I will be presenting a webcast on Thursday, March 23 | 12.00 to 13.00 (UTC) demonstrating how data-linked diagrams can provide a much more efficient and dynamic method for operational intelligence than PowerPoint.
Follow this link to register : http://bit.ly/2m2sPOv
I am on my way home after presenting and demoing Visio and SharePoint BPM portals at Kistamassan near Stockholm. I was staying at the Scandic Victoria Tower right next door. Very handy, and very tall. It is a striking building, as can be seen in my photos below, however, speaking as an ex-architect, I was disappointed to find the modern interior spoilt by large, but inadequate, curtains that took several minutes to draw over the large number of triangular windows in my room. I really think it would have been worth installing electric auto-tinting glass.
[Read more…] about MS TechDays Sweden 2016 – Visio and SharePoint BPM portalsI will be presenting a one-hour webinar today at 1pm UK time entitled, Getting better value from your process diagrams with Visio 2016.
Process flow diagrams are amongst the most popular diagram types in Visio, but many users do not know some of the tips, tricks and techniques for getting the best out of Visio, in terms of productivity and efficiency.
This webinar covers understanding structured diagrams, enhancing shape data rows, hyperlinking, validation and exporting.
Follow this link to register : Microsoft Visio Webinar Series
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 … 
Update : Just got my latest copy of Redmond Magazine ( see http://redmondmag.com/ ). Great article about SharePoint 2013 and Visio 2013!
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.
[Read more…] about Visio 2010 : Containment and Cross-Functional Flowcharts
