your company web access to org charts with powerful features like zoom, search and sort.

Key Features

Chart Creation
Windows XP interface
Specialized chart creation tools
29 pre-made design templates
29 chart layout styles
Gradient and texture fill effects
Add photos to boxes and backgrounds

Integrated Data Management
Spreadsheet functions in boxes
Search and sort chart data
Show and hide sensitive data
Create phone and email lists
Generate salary tables and custom reports

Automatic Data Import
Automatic TXT, XLS and XML import
ODBC, LDAP and Oracle add-on adapters
Convert Visio and PPT charts
Automatic data validation
Upload photos during import
Apply and save data preferences
Select templates during import
Change box, chart and text settings during import
Save import settings to a 'shortcut'

Microsoft Office Compatibility
Create, view and edit OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional charts in Word and PowerPoint
Open Word and PowerPoint org chart files in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional (excluding Office XP)
Publish to Word booklet - complete with table of contents and index, ready to print out as a presentable booklet
Publish to PowerPoint presentation - complete with table of contents and index, ready to present as a multi-slide presentation

Web/Shared Network Distribution
Break charts into hyperlinked sub-charts
Publish to OrgViewer
Query chart data
Save as OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional (.opx) from OrgViewer
Index View for employee directories
Profile View for extended employee information
Dynamic Reports View
One-click export to Excel
Save as HTML
Publish to HTML (includes many of the OrgViewer features)
PDF Publisher add-on module
Save publish settings to 'shortcut'

Planning Tools
Create budgets from chart data
Calculate salaries, headcounts and rollups
One-click export to Excel
Dynamic drag-and-drop calculating

Documentation and Help
Context-sensitive help
200+ page printed manual
Online and in-product tours and tutorials
Searchable online user guide
Online knowledge base
Web-based "fast-response" support case system
Monthly "Tips & Tricks" email newsletter

What's New in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional?

Publish to HTML
Publish to PDF
Dynamic Hierarchical Reporting
Excel Integration
Viewing Functionality in OrgViewer
Photo Handling
Improved Import Wizard
Live Data Adapters
Publishing Tools

Features Found ONLY in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional Edition

Automatic TXT, XLS and XML import
ODBC, LDAP and Oracle adapters add-on adapters
Convert Visio and PPT charts
Automatic data validation
Upload photos during import
Apply and save data preferences
Select templates during import
Change box, chart and text settings during import
Merge fields during import
Specify assistants, chart breaks, chart collapse points during import
Save import settings to a 'shortcut'
Publish to Word booklet - complete with table of contents and index, ready to print out as a presentable booklet
Publish to PowerPoint presentation - complete with table of contents and index, ready to present as a multi-slide presentation
Break charts into hyperlinked sub-charts
Publish to OrgViewer
OrgViewer function: Query chart data
OrgViewer function: Save as OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional (.opx) from OrgViewer
OrgViewer function: Index View for employee directories
OrgViewer function: Profile View for extended employee information
OrgViewer function: Dynamic Reports View
OrgViewer function: One-click export to Excel
Find by face
Publish to HTML (includes many of the OrgViewer features)
PDF Publisher add-on module
Save publish settings to 'shortcut'
Save Chart Output as XML
Publish reports to the OrgViewer for dynamic web viewing

Operating Limitations

Maximum charts open at one time 9 (depending on your system’s configuration)
Maximum boxes per chart up to 32,000 (depending on amount of memory available)
Maximum number of groups 255
Maximum number of levels 50
Maximum number of labels 30 (people’s names take up two labels)
Maximum number of characters per field 25,000
Maximum number of characters per box 25,000
Maximum number of boxes per group 1000
Minimum box size .125" wide by .07" high
Maximum box size 120" X 120" (depending on the resolution of your printer)
Maximum chart size 110" X 110" (depending on the resolution of your printer)

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional Operation

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional helps users very quickly create professional-looking organization charts, as well as just about any tree-type diagram, such as a work breakdown or a parts explosion. The program comes with numerous sample files that demonstrate these uses.

Click a box at the top of the chart window and then click the box to which you want to attach the new boxes. The program then draws and spaces the boxes and connecting lines.

To enter data about people in the boxes, just click in the box and type. You will be entering names and titles into the 2 default fields that start the program, but you can add other labels to contain other information about the person. OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional automatically positions the text and expands or shrinks the boxes as you type. You don't have to resize these boxes, as you would in other drawing programs.

You can change box borders, apply shadows, and change the thickness and style of lines with simple menu selections. Text, boxes, lines, and the chart background can have any of a variety of colors, and you can place a border around the entire chart. To further save time, you can have all this formatting automatically completed by applying one of the many pre-made chart styles that come with the program.

Rearranging boxes within the program's available choices is easy and quick. Simply select the boxes you want to rearrange, and then choose from the 20 styles built into the program. Any group of boxes can have any of these styles, and a group is defined as boxes with equal levels in the chart.

With more complex charts, the program will allow you to compact it to fit your paper size, and OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional will arrange boxes in the best way to save space. The Make It Fit feature will assure the entire chart will fit onto one page. Or, you can tell the program to scale the chart to more than one page, if the chart becomes overly cumbersome and would not be easily readable if compacted down to one page.

Updating the information about the people, their names, titles, or other information is also quick, and you can tell the program to rearrange the labels inside the boxes. Whatever changes, the program will always then uniformly size and space the chart on the page. With true WYSIWYG, you will always know what the final paper output will look like, additionally enhanced by the Print Preview feature.

