Org Chart With Mermaid

Python code to turn a CSV file of employee details into an org chart that is human readable and editable.

Visualizing a fast changing organizational structure for investors, potential customers, and curious journalists is common in the startup space. Many other organizations also need a quick and easy way to create an org chart without learning Visio in detail or hiring an IT department.

The included Python script creates an org chart which can be exported to HTML and other formats. The output is easy to read and modify by people who consider themselves non-technical.

This script tries to hit the following requirements.

Want	MoSCoW Ranking
Multiple people maintain the list	Must
Simple workflow for non-tech end user	Must
Straight lines between nodes	Must
Employee IDs non-contiguous integers	Must
Update the employee list constantly	Should
Easy to embed in a department web page	Should
Easy to export to an image file	Should
Use of identifying icons for rank	Should
Use different shapes, colours for visual identity	Could

The sample CSV is tab-delineated and based on Peter Stark's Chinook sample database, which is used in the excellent SQLite Tutorial site.

The Python script requires two modules: SQLAlchemy and Pandas. Python throws errors if these are not available. To install both, in the Terminal use pip:

pip install sqlalchemy pandas

Usage

1. Download the package.
2. Modify the CSV file (it should open in any spreadsheet program).
3. Save the modified CSV file (select tab-separated-values (TSV) format) into the same folder as the script.
4. Modify the Python script to output the desired information and format.
5. Run the script.
6. Copy the Markdown output into a program that handles Mermaid like Obsidian, Notion, Hackmd.io, etc. For the latest features like Markdown strings and FontAwesome icons, use the Mermaid live editor without the lines starting with 3 backtics `.

A detailed review of Mermaid and the code's inner workings is available in this blog post.