Mai-lan's Visio Blog : Dev Blog

Visio Use at Microsoft: Vaca Bubble Chart for Revenue Reporting

mailant — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:35:00 GMT

Visio lets people communicate business information in a variety of innovative ways. One example is in use by the Visio team for revenue reporting. The Visio product management team built a dynamic bubble chart diagram to report on Visio sales by national and international subsidiary to Visio senior management.

Product management gets the latest sales data by subsidiary in Excel and uses Excel charts to demonstrate trends, like where current revenue falls along annual projections. One of our product managers, Rodrigo, wanted to graphically display how the various subsidiaries performed along an axis of growth % and revenue %. He also wanted to display customer satisfaction % and the $ value of revenue. Doing all this in an Excel chart for multiple subs resulted in a pretty confusing chart. Rodrigo wanted to use a bubble chart, which conveyed all the different dimensions and measures more clearly. Here’s the diagram Rodrigo wanted to create (all data is fictitious).

This diagram shows that the WA sub has strong growth and revenue, while the CA sub has negative growth with average revenue. Both WA and CA have the same revenue $ range, as indicated by the size of the bubble itself. The color coding indicates the fourth metric, which is a greater than 55 customer satisfaction %.

Note the stencil on the left contains the custom shapes used by the solution. Really, the bubble size and the bubble color shapes are legend shapes that describe the information on the diagram. The Axis shape helps define the location. The individual bubble shape gets used multiple times as it represents a subsidiary. This bubble chart, which we call the “Vaca Bubble Chart” after the Product Manager who created it, gets rolled out with every business review meeting with Visio senior management.

To generate the bubble chart to use for reports, the product manager goes into Visio and selects a custom diagram type that is installed as part of the Vaca Bubble Chart solution.

When the user clicks the Vaca Bubble Chart option, the solution asks the user to import data from Excel, and uses the standard Excel dialogs through the Excel API.

In this example, the data looks something like this (the numbers are made up and not reflective of anything):

To build the diagram, the solution uses the data to determine the size, text, location, and color of the bubble representing the sub. The values in Region column are used for Shape Text. The values in the Revenue $ column determine the size of the bubble shape itself. Sales Target and Growth percentage columns are used to determine the shapes’ PIN (X,Y) co-ordinates. The bubble’s color depends on the Customer Satisfaction column.

If the data changes, you can re-run the solution to get a diagram like this:

Pretty neat, huh? As I mentioned, our Product Management team uses this report for every revenue reporting meeting with senior management. Chris Castillo, who wrote the solution, is going to talk about the code that drives the diagram creation – I’ll post a link when his blog entry is up.

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Editing Visio Masters

mailant — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:57:00 GMT

The shapes that you see on the stencil on the left pane of Visio are called “masters.” Think of a master as an object. When you drag a master from the stencil, you are dropping an instance of that master object onto the page. That instance, which we call a Visio shape, inherits its geometry and behaviors from its master.

Right-click on a shape in a Visio stencil and you’ll see lots of grayed options in the right-click menu. The stencil is read-only, which means you can’t modify the masters. Right-click on the title bar of any stencil, though, and you can save the stencil under another name, which turns the document read/write. You can then right-click on the master and choose Edit Master to modify the geometry and/of behaviors. When you do that, you get a dialog that tells you that in order to save the changes to the master, you need to close the window and save the drawing. This behavior demonstrates something that you need to know about masters if you plan to programmatically update them: masters follow a commit model. If you don’t work with the master commit model, you may get unexpected behavior when programmatically modifying masters.

You can modify a master using the Master.Open method. The Open method opens a copy of the master. (Once you’re done working with this copy, make sure to explicitly release it in non-VB programs.) Once you make changes to the master copy, you need to call the Master.Close method to commit the changes to the master object. If Master.Close is called on a master that hasn’t specifically been opened using the Master.Open method, the Close method fails. If the Close method succeeds, the changes that you made to the master copy get merged back into the master object and all instances of that Master in your code are updated with the changes.

This is an important concept when working with masters because it can be hard to figure out why your changes to masters aren’t sticking. Any changes to cells and shapes for masters need to be made using Master.Open and Master.Close to persist the changes to your master object and its instances.

