Adding custom data to your Lucidchart diagrams can help
improve your organization's documentation by embedding the
unique knowledge of all of your team members into a shared
document without creating cluttered mayhem.
Having this depth of information organized and all
in one place creates a single source of truth that is
standardized and easy to use.
First, let's cover when to use custom data versus data linking.
You'll want to use custom data when you're building a new diagram,
or you have a complete diagram but you need to embed
additional information that doesn't already exist in a
separate spreadsheet.
If the data you want to embed is already documented elsewhere,
you'll want to use data linking to bring that information into your diagram.
Or if you've already data linked to your diagram,
but there is more you need to add,
you can use custom data to add it. To learn more about data
linking, be sure to check out
training.lucid.co.
Now that we know when to use custom data,
let's cover how to add custom data to a new diagram as you
start building it.
Let's say we want to visualize our daily stand-up process to
help onboard a new project manager.
As we start building out our diagram,
we first want to consider,
"What information would be helpful for a new project
manager to have?"
Being intentional by planning what custom data we want to include,
will help save us time as we continue building out our diagram.
For each step in our stand-up process,
let's include the average time it takes and a description.
There isn't an existing spreadsheet that contains this
information, so let's keep going and add our custom data.
Let's create our first process shape, we'll call it
"casual catch-up".
And then we'll open the contextual panel.
We'll select the data tab and new data field. Now we see
the custom data panel and a line called property one.
Let's call our property one "Time".
And we'll insert the unique data here, which is five minutes.
Note that as you're filling out the Time field,
or any field that includes a number measurement,
you'll want to use only the number in the unique field.
This makes it easier for Lucidchart to read the diagram later on,
because it won't be trying to read numbers and text in the
same field. That's why with Time, for example, I'll put
minutes in the title,
and then only the number in the unique data field.
Now let's click the plus button to add property two and rename
it "Description".
We'll add the unique data here.
Now if we select a different shape,
it doesn't have this custom data embedded.
So we can see that our custom data is successfully linked to
the shape we want. With the custom data attached to our shape,
maybe we realize that we want to surface a bit more
information on the shape itself so that the new project manager
can glean the most important information at a glance.
Maybe in addition to the step name,
we want time displayed on the shape. To do this,
we'll select our shape again,
then we'll navigate back to our metadata panel,
and we have two options here. On our data tab,
we can select the +T next to the data fields,
or we can go to the layout tab and check the box for time.
Both methods surface the text on the shape,
then we can style it to our liking.
It's important to note here that if we need to update the
data displayed on the shape,
we need to do it in the contextual panel because
changes made only to the information surfaced on the
shape will not be changed in the custom data field.
So be sure to make changes directly in the contextual
panel. And when you do, you can see it update on your shape.
Now that we've got our process shape ready to go,
we can start building the rest of the diagram.
We can copy and paste this shape to create more process
shapes, or another option is we can add it to a custom shape library.
Creating a custom shape library will allow us to save and
standardize the styling and data fields on the shapes we
want to reuse often.
To create our custom shape library,
we'll navigate to more shapes.
Then we'll select the plus button next to my libraries.
We'll name our library and select use selected shapes.
Now, we can see the library appear in the side panel.
Note here that before adding this process shape to the
custom shape library, I'm going to copy, paste,
and put in general filler text for the custom data.
Removing the specific data related to this shape in order
to create a sort of template shape can help prevent
confusion that may come as a result of already having
specific data attached the shape you want to save.
To save our template shape,
we'll simply drag and drop it directly from the diagram into
the custom shape library.
We can also add it to the library by right clicking on
the shape and selecting add to custom shape library.
We'll choose our library,
and now we have the option to name the template shape to add clarity.
Better yet,
we can favorite this library by clicking the little star to
save it to our side panel.
The solid star indicates that this custom library will now
appear each time we open a new Lucidchart document. All of
that intentional preparation on the front end will now save us
time as we build out our daily stand-up process diagram.
When we're done, we can see that as each shape is selected,
the related information populates in the contextual panel.
However, after taking another look at our diagram,
maybe we realize that a new project manager would also
benefit from knowing who on the team is typically responsible
for each step. To include this information,
let's add one more property field to all of our process shapes.
