Visio

Published on March 4, 2010 by David Parker

MVP Conference 2010 and Visio Services

I went to the annual MVP Conference in February, and had a really good time, as usual. It is great to see so many people who give their time and expertise for free in all areas of technology, but the highlight for me (besides the skiing on the Saturday) has to be meeting with the Visio product team for two days. We really feel that they listen to us, and we like to hear what they might be considering for the future. I presented my take on the forthcoming validation API in Visio 2010 Premium (did I mention I am writing a book about it?), and others presented their areas of interest. One bit of Visio that stood out was the potential of Visio Services with SharePoint 2010. Obviously the Microsoft Visio team were excited about this, and the Visio MVPs are relishing it too, but what about the rest of the world? Well, I think the message is getting out … hopefully Visio will no longer be Microsoft’s best kept secret!

For example, in December I noticed that Dave McMahon of the very active NxtGen User Group (~~no longer available~~) presented about Visio Services. I was unable to see his presentation but he has blogged about it. Very nice article … I look forward to Part 2 🙂

I think that SharePoint (and web) developers will now see how compelling data-linked diagrams are, and hopefully will demand more and better Visio diagrams. Microsoft are moving Visio into the Business Intelligence division now (which is where I always thought it should be anyway). We Visio developers have got to embrace this wave, or we will get over-looked, and others will attempt to produce visualizations without the richness that we could offer.

To this end, I have managed to create a dual boot laptop with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 Server which has SharePoint 2010 with Visio Services, so that I can explore the possibilities opened up by this new Visio SharePoint integration, and I will be presenting some of which I discover at the Microsoft TechDays in April.

I will be writing some blogs about Visio Services in SharePoint 2010 in the future but for now, please check out these resources:

Title	URL
Visio Insights – Introducing Visio Services	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/bg-p/VisioBlogsArchive
Visio Insights – No Code Mashups with Visio Services and Web Part Connections	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/No-Code-Mashups-with-Visio-Services-and-Web-Part-Connections/ba-p/237608
Visio Insights – The Visio Services JavaScript Mashup API	https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/blogs/visio-services-javascript-mashup-api/
Visio Insights – Using a Visio Process Repository	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/Using-a-Visio-Process-Repository/ba-p/237473
Visio Insights – Publishing Diagrams to Visio Services	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/Publishing-Diagrams-to-Visio-Services/ba-p/237483
Visio Insights – Embedding a Web Drawing in a SharePoint Page	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/Embedding-a-Web-Drawing-in-a-SharePoint-Page/ba-p/237488
Visio Insights – Installing and Configuring Visio Services	https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Visio-Blogs-Archive/Installing-and-Configuring-Visio-Services/ba-p/237494
Configure Visio Services	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/administration/configure-visio-services

Finally, here is a superfluous photo from my time at the MVP Conference – well post-conference actually. Left to right : Jonny and Richard Smith (Microsoft – thanks for the Nordic skiing), me, Michel LaPlane (MVP Visio in France), Lamie Kim (not an MVP from S.Korea), and Scott Helmers (Visio MVP USA) – all enjoying PFChang’s in Bellevue!

Published on February 15, 2010 by David Parker

Writing rules to validate diagrams in Visio 2010 – A worked example

Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium Edition introduced an extension to the Visio Type Library called the Validation API. This provides the capability to validate a Visio diagram to ensure that its construction complies with industry-standard or company –wide rules.

Organizations are able to use this new feature to encapsulate business logic as validation rules, grouped within rule sets.

Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium edition contains rule sets for use with Basic and Cross-Functional Flowcharts, BPMN Diagrams and SharePoint Workflow Designer diagrams.

This article describes how you can create your own rule sets and rules.

[Read more…]

Published on February 2, 2010 by David Parker

Arrays in Shapes

I was recently asked by my good friend John Marshall, the longest serving Visio MVP (see http://visio.mvps.org/ ), if I had any examples of using arrays in shapes, rather than having scores of Shape Data rows. Indeed, I have used arrays in many shapes, and used the LOOKUP() and INDEX() ShapeSheet functions to extract discreet values, but I thought I would enhance an existing shape, the Pie chart master on the Charting shapes stencil to demonstrate a technique.

In this post, the screenshots are from Visio 2010, and I have used the Link Data to Shapes feature that was introduced in Visio 2007, but a similar effect can be done using the Database Wizard which has been part of Visio since version 4.1 back in 1997.

I started a new Business Charts and Graphs diagram, and dragged a dropped a Pie chart master on to the page. This shape allows for the user to enter values for 1 to 10 pie slices by use of the right mouse menu.

[Read more…] about Arrays in Shapes

Published on January 28, 2010 by David Parker

Applying Selected DataGraphic to the Whole Document

A recent newsgroup question asked if there is a way to apply a DataGraphic to all pages in a document. Well, there is no built-in option in Visio 2007 (or Visio 2010), but it can be done with a little bit of VBA. This blog presents a macro that can be used in most cases.

The specific use case was for an Organization Chart that has many pages, and it can be really tedious to make each page active, select all the shapes, then apply a DataGraphic, so I have written a macro that allows you to apply the required DataGraphic to a single shape, then you select that shape; run the macro to apply the same DataGraphic to all shapes in the document that has a Shape Data row with the same name as the the first Shape Data row in the selected shape.

The screenshots are from the Visio 2010 Beta, but the code will work for Visio 2007 Professional edition too.

Before

Published on January 21, 2010 by David Parker

visViewer Update

Microsoft recently retired Visio Viewer 2002 and 2003, and forced a security patch of Visio Viewer 2007. This affected my free visViewer wrapper application. Therefore, I have updated my visViewer application, which you can download from http://www.bvisual.net/Products/visViewer.aspx .

And yes, I will soon be creating a 3rd edition to work with Visio Viewer 2010!

Published on December 21, 2009 by David Parker

Displaying Metric Units in US Units Floor Plans

A recent newsgroup post asked recently why the Wall shape in his floor plans continued to show feet and inches, even after he had changed the measurement units of the page to millimeters. At first, I though he must be wrong because when I created a new Metric Floor Plan, where the walls do display millimeters by default, and then I changed the measurement units to feet and inches; I saw that the display did change. Admittedly, the display is feet and decimal inches, but it changed…. Well, I couldn’t resist the challenge to find a simple solution.

Then I created a new US Units Floor Plan and observed that the shape has US Units Shape Data drop down values.