-- Mai-lan

Office 2003 SP1 Whitepaper (Includes Visio 2003 SP1 Details)

mailant — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:00:00 GMT

I’ve posted a whitepaper from the Office Supportability Group that details what is in Office SP1, which everyone should install if you are using any Office 2003 application.

SP1 is available as separate downloadable patches for OneNote, MUIs, Project Client and Server, WSS, SPS and Visio. Visio’s SP1 download is located here; if you don’t have it, install it. The Visio SP has some important printing and org chart solution fixes, among other updates.

The main Office 2003 SP1 patch, available here, includes security updates for FrontPage, OWC, Publisher and the other core Office applications.

This is a level 300 document and has some good tips and tricks on patch deployment. It also provides insight on the advantages of using the Local Install Source (LIS) for patch management. This whitepaper will eventually get posted to the Office Resource Kit web site, but you can check it out now if you are trying to decide whether or not to upgrade.

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Hotfix for Control Developers

mailant — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:21:00 GMT

If you're developing on the Visio 2003 ActiveX control, please install this hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;884592

It fixes a nasty page fault problem in the control. Developers and end users of the control solutions should install this hotfix.

Thanks,

Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Webcast on Programming Visio

mailant — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 21:08:00 GMT

I’m doing a webcast tomorrow called “Programming the Visio Development Platform” if you want to check it out. You can register for it at: http://www.microsoft.com/events/EventDetails.aspx?CMTYSvcSource=MSCOMMedia&Params=%7eCMTYDataSvcParams%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ID%22+Value%3d%221032269605%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22ProviderID%22+Value%3d%22A6B43178-497C-4225-BA42-DF595171F04C%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22lang%22+Value%3d%22en%22%2f%5e%7earg+Name%3d%22cr%22+Value%3d%22US%22%2f%5e%7esParams%5e%7e%2fsParams%5e%7e%2fCMTYDataSvcParams%5e

The webcast starts on Friday, March 04, 2005, 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada). If you miss it, the recording will be available in 24 hours after the webcast at www.microsoft.com/webcasts.

I’ve got a big deadline next week so I’m a bit behind on email. If you’ve sent me questions in the last two weeks, I haven’t forgotten you!

Thanks,

Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Visio --> SVG --> XAML

mailant — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 07:33:00 GMT

I’ve gotten some questions about Visio’s ability to import or export XAML-based graphics files. Visio can’t do this today but you can use Visio 2003’s SVG functionality to achieve the same goal. You can save a Visio diagram out as SVG and then use a SVG to XAML converter to convert the Visio-generated SVG to XAML. I haven’t tried any of the converters myself and the XAML guys would probably be the ones to check to see which are the best. If the converters don’t work out, you can also write an XSLT for SVG to XAML yourself (although I'd be surprised if some enterprising developer hasn't already done it first).

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Step-by-Step Tutorial on Developing Visio Shapes Using ShapeStudio

mailant — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 18:58:00 GMT

We just published an article on MSDN that provides a step-by-step tutorial for using ShapeStudio to build shapes. It’s a good way to get started with the tool since it walks through the typical actions a shape developer might take.

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Visio 2003 Drawing Control in Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1

mailant — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:11:00 GMT

The Visio 2003 Drawing Control does not work in the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. We’ve done some testing on more recent builds of the VS 2005 bits (post-beta 1 bits), and the control does work in the more recent builds.

This will be fixed by Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and of course for the Visual Studio 2005 final release. For now, avoid using the Visio 2003 Drawing Control with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 applications, you’ll get a COM exception that you can’t work around.

-- Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Dev Luv: Distributing Custom Visio Stencils

mailant — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:31:00 GMT

Visio 2003 lets developers integrate their Visio content installation with a Windows Installer application. There are publish component table entries that can be added to MSI files to tell Visio about new Visio content (stencils, templates and add-ons). We added support for publish component table entries in Visio 2003; see this article for more information. All Visio native content starting with Visio 2003 is published through publish component table entries.

