A reader of my blog recently asked whether it is possible to use the icons in out-of-the-box Visio as the main shape, and get it to refresh with data. I pointed out that all of the icon sets are available in a handy stencil under Visio Extras, so all that remains is to make the icon display change according to data values.
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 Type | Description |
| 0 | String |
| 1 | Fixed List |
| 2 | Number |
| 3 | Boolean |
| 4 | Variable List |
| 5 | Date or Time |
| 6 | Duration |
| 7 | Currency |
The Format cell can modify the display of Value, or can provide the option values for the two list types.
[Read more…] about Mapping SharePoint List Columns to Visio Shape Data Types
I was recently asked how I would approach improving the Logic Gate 2 in the Circuits and Logic template, on the Analog and Digital Logic stencil. Well, this had resonance with me because I had often wondered why these shapes were not smarter than they are, so I looked more deeply into the shape construction to see how the Logic Gate 2 shape works, and how it could be improved so that the values of the inputs could be set and the logic applied to provide the correct output value. Eventually, similar improvements can be applied to all of the master shapes so that the connected logic diagram responds to input value changes.
The Logic Gate 2 shape has Shape Data rows to provide some configuration. Firstly, you can change the number of inputs from 2 to 5, and the number of outputs from 1 to 3:
In my previous two articles, I described how to have 6 icons in a Data Graphic Icon Set, and provided some VBA code to make your own icons sets from existing Visio shapes or images. One thing that I overlooked was the Insert Legend command in Visio 2010, because it does not add the sixth icon automatically, so this blog describes how to add it. As a side effect, the code also enables the legend labels of icon and CBV (Color By Value) items to be edited.
When you use the Insert Legend command, it examines the Data Graphics used on the active page, to create legends for each Icon Set or Color By Value settings that it finds. Closer examination of the legend shapes, shows that an instance of the Icon Set master shape is added for each of the icons found.
In my last post, I showed how you can actually have up to six icons in a Visio Data Graphics Icon Set ( see http://davidjpp.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/how-to-have-six-icons-in-a-visio-data-graphic-icon-set/ ), and I finished by saying that I would now show how to create new icon sets from existing shapes … automatically. In fact, I will show you how to do it with existing SmartShapes or with images.
I was asked to make KPI icons from six weather images:
I was recently asked to represent the values of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Visio. Great, I thought, this is just what Visio’s Data Graphic Icon Sets are for! Only trouble was, that there were six possible values for the KPI, but all the example Icon Sets have a maximum of five icons in them. So, I had to come up with a way of displaying six icons …
In the following example, I have defined a Shape Data row with a Fixed List type that can have a value from the list “3;2;1;-1;-2;-3”
I applied the Faces Icon Set, and set icons for each value, except for –1:
[Read more…] about How to have six icons in a Visio Data Graphic Icon Set