I am upgrading this website at the moment, and I came across on old post of mine about a new video series that Microsoft launched in 2009 … yes, 10 years ago! So, I thought I wouldre-boot the series for all our enjoyment … and because almost all of the features are still present, with a new look, and some new features!
Visio
Power up your Visio diagrams
It’s a new year, and Microsoft Visio Online Plan 2 continues to be updated monthly. There is plenty to get excited about, for example, broken links in Data Visualizer can now be repaired automatically. Also, I am pleased to report that I have written a white paper on using Visio in Power BI effectively! This downloadable guide explains how to combine Visio drawing pages and Power BI data to create great interactive data visualizations, and can be requested from Power up your Visio diagrams.
I will also be doing a webcast about this subject, so be sure to sign up for notification!
My session @ MSIgnite about Visio and PowerBI
Well, that is the first day of MSIgnite over, and I am looking forward to hearing more about the roadmap for Visio today. I presented my session yesterday in a theater that seats 50 but 1,000 had registered for. In the end, the space was so full, I had no idea how many were there, but it was a lot! ( View my session on YouTube / View a 360 image)
I will be on the Visio booth now for a lot of the time during the conference, so please come talk to me about the possibilities of Visio solutions and integration with other Office applications and Office365. Microsoft have some cool demos of Visio / 3D Mixed Reality, Visio / MSFlow and, of course, Visio / PowerBI.
My book publishers have kindly provided some discounts for the duration of the conference:
- eBook Discount: 50%Code – MDVMP50
- Print Discount: 15%Code – MDVMP15
- Valid until September 30th 2018
- Go to packtpub.com
In addition, we will be offering the chance to win a copy of mine and Scott Helmers’ book “Microsoft Visio 2016 Step by Step” on the booth.
Visio in PowerBI for viewing personnel hierarchies and locations
My last article, Aliasing Data Columns for #Visio Organization Chart Wizard , mentioned the slight anomalies in the default Shape Data rows for the Organization Chart shapes and the Resources / Person shape. This prompted me to create an alternative view of the same data that can be linked to the Person shapes on a floor plan, and then to use the preview Visio Custom Visual in Power BI to display both views of personnel synchronised by the same data. This demonstrates how easy it is to create an effective dashboard for locating personnel locations and their position within an organisational hierarchy at the same time!
View the Power BI report online : Org Chart and Personnel Locations in PowerBI
I duplicated the queryOrg in PowerQuery in Excel, as queryPersonnel, and slightly modified the naming of columns to match the Resources / Person master Shape Data row labels, as described in the previous article. I could then add data-linked Person shapes to the floor plan into the Space shapes that I had already added to it. These Space Plan add-on to Visio also includes Space and Category Explorer window which can be used to find a person by their name or by their location.
I used Power BI Desktop edition to get the queryOrg query from the Excel workbook, and created three aggregating queries for Department, Position and Manager. These were used to provide hierarchy slicers on the report.
I used the Visio Custom Visual and the Hierarchy Slicer from the Store in Power BI in addition to the standard Table visual.
I had to reduce the shape count on my office floor plan drawing, because the preview of the VisioCustom Visual for Power BI has a shape count limitation ( see Add Visio visualizations to Power BI reports for more information). This meant removing all of the furniture shapes that I has added over the top of the embedded CAD file. I also changed the color of the embedded CAD file layers to shades of grey, because I intended to use colors in Power BI. In fact, I grey-scaled all of the Visio shapes in the office plan and the organisation chart to provide greater contrast to the colors in Power BI. The embedded Visio Online visual in Power BI will automatically suppress and Data Graphics (Text Callouts, Icon Sets, Data Bars or Color by Value), but I removed them in the Visio file too because it must delay the display if Visio Online needs to hide them.
One key learning point for me is that the preparation of a Visio file for consumption by Power BI is different than that for printing or normal online viewing.
Related articles:
Aliasing Data Columns for Visio Organization Chart Wizard
Adding clicks to infographics with Visio visual for PowerBI
Visio custom visual preview for PowerBI available for all!
Aliasing Data Columns for Visio Organization Chart Wizard
One of the most frequently used components of Visio is the Organization Chart Wizard (OrgChWiz), but it is also one of the most frustrating because of its apparent inflexibility. I was recently asked how to use different table column names with the wizard because the originating ODBC source could not be touched. Well, I have previously used Access to modify and enhance tables in this situation, but the OrgChWiz is quite old, and does not like using the newer Access queries as a data source unfortunately. If the basic table column names do not match the default column names in the organization chart shapes, then there may be superfluous Shape Data rows created on each shape and the ability to change the shape style is compromised, and the Shape Data rows get quite confused!
The Organization Chart template opens with the Belts – Organization Chart Shapes stencil open by default, although the Master shapes used can be replaced with those on one of the other nine using the Org Chart / Shapes gallery:
Previewing the Visio Custom Visual in PowerBI
It is time to talk about the new Visio custom visual for PowerBI. You may have read about it at Visio Power BI example and Add Visio visualizations to Power BI reports, but I wanted to add my findings. First, it is great to see this feature, but it is not yet the finished article. However, I hope I can show that it can be an extremely useful addition to the business intelligence toolset from Microsoft. I think that the existing Link Data to Shapes and Data Graphics features in Visio desktop are considered to be Operational Intelligence capabilities, whereas this new custom visual for PowerBI is definitely Business Intelligence. This is a different discipline, and I have been developing some guidelines for good practice when using Visio with PowerBI. In this article, I will demonstrate how I created a PowerBI dashboard using graphics and data from last years Microsoft Ignite conference.
Let me set the expectations because I am working with a preview of the Visio custom visual.
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