I have previously written blog articles about using, and extending, the Microsoft supplied Data Graphic Icons Sets, but I never explicitly listed their variations in a useful visual table. So, here is one:
A Table of Visio Data Graphic Icon Sets
Visio
The history of Visio
I have been a dedicated user and developer of Visio since 1996 when I got a week-long developer training course presented by Dave Edson (see http://vizfirst.sharepoint.com/Pages/MrDavidAEdsonCEO.aspx ) and Mark Davison in Paris. Previous to that, I had been working with CAD and databases (or spread sheets), but I had noticed either version 1 or 2 of Visio on a computer mag cover disk, and earmarked it for future investigation.
We have recently been made aware that Ted Johnson, one of the original founders, has a website with the history of Visio up to the acquisition by Microsoft in 1999 ( see http://www.visiocorp.info ). It is fascinating reading, and there are lots of faces that I met there, plus some that you should still be aware of ( eg Chris Roth, aka VisGuy http://www.visguy.com/ ).
Visio is a unique product, and the story of Visio shows that it is a well-loved one, with an enthusiastic team behind it, and an watchful community eager to see it further develop!
Updating the file path of data linked Excel tables in Visio
Link Data to Shapes in Visio (not the Standard edition though) is great for visualizing information, and I often use a multi-worksheet Excel workbook that I create locally, and then wish to re-link to a copy of the workbook elsewhere, or even in Office365. This is a simple task if there are only one or two Excel tables involved, but can become tedious when there are many. So, this blog is presents an semi-automated method of achieving this.
Firstly I have an Excel workbook that I have many worksheets with tables of data on them. I named each worksheet, and used the Format As Table command on each.
Displaying SharePoint Document Library Column Values on Visio Services Diagrams
It is often useful to be able to link text or graphics to the values in the SharePoint document library that a Visio diagram is stored in. A SharePoint Document library is just a list with columns and Visio 2013 documents can be linked to the data in SharePoint lists … and it will be automatically refreshable. This means that Approval Status changes, for example, can be displayed as text or icons. This article goes through the methodology of linking data from the SharePoint document library to the Visio document.
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Visio for Mac ? Well, not really ….
My fellow Visio MVP, John Marshall (see https://johnvisiomvp.wordpress.com), pointed out recently that Lucid Software claim to have a Visio for Mac application that offers import and export of real Visio files. Well, although I would love to have a web-edition of Visio from Microsoft, I was interested to discover if the claims are true … so I signed up for a trial. I present my findings below, based on just one Visio document that I have used in this blog before ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2013/07/08/mvp-sessions-for-getting-started-with-visio-2010/ ). My conclusion is if you use Visio for high quality vector graphics or for any type of business intelligence then wait for Microsoft to do it right! Please do not even consider round tripping Visio files to Lucidcharts and back, because you will be extremely disappointed.
Using SharePoint Choice Columns with Visio Services
Back in March 2014, I wrote about mapping SharePoint Column Types to Visio Shape Data Types ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/03/03/mapping-sharepoint-list-columns-to-visio-shape-data-types/ ), and I skipped over the remaining SharePoint column types that could not be directly mapped. I described Rich Text previously ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/11/14/using-sharepoint-rich-text-multiple-line-columns-with-visio-services/ ), and in this article I describe some of the possibilities of using the SharePoint Choice column type.
There are three different options for Choice columns in SharePoint 2013, but only the third, Checkboxes, allows for multiple selections.
