bVisual

bVisual Blog by David Parker

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More secrets of the Visio Legend shape

I was going to do a full post on the special Legend shape in Visio that can automatically count instances of masters on a page, then I found that my good friend Chris Roth, aka VisGuy, had done one some years ago ( see visguy.com/…/legend-shapes). However, I have some extra information that will assist in getting the functionality to work consistently.
Basically, you can make any Master work with the Legend shape by adding the User.visLegendShape = 2 setting into a Master shape, but there are caveats.

  1. If the name of a Master is changed, then any existing shapes on the page must be re-placed
  2. The BaseID of each Master must be unique
  3. If the BaseID is changed (using NewBaseID), then any existing shapes on the page must be re-placed

To demonstrate this, I used the Good and Bad icon shapes from the Legend Shapes stencil.

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Visio @ASPC Update

My stint at the Artic SharePoint Challenge is nearly over …. I will be leaving the mountains near Oslo for the UK in a couple of hours, but the teams will continue with their SharePoint and CRM coding for another day. Such dedication! Still, I can always go out side to cool down, and contemplate:

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In the meantime, I have enjoyed spreading the knowledge of data-linked Visio diagrams in SharePoint Online to a bunch of geeks who know so much more than me about SharePoint!
I hope they now know more about the capabilities of Visio….
Anyhow, here are some Theta360 shots from the hackathon:
ASPC Presentation #theta360uk
Artic SharePoint Challenge Judges #theta360uk
Artic SharePoint Challengers #theta360uk
Contemplating the Artic SharePoint Challenge… #theta360uk
I set a challenge to create a data linked Visio diagram in SharePoint for people popping red or blue pills ….

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Each of the pills are an instance of a single Master, and are linked to two recordsets using Excel Services that provide the personnel data (and hyperlinks) and the pill colour they chose. The position and rotation of each pill is from a random ratio in the Excel worksheet. All of these details, position and rotation are automatically refreshed in the Visio diagram if the Excel workbooks are updated.
Next week, I will talk more about the content 🙂
 

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Visio @Artic SharePoint Challenge

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting Visio and Visio Online at the Artic SharePoint Challenge near Oslo on 2nd/3rd Feb ( see arcticsharepointchallenge.com ). The theme is The Matrix, but I have not yet decided whether to take the red or the blue pill.

Visio Online is a ideal for embedding visual data diagrams in SharePoint. I hope to see some of you in Norway!

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A Blackstar alphabet in Visio

I wrote an article last year for Microsoft, using Visio to explain some bits of messaging and encryption (see Musings on MVP Open Day 2016 at Bletchley Park.pdf ). I finished the article with an unexplained image of a word, well the solution was obviously “BOWIE”, as written on the cover of his final album, Blackstar, released exactly one year ago today.

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Reverse Engineering SQL Server DBs with Visio Pro DBRE

The news is out: due to popular demand DBRE (Database Reverse Engineering) is [almost] back in Visio. It is currently out in preview, as announced in MS Power User , for Visio Pro for Office365 users at least. It is, however, only providing support for MS SQL Server and Oracle Server, although there is an ODBC Generic Driver too.
My test machine is a Surface Pro 1, which does not have SQL Server installed, so my instinct was to test DBRE with a SQL Azure database that I created for my eXplore Visio app  ( see Windows Store ).



Try as I might, I could not get the full database structure with the Microsoft SQL Server driver that I had installed by default. With a little help from Microsoft, I discovered that I needed to download the Microsoft ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server from Microsoft ( see Download Driver). However, I still needed to set the default database for Visio to use as Microsoft SQL Server, not ODBC Generic Driver. In retrospect, it makes sense, but it did confuse me for a while.
Once I understood that, I was able to change my default database to the desired visioFeatures one, and to reverse engineer my SQL Azure database tables, views and stored procedures.

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Opening an MS Access form from a Visio shape

This article describes how to open a Microsoft Access form at a specific record from a Visio shape. I was an Access developer before I was a Visio developer, and both of the applications have VBA to provide tactical solutions for everyday tasks. Fortunately, it is fairly simple to copy the VBA code from one application to another…



Firstly, I am assuming that both of the desktop applications are open, and although Visio shapes can be linked to Access queries and tables, it is not essential for this solution.

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