The present invention provides a system and method for configuring an application via a visual map interface. The method involves providing a visual map into which a user can enter configuration data for the application. The visual map includes predefined topics that correspond to configurable portions of the application, and the user enters the configuration data as subtopics to the predefined topics. The predefined topics may be defined by a programmer or system administrator for the configurable application. When the configurable application requests the configuration data, the applicable data entered into the subtopics is sent to the configurable application.