To simplify this process for developers, the Visio 2003 SDK ships a Solution Publishing tool. The Solution Publishing tool user interface makes it a lot easier to add these entries to an MSI file that is already set up to install your stencils, templates and/or add-ons.

Before Visio 2003 released with the Windows Installer support, you had a couple of options for distributing custom solutions.

Send the .vss file to the user and have them copy it to their My Shapes folder. This is usually found under My Documents.
If you don’t want to send users the .vss file and the users are on the same network domain:

Create a network share and place your .vss files there.
Have your users add a stencil path to their Visio settings (you can also do this programmatically through the Visio OM).

i. In Visio, click the Tools menu, and then select Options.

ii. Click on the Advanced tab. Click File Paths.

iii. In the Stencils textbox, type in the path to the network share that contains .vss files.

You can also use these methods in Visio 2003,but it might look a little weird to your users since by default, the paths of all Visio templates, stencils, add-ons, startup add-ons, and Help files are now blank (since we switched to using publish component tables instead of the path).

-- Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Dev Luv: Follow-up on Digital Certificate Question

mailant — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 18:31:00 GMT

A blog reader asked if it was possible to get a cheaper digital certificate for a smaller dev shop. I looked into this and unfortunately, there is no special discount for individual software production houses. The real issue when talking certificates is the level of trust a certificate carries. For instance, if you develop some code and then sign it with a cert that is issued from a group that is cheaper and more questionable, then your cert is worth far less because it doesn’t have the same credibility.

In the internal corp environment, you can get a cert from my own company cert server and know that internally, it’s trustworthy. If you take that same application and ship it externally, no one would trust it simply because they can’t guarantee the authenticity of the publisher. This extra cost for the certificate goes to verifying identities and contributes to the higher cost from the reputable folks. For what it’s worth, you only have to get one digital cert for your company and use it multiple times for your company applications. I’m not giving tax advice or anything, but if you check with your tax advisor, you might be able to write it off, too.

By the way, I’m out of the office for a few days for family festivities during the Lunar New Year. If you’ve sent me mail in the last day, I won’t be getting back to you until next week some time. Happy New Year, everyone! (Year of the Rooster starts on Wednesday)

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: More Info on Digital Signing

mailant — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 06:14:00 GMT

I’ve gotten lots of mail from Visio blog readers who are still confused about how digital signing works for any Office solution. Siew-Moi Khor, a Programmer/Writer in the MS Office organization who writes seriously good documentation on complex topics, has written some articles on how digital signing works in the Office world. These three articles might help provide context to the signing process.

Btw, I’m still working on finding out if a smaller dev shop or an individual software producer can get digital signatures for cheaper than the standard digital signature pricing.

-- Mai-lan

Visio Use at Microsoft: Business Process Management Automation

mailant — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:40:00 GMT

Visio's “visualize information” mantra applies to many different customer scenarios. In the next several blog entries, I’m going to focus on several different uses of Visio within Microsoft. I’ll show screen shots where I can (e.g., I don’t have to scrub confidential data). Hold off on questions about how all of this is implemented if you can – we’re in the process of putting together a more detailed description for developers on the IT showcase on Microsoft.com.

The Field Services IT organization that supports our Microsoft Consulting Services branch has developed a smart client solution is called “Services Business Process Manangement” (SBPM) that leverages Visio Pro 2003 and SharePoint. The solution is a process documentation tool used by several services, marketing and sales orgs to document and share business processes. The app has been in production at Microsoft for several months.

The smart client portion (based on WinForms, Web Services, and the .NET Framework 1.1) uses the Visio 2003 ActiveX control within a Winform to document the process. The app has a custom set of shapes. The user drags and drops the shapes to the page. The app recognizes the shape dropped and prompts the user for more information about the type of process. Here’s what the process designer winform looks like.

Once the process is documented and automatically validated by the application, the next step is to publish the process to a SharePoint site. The relevant users are notified through SharePoint roles.

This application also lives on the extranet for consumption by partners. Partners access the Visio diagram of the process via the Visio Viewer (which doesn't require the Visio application to be installed) in the browser.

It would be great to hear if there are others out there who have done a similar corporate solution, or if there are similar scenarios that could benefit from an application like this.

