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bVisual Blog by David Parker

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Using JavaScript to Display Visio Shape Data and Hyperlinks in SharePoint Content Editor

I like embedding Visio diagrams into SharePoint web pages, but I am not too enamoured with the Shape Info panel and the popup hyperlinks menu because they clutter the diagram surface. So, I thought I would take some time to make an html document that can be included in a Content Editor web part. This html document includes JavaScript to read the hyperlinks and Shape Data of each selected shape, and, besides providing the opportunity to style the resultant table, allows you to interpret the content of the Shape Data values, and even the hyperlinks. I have shown an example where the multiple hyperlinks on the selected shape are clickable in the top list, and those interpreted from the values in Shape Data rows are clickable, and listed below the regular Shape Data rows. Of course, I could have combined the two types of hyperlinks into one list, separated from the regular Shape Data. Note that the values in the built-in Shape Info panel are not clickable. 

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So, this means that I can do away with the Shape Info panel and the hyperlinks popup within the Visio Web Access control, and provide hyperlinks, buttons, images, media files, or whatever, in the Content Editor html document. Therefore, I untick the Show the Shape Information Pane option, and tick the Disable Hyperlink option in the web part editor.

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Creating a Schema from Visio External Data record sets

Visio introduced External Data record sets in 2007, and I have made great use of them ever since. Visio 2013 has deprecated reverse engineering of databases to produce a schema, which was a function that I loved to use because it allowed me to provide clients with up to date, annotated, enhanced schema diagrams. Microsoft have, however, provided some nice database schema templates in Visio 2013 Professional, so I thought I would provide a way to use the External Data record sets to produce schema diagrams.

I have created a new custom stencil, based upon the IDEF1X Database Notation template in Visio 2013 Professional, and have added some macros to provide the guided diagramming. I say guided because page position of tables and relationships are left to you, but the macros will create table definitions from External Data record sets.

All of the three database notation templates contain an Entity and an Attribute master. In fact, they also have a Primary Key Attribute master too, but this is identical to the Attribute master, apart from a setting to say it is the primary key. This can be done from the Attribute shape anyway, so I will dispense with the Primary Key Attribute master.

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New Visio book out now!

After the trip to Hyderabad for the Visio MVP Conference, as described in my previous post, my wife and I went to Bangalore, Vadodara, and Mumbai. This gave me the chance to drop-in on Packt Publishing because this is the week that my new book is published ( see http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-visio-2013-business-process-diagramming-and-validation/book ). The book’s title is Microsoft Visio 2013 Business Process Diagramming and Validation, and, although this is an update to my 2010 book (with an extra chapter for integration with Office365 and SharePoint 2013), it should resonate with a wider audience because Microsoft decided to merge the Premium and Professional editions into one Professional edition for Visio 2013, so that it now includes Visio Services and Validation. This means that there are millions more Visio users who can take advantage of validation rules to ensure that they have well-constructed diagrams in Visio. I would also like to stress that validation rules can be applied to all types of diagrams, not just process diagrams, and I will demonstrate this over the next few months here.

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Clusters and Workstations Linked to Excel using Visio Professional

I was recently asked how to easily link an Excel worksheet that contains names of personnel sitting at workstations in clusters to a Visio floor layout. My own approach would probably have been to create an Access or SQL Server database, but I recognise that not everyone is confident about doing that, so I present a way that it can be done simply with just Excel.

The extra complication requested was the ability to easily control the visibility of specific data, so I have added an example of that into the mix.

Firstly, I mocked up a table in Excel. I decided to have separate Cluster and Workstation columns, and so I combined the two together in a column headed Location with a simple formula. I like doing this because I can then create a Pivot Table or Chart easily to give a count of workstations per cluster. I used the 1970 FA Cup winning Chelsea team for the Name and Department columns.

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Does Adobe Acrobat make better PDF files from Visio?

An export to PDF utility was freely available for Visio 2007, and was built in to Visio 2010. However, I have always been disappointed by the lack of support for Visio layers, Shape Data and multiple hyperlinks per shape in the PDF output. Microsoft have always told me that this is because they have limited control over the public PDF format, as opposed to the proprietary Adobe PDF format (These features are also surprisingly missing from the export to XPS tool, even though this format originated from Microsoft). So, the question is, does Adobe Acrobat make better PDF files from Visio than Microsoft’s free tool?

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Multiple Selection Methods for Visio Diagrams

Much as I love using Visio, I have always felt that there are a few selection methods missing, and I often have to some extra buttons into solutions to make up for this. There are many types of diagrams that have shapes connected to each other, usually with a connector shape, and the user needs to be able to traverse these connections quickly and easily, so I have created a Visio 2010 add-in, multiSelect, that adds a lot of different selection methods that are accessible via an extra ribbon tab when ever a shape is selected.

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