Step through your diagram using the explore plugin

This plugin should be used as-is, as an unsupported example for developers.

The explore plugin allows you to step through your diagram from the point of view of a shape (or a node) in your diagram. When you explore from a shape, you can click on the paths away from and to that shape, without the distraction of the rest of your potentially complex diagram.

This is useful for exploring complex organisation charts, mind maps, UML class diagrams, flow charts and more.

More information about draw.io plugins

Load the explore plugin

Explore a diagram

Once you have loaded the explore plugin, right click on a shape to see the context menu, and select Explore from here, which should be at the bottom of the menu.

This will open your diagram in the lightbox, showing on the shape you selected and its connected shapes.

Using the explore plugin to step through a complex org chart

Permanently load the plugin

If you want to always be able to explore your diagrams like this, add the explore plugin to the plugins list to load it each time you create or edit a diagram.

  1. From the menu, select Extras > Plugins.
    Open the plugins list
  2. Click Add.
    <img src=”/assets/img/blog/add-plugin.png”style=”width=100%;max-width:200px;height:auto;” alt=”Add a new plugin”>
  3. Select ex in the drop-down list of built-in plugins, then click OK.
    Add the explore plugin
  4. Click Apply.
    Add the explore plugin

Reload your browser tab to load the plugin into the diagram editor.

Share a diagram so it can be explored

By default, diagrams published to URLs do not load plugins.

To allow someone to explore your diagram, when you publish a diagram to a URL (File > Publish Link), add the &p=ex URL parameter to the link before you share it (as highlighted in blue in the screenshot below).

Share a link to your diagram and enable the explore plugin

Note: Plugins work with the web version of draw.io (app.diagrams.net) or our Docker image if you want to run your own server. They do not work with draw.io for Confluence/Jira or with draw.io Desktop.