PRONOVIX

In February I wrote a blogpost on how Drupal Freemind 2.0 could be turned into a relational (semantic) data interface. So many months later we've abandoned the Java plugin in favour of a Flex plugin and with what result...

After I shared my ideas on the project, our Flex/services guru, Peter Arato, started working last week on what has become the Graphmind project. It's a module that allows you to work with mindmaps in Drupal that are compatible with Freemind. With building mindmaps I mean full CRUD, you can:

• create a mindmap node from scratch
• paste an existing .mm mindmap
• do CRUD on the nodes in the mindmap (yes that's namespace collision, but we can't help it)

But it is much more than a mindmap tool: the module integrates with Drupal services.

• it can render any view into mindmap branches
• you can add individual users, nodes or comments as a freemind branch
• if you use a view with an argument it will try to fill that argument using the data from the mindmap node for which you are trying to add that branch
• a freemind node that was created from a Drupal object has a hyperlink to that Drupal node

I am really excited about this module and I think that it holds an enormous potential. Some of the things you'll be able to use this for in the future:

• (re)organize/build taxonomies in a mindmap
• do project brainstorms/planning on a mindmap that uses data from your Open Atrium project management system
• display relationships between data objects in your Drupal database
• refresh or reuse a graph, to build a new mindmap with different data, but with the same relationship tree (e.g. most active user in the last 24 hours > posts of these users > comments on these posts > people that posted these comments)
• and somewhere not to far in the future: display SPARQL queries in mindmaps

You can find a screencast on the module in the Pronovix solution section Peter is still working on the module as part of a development sprint sponsored by Eureka! Ranch. So watch out for even more cool features.