Excalidraw Tutorial for Business Analysts: Your First Flowchart
Excalidraw is a free hand-drawn whiteboard that runs in your browser, with no account. Learn the basics a business analyst needs: draw boxes and a decision, type labels, glue arrows to shapes, label the paths and add a colour, using an online shop checkout flow.
Step by step
A free sketch whiteboard
- Excalidraw for BAs. Excalidraw is a free hand-drawn whiteboard that runs in your browser, and you don't need an account. It's handy for quick process sketches in a workshop. Here we sketch the checkout flow of an online shop.
- excalidraw.com. Go to excalidraw.com. The canvas opens empty and ready to use, and all the drawing tools sit in the toolbar at the top.
Boxes and labels
- Draw a box. Pick the rectangle in the toolbar, or press R, and drag on the canvas to draw a box. Press Enter and type Add to cart. The label sits inside the box. Draw the next box to the right, a little wider, and label it Enter address in the same way.
Glue the arrows
- Arrows. Pick the arrow and drag from the edge of Add to cart to the edge of Enter address. Excalidraw glues the arrow to both boxes.
- Decision. A diamond is a decision. Draw a diamond after Enter address and type a short question in it: Paid?
- Arrows. Then glue a second arrow from Enter address to the decision diamond in the same way.
Label the paths
- Label the paths. If the payment went through, the order ships. Draw a box to the right of the diamond and label it Ship order. Draw an arrow from Paid? to Ship order, then press Enter and type Yes. Every path out of a decision needs a label. If the payment fails, the customer tries again. Draw a box under the diamond and label it Try again. Draw an arrow down from Paid? to Try again, press Enter and label it No.
- Loop back. After a new try, the customer checks the address again. Draw one more arrow from Try again back up to Enter address. That makes a loop.
- Colour. To make the decision stand out, select the Paid? diamond and pick a soft yellow background in the panel on the left.
- The finished flow. Click an empty spot on the canvas to see the finished sketch: boxes for the steps, a diamond for the decision, and Yes and No labels on its paths.
Recap
- The rules. The rules: pick a tool and drag to draw, press Enter to add a label, and drag arrows from edge to edge so they stick. Label every path out of a decision.
Common mistakes
- Arrows that don't stick to the shapes. If an arrow starts or ends on empty canvas, it isn't glued, so moving a box leaves the arrow behind. Drag from the edge of one shape to the edge of the next.
- Unlabelled paths out of a decision. A diamond with 2 plain arrows doesn't say which way is which. Select each arrow, press Enter and type Yes or No.
- Labels typed as loose text. Text typed on the empty canvas is a separate item and won't move with the box. Select the shape first and press Enter, so the label sits inside it.
- Long questions in the diamond. Keep the decision short, like Paid?, so it fits inside the diamond and people can read it at a glance.
When a business analyst uses this
In a discovery workshop, sketch the current process live on a shared screen while stakeholders talk it through: a box for each step, a diamond for each decision and labelled Yes and No paths. Gaps show up fast, such as a decision with only one path. You can then tidy the sketch into a formal process map.
Questions people ask
Is Excalidraw free?
Yes. Excalidraw is a free whiteboard that runs in your browser at excalidraw.com.
Do you need an account to use Excalidraw?
No. Open excalidraw.com and you can start drawing on the empty canvas straight away.
How do you connect arrows to shapes in Excalidraw?
Pick the arrow and drag from the edge of one shape to the edge of the next. Excalidraw glues the arrow to both shapes.
