Back in the early noughties, I was part of a start-up company to to visualise the risks of any dependency system. We used Visio, of course, to map operational components and assets into a hierarchy of dependencies that simply displayed the roll-up of perceived risk. One of the demonstration diagrams that we (mainly Humphrey Tizard) constructed in 2003 was for a global pandemic. How prophetic that seems now!
The easy to read RAG status of each element makes it simple to grasp the relationships of risk quickly, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the Red status of Vaccinate. That is exactly where we are at now.
I have often mused on re-vamping this visual risk analysis solution to take advantage of the newer capabilities of Visio desktop and the integration with the web, but, for now, I have simply added in a custom callout shape that displays the contents of the associated Description values in the Shape Data section.
You can view the above diagram in your browser (Pandemic Control), and you can read more about this solution at VRA makes the case for Prudential
Linking Data to Visio Shapes in Code
One of the most useful capabilities of Visio Professional and Visio Plan 2 is to link external data to shapes and have them refreshed by changes in the data source. So, many of my solutions involve writing code to make these links, and they are covered with some VBA examples in my book, Mastering Data…
Visio Shape Report Converter Excel add-in available
I am delighted to announce that I have just had my first Excel add-in accepted in the Office Add-ins Store! It is called Shape Report Converter because all it does is convert a Shape Report converted from Visio for Desktop to a modern Excel table with one click! It isn’t a complicated add-in, and it…
A Multi-Time Zone Clock for Visio
I wrote a post about making a clock face in Visio fifteen years ago, but a reader recently asked about displaying multiple time zones. Well, I have previously written about time zones in Visio, so I accepted the challenge to improve upon my earlier work. (more…)
Update any Visio ShapeSheet cell with External Data
When Microsoft introduced a new way of linking external data to Visio shapes in 2007, I initially bemoaned the inability to update anything but Shape Data row values, unlike the old database add-on that I had been using for 10 years. The new method, though, has many advantages over the old way, not least that…
Understanding Morse Clicks with Visio
A few years ago, I wrote an article about messaging and encryption inspired by a visit to the National Museum of Computing in the UK. I developed a Morse Click shape to demonstrate how Visio can be used to represent and learn Morse Code. However, I never published the shapes here, and my good friend…
Using a formula for Shape Data labels prevents multiple updates
I have only been developing Visio solutions for 25 years, but I got a surprise this week when I was trying to understand why I couldn’t update the value of a Shape Data row of multiple selected shapes. It is something that I often do, so it took me a while to understand why I…
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