Well, MS Ignite is over for another year. I planned to visit loads of sessions, but the reality was that I spent many hours on the Visio booth. Fortunately, many of them were recorded, including ours, but I don’t have time to watch over 700 videos! So, I looked through them all and picked out 50-odd, and used Get & Transform in Excel again to create suitable queries to link to Visio.
The more I use PowerQuery, the more I like it. I was able to extract the unique values in the Personas, Tags, and Products columns which each contained comma separated lists. I data-linked these values to large circles on different pages, and data-linked the Sessions to Watch to hexagonal shapes. I then wrote a little VBA code to link the circles to the hexagons with data-linked connectors. Data Graphics was applied to all shapes, including the connectors, and a legend added. Each of the Session hexagons have an automatically created hyperlink to the On-Demand Video. I used a standard radial page layout so that I had minimal manual movement shapes.
The end result is a visual dashboard by Persona, Tag and Product to open the videos for the sessions I want to watch.
bVisual Blog by David Parker
Updates from MSIgnite Visio booth
Yesterday was the first proper day at MS Ignite Conference, and we had an extremely busy day on the Visio booth. There was a lot of interest in the Visio Online Preview and Visio on iPad that we had on show, and of course, the cool data linking features in Visio.
You may still be able to sign up for the Visio on iPad Insider Program using this link. It requires a short survey, and you must be part of an organization. Also, there is more information about the Visio Online Preview using this link .
Packt have kindly provided two discount codes for my book during the conference. Use ‘MVPeBK15’ for 15% off the RRP off the printed version, or ‘MVPeBK50’ for 50% off the RRP of the eBook at bit.ly/1SeVfwW
Visio Rocks for Flag Semaphore … or another use of Lists
My good friend and fellow Visio MVP, John Goldsmith, aka visualSignals.typepad.co.uk, was telling me about a family visit to a semaphore tower over the weekend. Well, I just couldn’t resist making a flag semaphore shape in Visio. First, I looked up semaphore up Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_semaphore .
The character can easily be changed with the Shape Data panel … and watch the arms rotate … best with a wheel mouse rolling up and down in the Character drop-down
[Read more…] about Visio Rocks for Flag Semaphore … or another use of ListsUsing the Cross-Functional Flowchart Phases in Visio
The cross-functional flowchart template is possibly one that I use most frequently, and I do like the way that the Function Shape Data value is automatically evaluated from the Swimlane that is is within. But why did Microsoft issue the template without the same feature for the Phases? This article describes how to fix that issue, and is also a plea to Microsoft to correct it in a future release….
So, all of the flowchart shapes contain a Shape Data row named Function, as in the following screenshot, and the value is automatically updated to that entered into the Swimlane header. If the user updates the header text, or moves the shape between lanes, then the value gets updated.
[Read more…] about Using the Cross-Functional Flowchart Phases in VisioHow to play Yahtzee with Visio
The holidays are almost over, so I now present my Yahtzee game in Visio just using ShapeSheet formulas …. no VBA or add-in! Pretty soon, I will have a whole compendium of games, but I think this is my most complete yet. Yahtzee is very similar to Poker Dice, but we used to play Yahtzee a lot as kids, so maybe I am regressing. Anyway, setting these games up in Visio demonstrates the power of the ShapeSheet functions, which is necessary for the creation of efficient Visio shapes. I have also made the Dice Racks into List containers that can only hold the Die List Item shapes.
A Visio Countdown to Xmas
I presented a Visio deck of cards in a previous post ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/12/03/a-visio-deck-of-cards/ ), and now I present a real game that can be played with Visio over the holiday season. Countdown is a British TV programme with word and number puzzles. It was the first programme to be aired on Channel 4, and 70 series have been broadcast since its debut on 2 November 1982. With over 6,000 episodes, Countdown is one of the longest-running game shows in the world, along with the original French version, Des chiffres et des lettres, which has been running on French television continuously since 1965. Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_%28game_show%29.
[Read more…] about A Visio Countdown to Xmas