Visio is an enormous application with literally millions of lines of code, so it is inevitable that bugs creep in for time to time, and can lay dormant .. until you really need it! Such an incident happened to me during a project for a large organisation where the latest and greatest build and versions are held up by the internal IT departments until they are sure that there is absolutely nothing hidden inside. In this project, I was given a laptop with Visio Pro for Office 365 to work with … not a problem, even though that moniker already told me that this was a seriously out of date edition, since it has been called Visio Online Plan 2 for quite a while. Anyway, I developed a solution that relies heavily on linked SharePoint lists and document libraries, using a view. The automatic name of these views are very verbose, so I consistently renamed them. Also, I had the same SharePoint Document library view linked more than once, so that I could link multiple rows to shapes, so renaming was, and is, absolutely essential. Several weeks went by, and my solution was working fine, until one day last week, my colleague told me that the Data / Refresh All was failing for him, and for other users. A review of his laptop showed that his Visio version had been updated to build 1708 from 1609 and the refresh was reverting the carefully renamed data recordsets back to the underlying SharePoint view name. My own personal laptop, not the client’s, is at build number 1808, so I will get the real fix from Microsoft soon via the normal channel updates for Click-to-Run.
SharePoint
Using SharePoint Links and Hyperlinks in Visio
A current project of mine has caused me to look more closely at the use of links and hyperlinks in “modern” SharePoint Online libraries. Every “modern” SharePoint Online library gets the option to create a new Link in addition to any other content types. They are InternetShortcut files with a .url extension. Only the filename is easily editable once created because the target url is within the file, and no editor is provided. However, it does provide a method to create a repository of approved urls. The alternative approach is to create a column of Hyperlink type, which can be edited easily. This article looks at the implications of each when used in SharePoint Online and used within an external data recordset in Visio, with the intention of providing shapes with hyperlinks.
The video above shows how a Link is created in SharePoint Online, whilst the video below shows how a Hyperlink can be created (and edited).
Countdown to MSIgnite for Visio sessions
Only a couple of days to go before Microsoft Ignite conference starts here in Orlando. Yes, I am here a week early to “acclimatize” 🙂 , but I have not been idle since I will be presenting in three sessions!
[Read more…] about Countdown to MSIgnite for Visio sessionsVisio custom visual preview for PowerBI available for all!
Yesterday, I wrote about using #MSFlow with #Visio ( Updating data sources from #Visio using #MSFlow … easily! ), so it is fitting to announce that the Visio custom visual for PowerBI is now available from the Microsoft store, and that it works with PowerBI Desktop! This means that everyone can make use of my guidelines in my other recent article at Previewing the #Visio Custom Visual in #PowerBI !
I used the small sample file that I created for my earlier blog, but it does demonsrate how powerful these new capabilities are. The possibilities are really exciting!
By the way, the text in my Visio shapes above were not Data Graphic Text callouts, because, if they were, they would have been supressed automatically.
The support of the Visio custom visual in PowerBI desktop enables data modelling whilst testing with Visio diagrams. This is so useful!
Check out the Microsoft announcements at Office Blog post and on Facebook and Twitter.
Opening PowerApps from a hyperlink in Visio Online
Microsoft PowerApps are apparently the future for views of SharePoint lists, amongst other data sources, replacing, it seems, both Microsoft InfoPath and Microsoft Access web apps … and probably more. I have previously described how to open an Access form from a Visio shape hyperlink ( see Opening an MS Access form from a Visio shape), so now I need to open a specified PowerApps screen and record instead … as shown below:
[Read more…] about Opening PowerApps from a hyperlink in Visio OnlineManaging People, Processes and Performance in PowerPoint? There is a better way!
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