bVisual

MVP

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Migrating from Lucidchart to Visio?

My fellow Visio MVP, Michel Laplane, and I recently converted and transformed 15k Lucidchart documents to Microsoft Visio for a large multi-national organization. This was approximately 4 years after they had moved from Visio to Lucidchart! I do not know the full reason behind these changes in technology, and I do not have a particular dislike of Lucidchart, but my passion is Visio, so I was willing to assist SohoDragon in this migration for their client. The Lucidchart application is solely a web-based diagramming system with the documents stored in AWS, so perhaps it does not fit easily within the corporate compliance architecture of Microsoft Azure, Teams and SharePoint. Microsoft Visio though has the same files for both the desktop and web editions, although there are some restrictions in the size and features of editing Visio document in the web. However, all the M365 users will have the ability to view and comment of the Visio documents that they have permission for. Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscriptions will be required for editing the migrated documents because they have not been created with the templates provided in Visio for M365, and Visio documents which have any page with over a thousand shapes will currently only be editable in the Visio desktop edition. The Lucidchart documents needed to be audited, exported and transformed into Visio documents, and then uploaded to similar folders in SharePoint, where user permissions could be applied. We decided to use multiple secure Windows VMs to process the documents and then upload them to SharePoint before the VMs were deleted.

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Teams Tuesday Podcast Recording about Visio

I am delighted to share the link to my recent demonstration and conversation with fellow MVP Peter Ward about Visio in Teams. We discussed more than just Visio … and I look a bit like Max Headroom!

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What is the value of my MVP Award for 2021-22?

It may be something that has been repeated annually for 17 years, but I still feel so proud when the Microsoft MVP Award kit arrives at my door. We have seen changes to the scheme over the years, and my son tells me there are currently 3,550 MVPs around the world … or, as he sees it, currently $628m equity in Microsoft per MVP! Well, I don’t think I have added that much value to the shares, but I like to think that I have helped in the adoption of Microsoft Visio in many companies around the world, either directly or indirectly.

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Visio 2010 MVP Session videos reprise

Back in 2012, my fellow Visio MVPs, Scott Helmers and Chris Roth, and I recorded a series of 24 videos about Visio 2010. They were first hosted on Microsoft’s web site, then they put them up on YouTube, they they got deleted :-(. Well, we have managed to retrieve them, and put them back up on YouTube in a new list :-). Most of them are still very relevant and useful!

See Visio 2010 MVP Sessions – YouTube and The Visio 2010 MVP Sessions .

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From Seattle to Orlando in 21 years

I was going through my wardrobe the other day, and found my speaker shirt from the Visio Solutions Conference in 1997. This was the first time that I spoke about my use of Visio in the workplace. Back then I was automatically creating dealer desk layouts from a Sybase database for a major bank in London. Next week, I will be at MS Ignite in Orlando, demonstrating how Visio and PowerBI can provide a searchable, updatable dashboard of a data center. If you are there, then I would be delighted to meet you.

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Gus am bris an là – David A. Edson

My first introduction to the art of Visio development was provided by David Edson, M.Arch. MCP. back in 1996 in Paris. Visio Corporation parachuted him and Mark Davision into that beautiful city to spread the knowledge with a week of intensive ShapeSheet and automation training. Dave was inspirational, and that week set the course for the rest of my life. His enthusiasm for the smartness of Visio and his similar background to my own, as an architect, meant that we immediately connected and understood each other. I stayed at his self-designed house in the woody hills near Seattle in the early days, and he has stayed with me in the England, though I know he would have preferred that it was Scotland, the land of his forefathers.
Dave wrote many books and articles about Visio, and created many videos, so he will live on in the ether for a long time, but many will remember his effortless presentations enthusiastically describing how to make smarter diagrams.
Here is an early example of his work, a simple Back Gammon game, that he created to demonstrate the capabilities of Visio with some VBA code.

backgammon


Dave was also a great photographer, and connoisseur of single malt whisky, but it will be for his belief in Visio that he will perhaps be best remembered. I recommend that all Visio users worldwide visit his website and download all of the free resources that he provided : (no longer available)
Gus am bris an là – David A. Edson