Animated and Change Views: Walking a Diagram Through Time in Revelation
Most architecture diagrams show one moment: the estate as it is, or as it's planned to be. Neither on its own answers the question a transformation programme actually gets asked — how do we get from here to there? Showing the whole journey as one static diagram usually means drawing every system that ever existed, coloured by some ad-hoc key, with arrows nobody can follow.
Revelation lays a diagram out once and then steps through it: elements appear, disappear, and change without anything moving between steps. The same mechanism serves two different jobs. An animation only brings elements on, building a diagram up piece by piece for an audience. A timeline also takes elements off and marks them changed — an as-is to-be transformation roadmap, with every step coloured by what happened in it.
Open the Revelation EA tool and follow along with either example below.
An animation: building a diagram up one step at a time
Both examples below use the same model, so the only thing that changes between them is the kind of steps it has. Open Menu ▸ Browse reference models…, and under Getting Started pick Basic C4 — four elements (a Customer, an Order Management system, a Payment Gateway, and an Order Database) connected by three interactions. Drawn all at once it's a complete, if small, picture; as an animation it becomes the order flow told in order.
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Add steps to the view
Choose Layout ▸ Add steps to this view. The view opens at the Initial state, showing just the Customer and Order Management — nothing else exists until a step brings it on. -
Add two steps
Click + Step twice on the step bar. With no T-numbered steps already on this view, they're named Step 1 and Step 2. -
Choose when each system arrives
Click the Payment Gateway and set its Arrives at to Step 1; click the Order Database and set it to Step 2. -
Step through it
Press Edit to finish, then use ◀ ▶ on the step bar. Step 1 brings in the Payment Gateway and the Payment Details interaction that reaches it; Step 2 brings in the Order Database and the Order Record interaction. Nothing that's already on screen ever moves.
Save the model, or Layout ▸ Save as a new view…, and the animation is kept with it — anyone who opens the model gets the same build-up.
A change view: the same idea, with something marked as changed
A timeline is an animation that can also retire and change things — which is what a transformation roadmap actually needs. Starting fresh from the same Basic C4 model, build the same two steps as above, but this time tick the Order Database's arrival at Step 2 as also changing the Payment Gateway: once orders are recorded, the Payment Gateway's own integration changes to reference them.
| Step | Arrives | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| Initial state | Customer, Order Management | — |
| T1 | Payment Gateway | — |
| T2 | Order Database | Payment Gateway |
The only difference from the animation above is one tick in the Change checklist — but the moment any step takes something away or marks it changed, the view becomes a timeline rather than a plain animation. Rename the steps T1 and T2 (the ✎ control on the step bar) and this becomes the model's Roadmap: saving the model writes START, END and CHANGE onto the Payment Gateway and Order Database directly, the same properties Revelation has always used to mark a transition.
What the colours mean: step forward with ◀ ▶ and watch New systems arrive and, at T2, the Change colour mark the Payment Gateway. A larger roadmap can also show Retired for something that leaves (still drawn, so you can see exactly what's going) and Interim for something that arrives and leaves in the same step — neither needed here, but both work the same way: set a Leaves at step on anything you want to retire. The Changes toggle on the step bar is on by default for a timeline like this one; turn it off to see each state plainly, with no colouring.
Making your own
Both examples use exactly the same mechanism — a timeline is simply an animation that also has somewhere to send things:
- Start it from Layout ▸ Add steps to this view, or press Edit on an existing step bar.
- + Step adds a step after the one on screen; ✎ renames it, ⇠ ⇢ moves it earlier or later, and ???? deletes it.
- Click any element on the diagram to set Arrives at (Initial state, or any step), Leaves at (Never, or any step from there on), and tick Change against any step it's altered in.
- Each element has exactly one arrival and one departure — setting either replaces whatever was there before, so there's no separate "bring it back" action; move or clear Leaves at instead.
You don't have to use the step bar at all to build a roadmap: typing directly into a system or interaction's START, END and CHANGE columns in the table works too, exactly as it always has — Revelation keeps a Roadmap view in step with whichever one you edit. The first view you ever add steps to becomes the model's timeline; every other view's steps are an animation of its own and write nothing back to the model.
Try it
Open the Basic C4 model and build both versions yourself, or add steps to a view of your own model — an animation to present it, or a timeline to plan the move from where you are to where you're going.
The model used in this article is available from Menu ▸ Browse reference models… under Getting Started, or directly at basic.json.