How to turn a written process into a flowchart

Open the example and take a copy

Open the incident triage and escalation flowchart, then click Edit a copy. The copy opens in the editor with all 19 objects — the published example stays untouched, and no account is needed.

Rename the steps to your words

Double-click a shape to edit it in place; Enter commits, Escape cancels. In the test run Alert received became Triage new alert and the object count stayed at 19, so the connectors stayed attached.

Delete what is not yours, then add what is

Strip the branches your process does not have. Add work with Insert → Rectangle (a step), Insert → Diamond (a decision), Insert → Text (a swimlane label or note); drag from a shape’s edge to draw the next arrow. The test run’s Insert → Rectangle took the canvas from 3 objects to 4.

Tidy the layout

Drag shapes into left-to-right reading order and use Insert → Layout… when the routing gets messy. Keep the decision diamond in the reading line so the branches read as a fork, not a tangle.

Save it as a file you own

File → Save (or Ctrl+S) downloads diagram.diagramly; File → Open… reopens it later. That file is your insurance — a flowchart you can move between machines and teams without a licence conversation.

Open the Mermaid import

Insert → Mermaid… or File → Import Mermaid… opens the Import Mermaid dialog: “Paste Mermaid flowchart or graph syntax to convert it into editable diagramsnow shapes and connectors. Edge labels work best with the |label| syntax.” It also offers Load Mermaid File, and an import mode of Replace or Append.

Paste the flow

This is the exact text used in the test run — five nodes, one decision, labels on both branches:

flowchart TD
  A[Start incident] --> B{Page on-call?}
  B -- yes --> C[Acknowledge page]
  B -- no --> D[Escalate to backup]
  C --> E[Post status update]
  D --> E

Click Import Mermaid

The canvas went from 4 objects to 14: the five steps, the branch labels and the connectors, all normal editable shapes. Append keeps what is already on the canvas; Replace starts from the paste alone.

Then treat it like a drawing

Rename, colour, regroup and delete freely from here. The import is a starting layout, not a locked view — nothing stays tied to the text you pasted.