The Find command allows you to very quickly find someone in a large, or complex chart, to allow you to more quickly edit their name or information. In addition, you can track numerical data in the boxes, such as salaries, commissions, budgets, office information, or project hours. The Amounts feature allows you to perform calculations on this data.

Some customization of the charts is also allowed. You can add a company logo to the chart, create a special boxed legend, or draw extra lines to separate groups within the company.

Comparable Applications

With OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, you are running a very specialized application focused on creating charts of organizational structure that are useful in any business or organization. With the dynamic nature of workforce turnover, mergers, and acquisitions, these organizational charts also frequently change, and the process of constantly revising these charts, as well as designing them so that folks who work for the organization can understand where they "fit," is a cumbersome, never-ending process.

In many organizations, this process is usually delegated to staff in the Human Resource function, creating an opportunity for software vendors to design just the right amount of program to keep up with this challenge. However, as is the case with any software, there are limits to what this program can do, especially when compared with other drawing programs, such as MS Visio. In OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, since you are working with a program that has been designed to simplify the organizational charting process, moving the staff boxes around is limited, and the complete control of laying out these boxes is not allowed. Instead, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is going to place these boxes on the chart according to the level of responsibility that is associated with where the user places the box on the chart. While OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional does allow for 20 styles of box arrangement, the user cannot click on a box and move it wherever desired, as the program would interpret this as assigning a different level of responsibility.

While you can select the font type, size and style of the text, placing these labels in the boxes is severely limited in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, but again, this is purposefully designed around the "most likely" text necessary to represent someone's status in an organization. In response to this, the program now allows for adding other labels in the program, but this would be considered as more cumbersome by those used to the greater degree of flexibility with this feature in other drawing programs. Use of the boxes is therefore strictly limited to what is essential for the identification of the person in the organization. In other drawing programs, the boxes will more likely be text boxes a user can use to insert whatever text is desired.

Placing an assistant box, for example, is limited to where OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional chooses to place it, and the user cannot click on and then move this box anywhere on the projected organizational chart. If so moved, the program interprets this as a level of authority and responsibility change, and will then assign its place on the chart in accordance with how this status level is related to its position on the chart.

In addition, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional does not offer anywhere near the number and complexity of additional shapes and templates that tend to come built into other drawing programs. In Visio, for example, the Visio organizational chart template design process is set up to run similar to OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, in the beginning, as a means of allowing for faster data entry of the names and titles of folks in a company. After the design of the chart is completed, the user then has more control over box placement, style and arrangement, all not necessarily allowed in OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional.

As a means of addressing these other customization needs, the OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional engineers have developed the program to integrate into Office XP, which means OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional replaces the existing MS Organizational Chart object. While this does open up the MS Organizational Chart object to more features, OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional may not totally replace existing drawing programs used because of their more open environment. However, earlier versions of MS Office include an older version of OrgPlus that will clearly be improved upon with the use of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional.

However, most folks in clerical support or staff support roles, especially in a Human Resource function, assigned the responsibility to keep their company's organizational chart always up-to-date, will very likely find OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional to be their program of choice for this duty. With the newly added OrgViewer, HumanConcepts has firmly established this important program as the application of choice in many environments to accomplish this necessary task.

As is the case with any software program, the more features allowed in a program, the steeper would be the initial learning curve and the higher the prices. In the case of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional, HumanConcepts has focused on simplicity, control over the essentials necessary to create organizational charts, and a very competitive price that results in a very useful program even for companies already using other drawing programs for their organizational charting needs.

Target Customers

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional is targeted for any organization that needs to develop and distribute professional charts of organizational structure. The most likely targeted group that would work with the program is the Human Resource department, where the updates to the comings and goings of staff in the organization are usually always first known. The use of the OrgViewer is also highly important in these larger organizations, as the HR folks strive to keep the entire workforce updated on these constant changes.

Recommendation

I highly recommend OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional for these uses, as well as in organizations already committed to other drawing programs, such as Visio, for support of their organizational charting needs. With the integration into MS Office a possible issue, I also suggest staff work with their Information Systems support to be sure their install process helps prevent replication of any similar file problems. However, with a focused use in select functional areas, this issue should be easily controlled and rectified, presenting a nicely designed program that will likely fit well in their existing Office applications.

System Configuration Requirements

IBM or compatible 486 processor or higher
Win 95, 98, 98 SE, ME, NT 4(SP 3 or higher), 2000, XP
16MB RAM (Win 98, ME)
32MB RAM (Win NT 4, SP 3 or higher)
64MB RAM (Win 2000, XP)
30MB free hard disk space minimum
Microsoft compatible mouse
VGA 256 colors monitor minimum
Keyboard and mouse
CD ROM drive for install

These are the company listed minimum requirements, and as most folks know, you just never ever want to depend on software in any minimally configured machine. I recommend users seriously consider 64 MB as the minimum RAM, and of course, the faster the processor, the more responsive the system. The size of hard disk space needed varies according to the size of OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional files saved.

About HumanConcepts, LLC.

HumanConcepts provides industry-leading tools to assist organizations in visualizing and communicating their organizational structure and in managing changes to the way in which they are organized.

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional's functionality spans the disciplines of Enterprise Resource Planning, Human Capital Management, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Development. HumanConcepts refers to what they do as Organizational Change Management; the discipline and process of managing change - visualizing, planning, and communicating.

OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional has become an essential management tool for millions of professionals worldwide, in organizations of every type. Over 400 of the Fortune 500 have selected OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional. Based on knowledge shared by thousands of these OrgPlus 4.0 SE Professional users, HumanConcepts has defined methodologies for organization charting best practices that are being embraced everyday by companies worldwide. HumanConcepts is a privately held company based in Mill Valley, California.