To do this efficiently,
we'll select all of the process shapes by using the shortcut,
select all shapes.
The title, start, and end shapes were also selected.
So we'll just hold the command or control key and click on
these shapes to remove them from the selection.
Next, we'll go back to the contextual panel,
make sure we're on the data tab, select the three dots, and
add new field.
Then we see the property one field, and let's add "Owner".
Because all of my process shapes are selected as I do
this, if I click on the canvas and select individual shapes,
I can see that this new Owner field was added to every shape
at the same time.
Let's keep going and add the specific information for Owner
to each shape.
As we think about adding specifics,
I'm noticing that these three steps are going to contain the
same information.
So I'm going to select those steps and add the owner
information to all of them all at once. Great. Now all of
those shapes have the Owner data filled out. But I
realized, oops, we forgot one.
I'll select one shape that has the information I want and the
other shape that I forgot.
Now in the contextual panel, I can see two categories:
shared and unique.
To add a field and information from one shape to another,
I'll just select these three dots and add to shared data.
Now both shapes contain shared Owner information.
Note here that you can select the button with the three dots
by the field title or the three dots by the unique data in
order to move the information to shared data. Both lead to
the same outcome.
With all our data in place and our shapes saved for future use,
we're ready to create visual cues and gather insights from
our data using conditional formatting and formulas.
Remember that the purpose of our diagram is to help onboard
our new project manager. As we look at our diagram,
it's not immediately obvious that the description
information is embedded in each of these shapes.
So to make our diagram more user-friendly,
let's create a visual cue that indicates a description is
included for each step.
To do this, we'll go to our conditional formatting window.
We'll select create rule. Let's call our rule "Description".
Now,
we want Lucid to read the custom data we've added to our
shapes, so we'll select shape data, description,
is not empty because we want the conditional formatting to
appear on any shape that has information in the description
data field. Then use formatting, icons, icon library,
let's do the "i", meaning information, and make it gray.
Then we'll toggle on custom hover text and include
something like "Description in contextual panel", save.
Remember to check that our conditional formatting is
applied to all shapes. Then we'll select the
"i" icon to see our conditional formatting applied.
To highlight different information,
we can add more conditional formatting rules and turn them
on and off as needed.
If we want to simplify even further and remove the need for
the new project manager to look at the contextual panel for
description information,
we can actually use a formula to make the description
information appear right in the hover text. To do this,
we'll go back to our conditional formatting rules
and in the custom hover text area, we'll write this formula.
These brackets "{{" tell Lucid that a formula is being used.
The "=" is the start of the formula syntax.
The "@" applies the formula to whichever object we happen to
be looking at. And the title in quotes
"Description" tells Lucid which custom data field to pull the
information from.
We'll hit save, we'll make sure the formatting is applied,
and we'll hover over the information icon.
Now the unique description text will appear for each shape.
Last but not least,
it could be beneficial for a new project manager to know how
long to expect the stand-up meeting to last.
Instead of adding all the minutes ourselves,
we can use a formula so that Lucid will automatically total
the time for us.
Since we want to add all of the time values in all of the
shapes on this page,
we're going to click on a blank space and in the contextual
panel, we can now see that there's a data tab for page.
We'll add a property title and call it "Total Time".
Then in the data field, we'll type this formula.
So this is how we tell Lucid to sum or add together every descendant,
meaning anything below the page level with data related to time.
Now we hit enter,
and we can see that our minutes have been automatically totaled.
Now to display this information, let's go to our
terminator "End" shape.
We'll add a custom data property and call it "Total
Time". And in our custom data field,
we'll type another formula.
This means that Lucid is going to read the page data,
the data we just entered, and it's going to pull that value.
If we go back to our terminator shape,
we can hit the +T button and add the label and the value,
we can format it how we'd like, and now, if any of the time
data changes in any of the process shapes, the total time
will also adjust because the formula is automatically
totaling that data for us.
And there you have it. With custom data, we added depth to
our diagram while keeping our documentation clean and organized,
easy for the new project manager to use.
For more videos like this one,
be sure to visit training.lucid.co.