Visio

Published on April 8, 2014 by David Parker

Adding Configure Callout functionality to Visio Callouts

Visio is always improving but sometimes some functionality is hard to find, and gets forgotten about. For example, the Custom callout 1,2 and 3 masters on the Visio Extras \ Callouts stencil have been there for a few years, yet most users do not find them or realise what they can do. They provide the ability for a connected callout shape to display the values, and optional labels, of a target shape. This can be most useful for automatic annotations because they are always up to date. However, Visio recently introduced some new Callout shapes, but this ability is not there by default. In this blog, I show you how to add this useful feature to the new Callouts.

First, let’s look at the older Custom callout shapes, which automatically open a Configure Callout dialog when connected to another shape. This callout invites you to display selected Shape Data rows of the target shape:

Published on April 2, 2014 by David Parker

10 years and counting …

I avoided posting this yesterday … just in case it was considered an April Fool’s Day prank … but I am pleased (and relieved) to get my 10 years award as a Microsoft MVP for Visio. This gives me renewed enthusiasm to continue blogging technical articles about Visio. Watch this space …..

Published on March 26, 2014 by David Parker

Creating a Schema from Visio External Data record sets

Visio introduced External Data record sets in 2007, and I have made great use of them ever since. Visio 2013 has deprecated reverse engineering of databases to produce a schema, which was a function that I loved to use because it allowed me to provide clients with up to date, annotated, enhanced schema diagrams. Microsoft have, however, provided some nice database schema templates in Visio 2013 Professional, so I thought I would provide a way to use the External Data record sets to produce schema diagrams.

I have created a new custom stencil, based upon the IDEF1X Database Notation template in Visio 2013 Professional, and have added some macros to provide the guided diagramming. I say guided because page position of tables and relationships are left to you, but the macros will create table definitions from External Data record sets.

All of the three database notation templates contain an Entity and an Attribute master. In fact, they also have a Primary Key Attribute master too, but this is identical to the Attribute master, apart from a setting to say it is the primary key. This can be done from the Attribute shape anyway, so I will dispense with the Primary Key Attribute master.

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Published on March 3, 2014 by David Parker

Mapping SharePoint List Columns to Visio Shape Data Types

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.

Published on January 27, 2014 by David Parker

Visio Map of the World Update

My earlier post about the world in Visio shapes, see http://blog.bvisual.net/2013/08/16/visio-map-of-the-world/ , has been one of my most popular, and a reader recently asked about changing the colour of countries by data not in my original worksheet, and another asked about adding labelled dots.

Well, at first, I thought it would be quite simple to add more Data Graphics with the Color By Value that I already had, but then I realised that I needed to adjust some of the shapes that I had created from SVG in my previous article.

The problem is that some of the country shapes which were converted from SVG have geometry at the top group level. This means that any Data Graphic items, other than Color By Value, are actually sub-shapes of the group and will be hidden by the country shape itself. That is probably why the Data Graphics task, on the selected Afghanistan shape below, sent the AF label over to the right of it, whereas all the group shapes with all their geometry in sub-shapes, such as the AE (United Arab Emirates) shape, placed the label in its centre.

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Published on December 23, 2013 by David Parker

Making the Off-Page Reference Hyperlink URL Safe

One of my favourite shapes in Visio is the Off-page reference shape on the Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil. I have written about this shape before ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2011/09/02/page-grids-and-off-page-references/ ) but I did not notice a slight issue with it previously, so this article show how to overcome a couple of issues that I discovered whilst working on a project recently.

The shape is so useful for creating links between different pages and shapes within a Visio document (and can even be used to link between Visio documents), but it achieves this is a couple of ways. When dropped on to a page, it runs an add-on to prompt for the creation of a paired shape on an existing or new page.