Visio

Published on April 1, 2013 by David Parker

MVP Award … again

1st April is the time for April Fools, but I am pleased to report that this fool is still an MVP, as I am pleased to say that I have received that important email from Microsoft. I genuinely worry that one year I will receive bad news … but, lucky for me, not this year! The most important part of this award is the relationship that it gives me with the Microsoft Visio product team because we few Visio MVPs feel like our feedback is appreciated. I must admit that my MVP award does get me some paid work, for example, I have been teaching Visio Services around Europe for Microsoft Western Europe for most of the last year. I have really enjoyed these days because I get to see new places, meet interesting people, and almost always get the same reaction … I didn’t know Visio could do that!

I have got to know SharePoint because of my Visio skills, and I have seen big improvements in Visio Services with the 2013 release, with the addition of Business Connectivity Services as an out-of-the box data source, and the presentation of the Visio Web Access web parts as html/png. The latter enables the Visio based dashboards to be viewed on popular tablets (you know, those non-Windows 8 ones…). But perhaps the most exciting enhancement to Visio Services 2013 is the full calculation of ShapeSheet formulas by the automatic refresh if they are linked to data using a refreshable data source. This is possible because of the new file format, so Visio 2013 diagrams no longer need to be published to SharePoint into a binary file with an Silverlight overlay.

I intend to spend more time, over the next year, exploring the possibilities of Visio and SharePoint integration, and share what I learn here.

Published on March 31, 2013 by David Parker

Using ODC Files with Visio

I use the Link Data to Shapes wizard in Visio Professional almost everyday, but I have not really bothered to use the Office Data Connections (ODC) files much, probably because there is no easy way of creating them in Visio. However, the Data Connection wizard does allow you to use previously created ODC files. So, I thought I’d document the easiest way I know of creating them … using Excel!

In fact, Excel and Reports can use ODC files too. See http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-excel/archive/2008/10/15/using-office-data-connection-files-odc-and-the-dataconnections-web-part-in-sharepoint-to-specify-external-data-connections-in-newly-created-excel-workbooks.aspx

In Excel, select Data \ From Other Sources \ From Data Connection Wizard …

Published on February 20, 2013 by David Parker

Visio MVPs in Redmond

We Visio MVPs have always been closer to the product team than most others … This week has been no exception!
An exciting future awaits….

Left to right:
Me (UK), Scott Helmers (USA), Michel Laplane (France), John Marshall (Canada), Chris Roth (Germany/US), Senaj Lelic (Germany), Al Edlund (US).

Disappointed to find that there are no Surface Pro 128 GB in stock 🙁

[Read more…]

Published on January 21, 2013 by David Parker

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 98,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Published on January 12, 2013 by David Parker

Clusters and Workstations Linked to Excel using Visio Professional

I was recently asked how to easily link an Excel worksheet that contains names of personnel sitting at workstations in clusters to a Visio floor layout. My own approach would probably have been to create an Access or SQL Server database, but I recognise that not everyone is confident about doing that, so I present a way that it can be done simply with just Excel.

The extra complication requested was the ability to easily control the visibility of specific data, so I have added an example of that into the mix.

Firstly, I mocked up a table in Excel. I decided to have separate Cluster and Workstation columns, and so I combined the two together in a column headed Location with a simple formula. I like doing this because I can then create a Pivot Table or Chart easily to give a count of workstations per cluster. I used the 1970 FA Cup winning Chelsea team for the Name and Department columns.

Published on December 6, 2012 by David Parker

Microsoft Visio Viewer 2013 Released

Microsoft have released a new version of the free Visio Viewer ( see http://blogs.office.com/b/visio/archive/2012/11/28/download-the-free-microsoft-visio-viewer.aspx ), so you can now view Visio 2013 files, in addition to earlier versions, without having Visio installed. Or, as in my case, on a PC that has Visio 2010 installed.