Knowledge Mappers New Calendar Maps Take Advantage Of MindManagers Unique Information Mapping Functionality Up Until 2030 [New & Updated Maps]

Last October we blogged about the expansion of our catalogue of calendar maps. Well we’ve just finished another calendar “map sprint” and we have dramatically expanded it again. At the same time we took the opportunity to enhance all our calendar maps to take advantage of MindManagers unique embedded spreadsheet functionality, making them even more versatile in helping users plan ahead and have their best, most organised (and most informed!) years ever!

Purpose of Our Calendar Maps

First off though a quick review of the benefits of our calendar maps for those who haven’t yet discovered them. Their purposes is at least 3-fold (but we’re sure you can think of more):-

• Stand-Alone Calendars – They can be used as stand-alone calendar maps to record whatever you would want to in as much chronological detail as you require, be it for work, family, hobbies, personal journal or blog, whatever.
• Source Templates – They can be used as a source template to add calendar branches to other maps. The fact that entries can incorporate hyperlinks to websites or other documents, text and images as well as extracts from other maps, and that significant public events are already listed (even for events that shift around the calendar every year eg. Easter), makes it a very powerful tool for self-organisation, forward planning and time management. Just as importantly though it will serve as a fantastic historical record of your year, not to mention digital archiving tool.
• Public Education Resources – Users can discover further information about the public events in the world and perhaps make a connection that they wouldn’t otherwise have done.

Since we first created them though the basic design hasn’t changed much, so we thought to ourselves “this time round, how can we make our calendar maps even better? What additional elements of all the great (and incidentally unique amongst information mapping software) Mindmanager functionality can we incorporate into them to make the user experience even better?” Well …..

New Embedded Spreadsheet Monthly Calendars

Each monthly main branch in all our calendar maps now has an embedded spreadsheet calendar showing the whole month in a traditional calendar grid layout. This utilises one of MindManagers unique topic properties funtions that enables users to embed spreadsheets of their own design (amongst other types of data objects) into topic branches. This greatly enhances the utility of the Calendar Map:-

• At-a-glance overview of the month – The more “conventional” grid layout provides a complete overview of the month in a single galnce.
• More recording options – An embedded spreadsheet gives users an additional space in which to record time-based information. For example users could block off personal dates in the embedded calendar such as kids school holidays etc,. and use the days of the month sub-branches for “work”.
• More information mapping functionality options – Take advantage of spreadsheet functionality like adding comments to individual cells on the calendar grid.
• Easy Hide and Show toggle – All Topic Properties in MindManager (such as embedded spreadsheets) have a simple hide/show toggle arrow on the topic. Thus these extra calendars don’t take up any extra screen space, simply hide them if they are not required.

As with every aspect of our maps, users are free to adapt the look and layout to suit themselves.

Expanded Time Horizon

It has always been our aim to have Basic Calendar maps available for the next 5 years, and the more comprehensive Standard Calendar maps for the next 2 years. Thus we usually have at least one calendar map “sprint” event in the second half of each year to “top up” the catalogue.

Well the Production Department were so excited by the new format that they got very carried away with themselves and created Basic Calendar maps up to and including 2030 (a nice “Brucie Bonus” for all our customers :-)). This greatly expanded time horizon means we can now commit ourselves to ensuring that we will always have Basic Calendar maps for at least the next 10 years available to download from our website.

Standard Calendar maps are more problematic as they require a lot more time and research to produce, especially the topic images that uniquely identify each day. Thus for this particular “map sprint” there has only been time to add the 2018 Standard Calendar map to the catalogue to maintain our 2 year time horizon, but we did “retro-fit” the existing back-catalogue so now all our standard calendar maps from 2013 to 2018 inclusive are now available in the new format. We will re-visit this during our next calendar map sprint, so please leave your feedback in the comments below. In the meanwhile we will always produce calendar maps for any year in response to specific requests from customers.

Calendar Map Types

So just to update our summary from the previous blog post of the range of calendar map types we have available….

Generic Calendar Maps

Generic Calendar Maps denote generic month & dates by text and graphic but do not identify individual days of the week.
Use our FREE generic calendar map to create your own basic annual planner maps for as many years into the future as you want (also available as a generic academic calendar).

Basic Calendar Maps

Basic Calendar Maps denote the actual year and month, and day of the month and day of the week by text and graphic, including weekdays and weekends. However unlike in our standard calendar map there are no sub-branches with notable diary events or links to the relevant web page(s) about them (eg. Wikipedia, United Nations).
Use our Basic Calendars for planning of specific years. Because they are more straightforward for us to create, the next 10 years at least are always available on our online store.

Standard Calendar Maps

Standard Calendar Maps show months and days all uniquely identified by year, month, day and day of the week graphic and textual description.

There are also over 300 further sub-branches showing selected diary events of international public significance which contain links to the relevant web page(s) about them (eg. Wikipedia, United Nations). Events include:-

• Astronomical Events (lunar cycles, equinoxes etc.)
• Commemorative Days
• Cultural / Environmental / Health / Human Rights Issue Awareness Days
• Profession Awareness Days
• Major Religious Festivals
• United Nations Official Days
• Civil Observances

There are also nationally significant days & public holidays specific to a particular country. Currently we cover the United Kingdom and the United States, but there is also a general edition without national events for each year so you can add those for your own particular country.

Use our Standard Calendars for more detailed planning of specific years. Because they are more time-consuming for us to create, we are currently only committed to having standard calendar maps for the next 2 years available on our online store, but we are looking to extend this time horizon in the future.

Chronicle Maps

Chronicle Maps use our calendar map structure to link to a range of free “On this day in history…” websites (including the BBC and Wikipedia), thus making them the ultimate flexible resource for anybody who researches history and time-based information on a regular basis.

Use our Chronicle Maps for any sort of historical research tasks and creating bespoke historical timeline maps. Currently we only have generic chronicle maps available (ie. only linking to generic months and days of the month), however chronicles of specific years and days are on our product road map so watch this space!

Time Related Template Map

A Shoutout For Map For MindManager ®

Finally we need to acknowledge the fact that we couldn’t produce our calendar maps without the MAP for Mindmanager add-in created by the good people at Olympic Limited, one of our fellow Mindjet Value Added Partners that have been developing value add solutions for over 14 years!

The Mapping Action Pack (MAP) for MindManager is a veritable toolbox of additional commands (40 and rising with each quarterly release) that greatly expands the functionality of the software and makes working with topic properties like the embedded spreadsheet a “breeze”:-

• Show/Hide Custom Properties – Show/Hides ALL Custom Properties (such as embedded spreadsheet calendars) on a map with one click (you have to toggle each one individually in MindManager itself).
  Click here for more details from the MapformindManager website.
• Property Clipboard – Enables copying and pasting of Custom Properties (such as embedded spreadsheet calendars) into other map branches.
  Click here for more details from the MapformindManager website.
• Sub-Topics to Markers – Converts the selected Topic and its Sub-Topics into a Map Marker Group and its Marker Tags. This will enable users to create bespoke time markers from their customised calendar to “time tag” branches on any map!
  Click here for more details from the MapformindManager website.

See the full list of MAP commands here.

“Once you’ve had MAP, you never go back!” Check out for yourself why MAP for MindManager® enables you to do more, do it quicker & do it slicker!