OK, it’s time to view another of our Visio introductory series :
Learn how to enhance the business intelligence visuals of a dashboard with custom data graphics in Microsoft Visio 2010—without having to do any coding. This video reviews how to create, apply, and modify custom data graphics to reveal additional information visually in your Visio diagrams. It also covers how to duplicate data graphics and create formulas to show calculated values.
Enjoy ….
The ninth of 24 videos in the MVP Sessions series has just been published at http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Get_Started/How_To/Pages/Session-9-Visualize-business-data-with-data-graphics.aspx. In this one, you can:
Learn how to visualize business intelligence linked to diagrams by using data graphics in Microsoft Visio 2010. This video reviews how to create and edit data graphics that display linked external data as text, colors, or icons directly in the shapes of your diagram—since the data links are dynamic, updates in the data source can be refreshed automatically. The video also covers how to apply data graphics to multiple shapes at once.
I have often linked Excel worksheets and ranges to Visio over the years. I used the Database Wizard initially, but have been using the Link Data to Shapes feature since Visio 2007. I had noticed that I sometimes didn’t get a full list of the available ranges when trying to link in Visio, so I decided to investigate why.
Firstly, I created a sample Excel 2010 worksheet with a header row, and three rows of data in Sheet1.
The third video in the MVP Sessions has just been published, and it’s the first one where I do the presentation, rather than the introduction. In this one, I show a few shortcuts to laying out shapes : http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Get_Started/How_To/Pages/Get-started-with-shapes.aspx
Enjoy!
It has long been said that Visio’s ShapeSheet was modelled on Excel’s WorkSheet with it’s ability to enter formulae from a set list of functions. Indeed, there is a lot of similarity between some of Visio’s ShapeSheet functions and similar ones found in Excel, however one should exercise some caution and check that the behaviour is as expected. I recently forgot to do this with the NOW() function, and it caused me some grief for a while.
I had constructed a Today shape in Visio, and used the NOW() function to position the shape in the horizontal, and to display the date value in a Shape Data row and in the ScreenTip.
In Excel, if you enter the NOW() function into a cell, it immediately evaluates when the formula is entered. So, if you enter the same formula in multiple cells (by typing … not copying), it will evaluate at the time that you enter it. Thus you can apparently have different times displayed.
The first of 24 videos has been released at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTtplW6mJ7fWSIvHScqHCkaA4T0HhaWU-. This one features Scott Helmers doing a tour of templates available in Visio 2010 out-of-the box. I hope you find it useful.