Creating Flowcharts in Microsoft Office Just Got Whole a Lot Easier

BreezeTree Software announced it has released FlowBreeze 1.2, an update of its Microsoft Excel flowchart software add-in. The software program enables users of Microsoft Office drawing tools to automate the generation of flowcharts.

The product marks the continued development of a business diagramming platform integrated into Excel. Included in this update are automatic symbol sizing and layout, better flowcharting interactivity, and more convenience features, such as automatic capitalization, expanded toolbar functions, and a flowchart symbol rules cheat sheet.

"We're starting to see a lot of buzz out there about FlowBreeze," said Nicholas Hebb, founder of BreezeTree Software. "Not only do people like how easy it is to make flowcharts with, but they're also realizing that integrating flowcharts into an analytical tool like Excel makes sense on a whole lot of levels."

"When FlowBreeze was launched, we envisioned our typical customer to be a knowledge worker creating ISO 9000 process documentation or perhaps involved in the Lean Six Sigma project. What we've found is that it's a flowchart world. We've seen educational and curriculum flowcharts, human resource flowcharts, purchasing and ordering flowcharts, finance and accounting flowcharts, programming code flowcharts, legal flowcharts, and just about every type of business process flowchart imaginable. Small businesses and entrepreneurs have played an important part of our market, and we're proud to provide a product that our customers value."

Most flowchart software requires the user to do a lot of drag and drop. FlowBreeze Excel flowcharting add-in works differently. It lets the user just enter the text into a cell. Then FlowBreeze analyzes the text and generates a flowchart symbol based on a set of customizable rules. FlowBreeze also automates a number of other common tasks such as sizing the flowchart symbols, adding flow line connectors, and creating flowchart symbol keys.

One feature that is a huge time saver and a big hit among customers is the list-to-flowchart generator. It allows a user to copy a list of process steps from another text document (e.g. Microsoft Word), paste it into the FlowBreeze environment, and have a basic flowchart generated on the fly.

A popular side-benefit of FlowBreeze is the built-in collaboration ability. With the near ubiquity of Microsoft Office worldwide, FlowBreeze users can create Excel flowcharts and readily share them with customers and colleagues. The flowcharts can easily be copied into Word or PowerPoint and viewed, edited, or maintained by anyone - without having to purchase a separate, expensive and complicated drawing software tool.

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About BreezeTree Software, LLC

BreezeTree Software, headquartered in Sherwood, Oregon, was founded in 2005 with the mission of providing business diagramming and productivity tools for quality management.