Embedding an existing Draw.io diagram?

Shawn in Van December 27, 2017

I recently inherited a Confluence Cloud project and having little previous exposure to Confluence, I am not enjoying this experience.

At this point, I am uncertain is it's my ignorance of the tool and/or Confluence (and its macros) are very buggy. Please help me to love Confluence because I expect to have a long relationship with this tool. :)

This morning, I began working on a large document, transferring my draft work from Google Docs (which I know well) into Confluence. I needed to embed a Draw.io drawing into Confluence and after about ten minutes of experimenting (it's not intuitive!), I got it to work. Here are the required steps to embed an existing drawing, please tell me if I am doing this correctly:

  1. Insert Draw.io macro.
  2. Click Create blank diagram (inexplicably, there is no choice to select existing??).
  3. Select File > Import from > Device.
  4. Select from my Google Drive Sync folder the drawing (in HTML format).
  5. Click Open
  6. Click File > Save (inexplicably, I need to save as a new document??).
  7. Drawing is inserted into the Confluence document but it is severely vertically compressed. It only appears normal after the document is publish.

 

Observations and Questions

 

  1. I do not see the options shown on this page: 
    https://support.draw.io/display/DFCS/Adding+a+draw.io+Diagram+to+a+Confluence+Page
    ^ Those are instructions for the Confluence Server version. The cloud version instructions seem to assume that one is always starting with a blank diagram. (https://info.seibert-media.net/display/DRAWIO/draw.io+for+Confluence+-+User+Documentation)
  2. There must be a better way to embed exisiting Draw.io diagrams into Confluence? It's really annoying and somewhat time wasting that I must start with a blank drawing in order to insert an existing drawing.
  3. Why must I create a new copy of my drawings? Where is the new copy stored? Since many of my drawings are used in and out of Confluence, I am not at all comfortable that they are only accessible from Confluence. I would rather that the source files are kept in a more accessible Google Drive, which syncs to my local storage.
  4. It would be easier to insert an image but one of my requirements is to employ embedding for easier future edits. Like we did with Google Docs; Draw.io embedding works perfectly with Google Docs.

 

Thank you. :)

 

2 answers

5 votes
David Benson January 5, 2018

I would suggest to use https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.mxgraph.confluence.plugins.driveconnector/cloud/overview. It embeds files from Google Drive in your Confluence pages, including draw.io diagrams.

0 votes
Benji December 29, 2017

Didn't try yet, but can't you just move the exsisting draw.IO to the page?

Benji December 29, 2017

Sorry, see that this doesn't work.

When you create a new draw.IO drawing, you have the option to import it. Via that route you can get an exisiting drawing in.

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