How to Create an Org Chart with Orgivo

Updated

Orgivo is built to turn your existing organization structure into a finished org chart in minutes, not hours. The core workflow is: get your hierarchy into Orgivo, let it generate the chart, then adjust and share. This guide covers what to prepare, the general steps, and where people typically get stuck.

What Orgivo Is and Who It's For

Orgivo describes itself as a way to make "beautiful org charts without the hassle," with the promise of going "from structure to org chart in minutes." That positions it for anyone who already knows their reporting lines — HR teams, founders, operations managers, or team leads — and wants a presentable chart without hand-drawing boxes in a general design tool.

If you're starting from a blank canvas and don't yet know your hierarchy, Orgivo isn't the bottleneck; you are. Sort out the reporting structure first.

Before You Start: Gather Your Structure

Orgivo works from hierarchy data, so the real preparation happens before you open the tool. Have these ready:

  • Names and titles for each person or role you want on the chart.
  • Reporting lines — who reports to whom. This is the parent-child relationship that defines the chart's shape.
  • Groupings, if your org uses departments, teams, or functions that should appear as clusters.
  • A decision on scope — the whole company, one department, or a specific team. Charts get unwieldy fast, so pick a boundary.

A simple way to check your data is to write it as an indented list first:

CEO
  VP Engineering
    Backend Lead
    Frontend Lead
  VP Sales
    Account Executives

If that list reads correctly, your hierarchy is ready to become a chart.

Creating the Chart: The General Steps

The exact menu labels depend on the version of Orgivo you're using, so treat these as the shape of the workflow rather than a click-by-click script.

1. Start a new chart

Open Orgivo and begin a new org chart. You'll land in an empty or near-empty canvas with a root node — usually a placeholder for the top of your hierarchy.

2. Enter or import your hierarchy

This is the step that determines how much manual work you do. Two broad approaches:

  • Manual entry — add the top node, then add children under it, working down your list. Good for small teams or when you're building the structure as you go.
  • Import from existing data — if Orgivo accepts a pasted list, spreadsheet, or structured text, you can bring in a larger hierarchy at once. This is where the "minutes" claim pays off, because a 50-person org typed by hand is not a minutes-long job.

Expected result: after this step, every person or role appears as a node connected to its parent.

3. Generate and review the chart

Once the structure is in, Orgivo lays it out as a chart. Review it against your source list:

  • Does every node have the right parent?
  • Are any people missing or duplicated?
  • Do the groupings match how your org actually talks about itself?

4. Adjust layout and styling

Orgivo's pitch centers on charts that look good by default, so the styling step should be light: check that the layout is readable, that labels aren't cut off, and that the visual hierarchy makes the reporting lines obvious.

5. Export or share

Produce the final chart in whatever format you need — for a slide, a document, or a link to send to colleagues. Confirm the export looks the way it did on screen before you send it anywhere.

Common Places People Get Stuck

  • Messy source data. Duplicate names, missing managers, or people listed under two managers will produce a broken chart. Clean the list before importing, not after.
  • Trying to chart everything at once. A 200-person org chart is technically possible but rarely useful. Chart the level people actually need to see.
  • Assuming import handles any format. If Orgivo expects a specific structure, a loosely formatted spreadsheet may not map cleanly. Match your data to the expected shape first.
  • Skipping the review step. Auto-generated layouts can place nodes in ways that are technically correct but visually confusing. A two-minute check saves a redo.

A Quick Sanity Check

Before you call it done, ask: could someone who doesn't know your company read this chart and correctly say who reports to whom? If yes, you're finished. If not, the problem is almost always in the hierarchy data, not the styling.

Orgivo's value is speed — it removes the drawing work so you can focus on getting the structure right. The tool handles the layout; you still own the accuracy of the reporting lines.