I’m looking to build an interactive web-based org chart for a large organization. I somewhat like the interface at ancestry.com where you can hover over people and pan/zoom around and click on different nodes to make them the root.
Ideally, I’d like it if people could belong to multiple organizational entities like committees, working groups, etc. In other words the API should support graphs in general, not just trees.
I’d like to be able to visually explode each organizational substructure into substituents by clicking on it, with a nice animation of the employees ballooning or spilling out so you can really interactively drill down through the organization.
I found http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/orgchart.html but it looks a bit rudimentary.
I know there are desktop tools like OrgPlus and Visio that can build static charts but I’m really looking for a free, web-based API with open standards-based output like SVG or HTML5 Canvas elements rather than Flash or some proprietary output. Something I can embed into a custom web application and style myself. Something interactive.
There is this one for asp.net but I have only ever added it to my bookmarks so I can’t vouch for how standards compliant it is:
Something you should also consider when you are looking in to this is your charting requirements. Many org charts only support a single top node. If you wanted to map a family tree for example then this might not be the case.