-- Mai-lan

Dev Luv: Digital Signatures for Visio Documents

mailant — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:29:00 GMT

If you are shipping a custom ActiveX control in your Visio solution, it’s important to know that Visio creates a VBA project when you embed an ActiveX control in a Visio document. That means that you need to sign both the custom ActiveX control and the Visio document itself in your solution. For more information on getting a digital signature for your Visio document, check out this KB article. It summarize the digital signature story for Visio and gives more links to a great tutorial on code signing up on MSDN.

The signcode program only works with Visio XML files. If you want to programmatically sign a Visio binary file, you’ll have to write code to open the binary file in Visio, save as a Visio .vdx, close the file, run the signcode program, reopen the file and save back as binary.

I get a lot of questions asking how to automatically “turn off” the macro warning dialog for customers. The short answer is that you can’t. Only users can turn down their own macro warnings. A responsible developer shouldn’t ask the user to turn down the macro warning settings. There’s only one recommended way to get the macro warning dialog to not appear when opening a Visio document (or any Office document) that contains VBA: the developer must digitally sign the document and the user must select the checkbox about trusting all documents from this source.

Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Dev Luv: Guidelines for Developing Visio Managed COM Add-ins

mailant — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 06:02:00 GMT

If you are developing a Visio (or any Office) managed-code COM add-in, these resources will come in handy:

1. This PIA article is the best place to start to learn more about installing and using Office 2003 PIAs.

2. If Microsoft provides an official PIA, always use PIAs. Yes, you can roll your own interop assembly (aren’t tools great?) but use interop assemlies only if Microsoft does not provide a PIA. In Visio’s case, we started providing a PIA with the Visio 2002 (in the Office XP PIA download). We started providing a PIA installed as part of the Visio product setup with the Visio 2003 release.

3. This KB article provides information about designing Office XP add-ins and Office 2003 add-ins by using the .NET Framework.

4. Without exception, use an unmanaged shim for security to isolate one managed add-in from others through AppDomains and other details. This article describes why and how.

By the way, if you are also building a smart-tag managed COM add-in, there’s some additional information to track (note that these smart tag links are not specifically for Visio development – I’m providing them just in case you also do smart tag development in managed code). If you are building a managed COM add-in that will be used in Office 2003 only or Office XP only, it is highly recommend to use VSTO loader (also called the otkloadr.dll) that is shipped with Office 2003. For detailed info on using VSTO loader, see the Office 2003 Smart Tag SDK. It is not recommended to build a smart tag managed COM add-in that will be used in Office 2003 and downlevel versions of Office (such as Office XP also). This article talks about why. To learn more about migration of managed smart tag COM add-ins from one version to another, check out this article.

Mai-lan

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Visio Program Manager Job Opening

mailant — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 20:49:00 GMT

In the spirit of networking, can you recommend or refer anyone that you think may be qualified or have an interest in the position below? We are looking for candidates who would like to Join Microsoft's award-winning Visio Team within Office. Come join the Visio Program Management team to define how our next generation diagrams improve how customers communicate about business concepts. Help build the newest cool features that help customers use Visio to visually analyze, understand, and communicate about business and technical information. Join a team that produces a product with the incredibly high customer satisfaction rate of over 95% and see what further excellence you can provide for an engaged and active customer base.

If you know of someone who might be interested, or feel that you are qualified, please reply with a Word resume and some additional information regarding your interest in the position or any questions you may have. Please send your information directly to my staffing consultant, Molly Griffin at mollyg@microsoft.com. Molly and I will review your credentials and experience and follow up with you directly should you match our needs. We expect to narrow down our final interview list in 2-3 weeks and make our final hiring decision within 4-6 weeks.

To learn more about Visio at Microsoft, please visit http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857981033.aspx.

Thanks in advance for your help and referrals!

Position Overview:

This position will directly assist Visio in becoming a graphical front end for business information. A clear desire to own an area of major customer impact, drive for results, and passion for technology is critical. A solid understanding of customer and design issues is a must. A background in databases and/or line of business applications is a plus. Experience working for more than two years as a program manager and a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related discipline or equivalent experience is required.

-- Mai-lan