Diagram Types

Published on August 16, 2013 by David Parker

Visio Map of the World

I have often wanted a Visio map of the world, with countries that can be linked to data. There are a number of Visio country shapes that are available for download on the internet, but they are fairly old, and certainly don’t have an up to date world. For example, South Sudan is currently the newest country in the world (2011), though a lot of resources on the web don’t show it. So, I was relieved to find a good SVG world map at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-FlatWorld6.svg?uselang=en-gb . Even better was that each of the shapes are named with the ISO2 code. This meant that I could use Link Data to Shapes to automatically create Shape Data from an Excel worksheet that I put together from various sources.

Note that I had to add Kosovo manually, since it was not on the original map, as it’s status as a country is in dispute. The ISO codes have apparently been temporarily assigned.

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Published on December 4, 2012 by David Parker

Visio 2013 BPM Maturity Model

In my book, Microsoft Visio 2010 Business Process Diagramming and Validation (see http://www.visiorules.com/ ), I presented a table of the progressive maturity of BPM within Visio. I have now extended this diagram in the figure below to show how Visio 2013 increases this maturity level.

I have just been running 2 day Visio 2013 Services introductory courses to Microsoft partners in Oslo and Copenhagen, and I think there has been a very positive response to the new capabilities of Visio 2013 along with SharePoint 2013. The two products together provide some great capabilities that should lead to exciting value propositions to business. New features include co-authoring of Visio files; commenting with or without the Visio client application; deeper integration with SharePoint Designer for SharePoint Workflows; and rendering of Visio files in high quality images, making them usable from any browser on any device.

Microsoft have also merged Visio Premium into Visio Professional for the 2013 product, making all of these features available to the normal business user. The good news about my book mentioned above is that it is very current for Visio 2013 Professional, as there have been no significant changes in this area … Smile

Update : Just got my latest copy of Redmond Magazine ( see http://redmondmag.com/ ). Great article about SharePoint 2013 and Visio 2013!

Published on May 8, 2012 by David Parker

Creating a Custom Org Chart Template with Extra Properties

A Visio user recently asked how to add a salary amount for an Org Chart person automatically, based on their selected Level. I thought it was a bit long to answer in the forum, so I have written my answer below. It demonstrates how you can have your own custom template that works with the Organization Chart add-on in Visio.

My approach to creating a custom template that still uses the Organization Chart Add-On is to create a new drawing from the built-in template, and then to add extra properties to it.

First, select Show Document Stencil to view all of the local copies of the built-in master shapes. If they are not there, then simply drag and drop them from the built-in stencil on to the first page, and then delete the shapes on the page. This will not delete the local copies of the masters.

Published on August 5, 2010 by David Parker

A Patch Panel that can be 1U too

Microsoft Visio 2007 Professional and 2010 Professional and Premium includes the Network / Rack Diagram template, which opens the Rack-mounted equipment stencil. This stencil includes the Patch Panel master which can be stretched from 2U to 25U high. However, I have often required a 1U patch Panel, so I decided to look into the Microsoft shape to see if it could be modified to allow it to be reduced to 1U without looking ridiculous.

Published on March 15, 2010 by David Parker

Visio and Bing Maps for Travel Photos

I am not sure how to categorise this article because it covers Visio, Bing Maps and travel. I went to Pisa and Florence for a weekend break this month, and took many photos that I stitched together with Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). Well, I wanted to show-off these photos as I have done on previous articles, but I wasn’t satisfied with how I presented them before. so I re-used and adapted some of my previous work (see Importing KML files in Visio), and some of John Goldsmith’s (see visualsignals.co.uk/blogs/vislog/2007/12/escaping-from-s), and one of Chris Roth’s blogs (see http://www.visguy.com/2007/07/13/map-distance-dimension-line/).

Firstly, I couldn’t resist taking this photo of a bollard, on the Lungarno Amerigo Vesspucci in Florence, that has been used over and over again to lock-up locals motorbikes:

I created a series of panoramic images using Microsoft ICE, and then located them on Bing Maps. I created two Bing Maps Collections (we flew into Pisa airport on the way to Florence for the weekend) :

Florence : http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=43.7227~10.3944&lvl=17&sty=h&cid=3350D61BC93733A9!2115

Pisa : http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&cp=43.72339418736733~10.396136865019798&lvl=17&sty=h&cid=3350D61BC93733A9!2100

I created a Camera Position master in Visio, and adapted my previous code to import the KML files from the above Bing Map collections into Visio.

I can adjust the splay and angle of the camera to approximate the vista covered by the panoramic views.

I then saved the Visio 2010 document (two pages) as web pages, and altered the frameset.js file, as shown by John, so that the PhotoUrl is displayed as a thumbnail, and the MoreInfoUrl and Bing Maps Url links are available in the Details panel.

In addition, clicking on a Camera Position shape opens the Deep Zoom web page for that view.

Here is the final output: https://www.bvisual.net/views/PisaAndFlorenceMarch2010.htm

Enjoy (I hope).

Published on September 7, 2009 by David Parker

Visio 2010 : Containment and Cross-Functional Flowcharts

One of the templates to get a revision in Visio 2010 is the Cross Functional Flowchart template because of the new list and containment functionality that has been added into the core application. I had to write a small bit of code in earlier versions of Visio for each flowchart shape to automatically understand which swimlane and phase it belongs to, but now there are ShapeSheet functions available, so a slight modification of a flowchart master enables it to inherit values from the swimlane that it is in. This article demonstrates who you can do this to, for example, synchronize the fill color of each flowchart shape to that of the swimlane that it belongs to.