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bVisual Blog by David Parker

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Introducing eXplore Visio–a Windows 8.1 App

Microsoft recently launched Universal Windows Apps, which offers the prospect of developing apps for Windows and Windows Phone from one code base. They also offered a prize entry for all apps listed before start of June 2014. Well, that was enough for me to try my hand at one, but I failed to hit the prize entry deadline, but have just launched the first part of my Universal App – eXplore Visio for Windows 8.1. This app was supposed to be a simple listing of the contents of the various editions of Visio 2013, but it became slightly more…

XploreVisioPromo846x468


I also wanted to learn more about Windows Azure, so I ambitiously created a Windows SQL Azure database to hold all the information that I gleaned from Visio. I then created a Windows Mobile Service to provide read-only access to the data. At first, I created a .Net back-end, but although I could develop with it locally, I could not get anonymous access from the wild to work … I kept getting a request to enter an unknown user name and login, so I created a JavaScript back-end, and it worked … after I used SQL Management Studio to copy the data from one database to another. Anyway, the .Net back-end does say Preview at the moment.

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The Hidden Master Cells – ShapeKeywords and Copyright

Readers of my blog will know that I often customize Visio masters, but I rarely bother to (re-)set the keywords or copyright. The reason being that I do not like to change the copyright if it has been set by another, and I was not quite sure where the keywords were stored. So, I decided to document them both here for my (and your) future use!

 

Master Keywords

The Keywords textbox on the Master Properties dialog provides you with the opportunity to enter keywords for the master which can be used by the Search function:

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Adding Configure Callout functionality to Visio Callouts

Visio is always improving but sometimes some functionality is hard to find, and gets forgotten about. For example, the Custom callout 1,2 and 3 masters on the Visio Extras \ Callouts stencil have been there for a few years, yet most users do not find them or realise what they can do. They provide the ability for a connected callout shape to display the values, and optional labels, of a target shape. This can be most useful for automatic annotations because they are always up to date. However, Visio recently introduced some new Callout shapes, but this ability is not there by default. In this blog, I show you how to add this useful feature to the new Callouts.

First, let’s look at the older Custom callout shapes, which automatically open a Configure Callout dialog when connected to another shape. This callout invites you to display selected Shape Data rows of the target shape:

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10 years and counting …

I avoided posting this yesterday … just in case it was considered an April Fool’s Day prank … but I am pleased (and relieved) to get my 10 years award as a Microsoft MVP for Visio. This gives me renewed enthusiasm to continue blogging technical articles about Visio. Watch this space …..

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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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Mapping SharePoint List Columns to Visio Shape Data Types

The shape data in Visio 2013 diagrams can be linked to many external data sources, and one of the most useful is a SharePoint List. However, the Shape Data rows have a smaller number of expected data types than the column types that are available in SharePoint. This article begins an exploration of the mapping of SharePoint list column types to Visio data types.

The Type cell of a Shape Data row defines the data type, which is a number from 0 to 7, that is stored in that row.

Data TypeDescription
0String
1Fixed List
2Number
3Boolean
4Variable List
5Date or Time
6Duration
7Currency

The Format cell can modify the display of Value, or can provide the option values for the two list types.

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