Visio Insights

Video: Process Diagrams in Visio 2010

Recently Mark Nelson from the Visio team sat down with Harry Miller (off-screen) to discuss some of the improvements in Visio 2010 related to process diagrams.  The video includes explanations of our Process Management investments as well as demos for Cross-functional Flowchart, BPMN diagram and Validation features.

The conversation is the latest in a video series titled “Visio: Drawing on Experience” posted on Microsoft TechNet.  Other videos featuring some of our Visio MVPs can be found here: http://edge.technet.com/Tags/Visio/

SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010 (Part 1)

Visio has long been the tool of choice for documenting processes. Ever since the introduction of workflow support in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, we have been hearing from customers, “wouldn’t it be great to visualize SharePoint workflows in Visio like flowcharts? Wouldn’t it also be great to go from Visio business process diagrams to executable workflows on SharePoint?”

In Visio Premium 2010, we have partnered with the SharePoint Designer team to bring you that functionality to life. In this blog post and the next, we will introduce to you how you can author SharePoint workflows just like any flowcharts in Visio, and how such workflows can then be imported into SharePoint Designer 2010 for further editing before it can be executed in SharePoint.

What are SharePoint Workflows?

First of all, what are SharePoint Workflows? Workflow is just another way of saying process flow, something most Visio users are already familiar with. In SharePoint, there are pre-defined common activities (e.g. Send email) that can be executed together with others, and together this forms a “workflow”. Some SharePoint workflow examples include: document approval workflow, expense approval workflow, and document review feedback workflow. A user may originally create the business workflow in Visio, as shown below:

That same workflow, implemented as a SharePoint Workflow, can look like the following in SharePoint Designer 2010:

So how can you go from a business flowchart in Visio to a workflow published to SharePoint?

Starting from Visio: New SharePoint Workflow Template

In Visio Premium 2010, we are introducing a brand new drawing template just for SharePoint Workflow. When you start up Visio, you can go to New->Flowchart->Microsoft SharePoint Workflow in order to start authoring a Visio SharePoint Workflow from scratch.

This is especially handy for Business Analysts or Process Analysts who are already familiar with flowcharting in Visio, but would like to automate the workflow to be executed in SharePoint.

Upon opening the drawing, you will notice that key SharePoint activities are available in three separate stencils: SharePoint Workflow Actions, SharePoint Workflow Conditions, and SharePoint Workflow Terminators. Every SharePoint activity directly maps to those available in SharePoint Designer 2010.

To start authoring a SharePoint workflow, simply drop shapes to the drawing canvas, just like creating any basic flowchart in Visio. Note you can modify the original shape text and replace it with text more relevant to your business process:

Exporting Workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010

When you are done with authoring your workflow, you can export it in a file that can be imported by SharePoint Designer 2010. By exporting the workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010, SharePoint specialists or IT professionals alike can further parameterize the workflows by binding workflow activity fields with SharePoint lookups and then publish as executable workflows.

To export, simply go to the Process tab, and click Export:

Visio will automatically validate the workflow first to make sure the workflow is valid (for more information about our validation feature, see this earlier blog post). In the event that your workflow has issues, an Issues window will pop up, and the shape with the issue will be highlighted.

After you fix all issues, the workflow will be exported as a Visio Workflow Interchange (*.vwi) file, which can be imported into SharePoint Designer 2010.

Upcoming Post: Part 2 of SharePoint Workflow Authoring in Visio Premium 2010

In the next blog post, we will discuss in more detail about the round-tripping capabilities between SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visio 2010. We will also discuss the ability to publish Visio workflow visualization through SharePoint Designer 2010. So stay tuned! And don’t forget to send us feedback through the Send a Smile feedback tool or comment on this post!

Introducing the Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta SDK

A Beta release of the Microsoft Visio 2010 SDK is now available for download! Due to high demand for an early version of the SDK, we have released a Beta version of the SDK with a partial set of supported features. Additional features and functionality will be available in the RTM version of the Visio SDK.

There are two versions available depending on whether you are running the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Visio. It is important to install the right version of the SDK to ensure that all the SDK tools function correctly.

The Microsoft Visio 2010 SDK contains the following items:

1. Tools
2. Sample applications
3. Visual Studio Add-on Wizards
4. Documentation
5. Visio Type Libraries and C++ Library Files

We explain these items in more detail below. Features listed with an asterisk (*) are not supported in the Beta version of the Visio SDK.

Tools

Once you install the Visio SDK, you will see SDK Tools available on the Developer tab in Visio.

The Event Monitor tool watches for events that are raised in Visio and it can help you debug your solution when handling events.

The Persistent Events tool provides a user interface that lets you add and modify persisted events.

The Print ShapeSheet tool provides a user interface that lets you print the contents of a ShapeSheet.

The Visio SDK also includes the Microsoft Visio Solution Publishing Tool*, which is an executable that you can run from outside Visio. This tool works with Windows Installer to add Visio-specific entries, such as Visio add-ons (.vsl and .exe files), stencils (.vss and .vsx files), templates (.vst and .vtx files), and Help files (.chm files), to the PublishComponent table of the .msi file that you create to install your solution on your users' computers.

Sample applications

The Visio SDK also includes a number of sample applications written in either Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Visual C#, or Microsoft Visual C++. You can experiment with these samples as you develop your own custom solutions for Microsoft Visio 2010. By default, the sample applications target the 32-bit version of Visio 2010.

After installing the Visio SDK, you will see a new category of template on the New tab of the Backstage View.

The samples are not functional, however, until after they are built in Visual Studio and then installed using the generated setup.exe or .msi file. Once a sample application is installed, the application can be launched by opening the corresponding template in the SDK folder shown above. The only exception is the Office Plan Sample, which uses the Microsoft Visio 2010 Drawing Control inside a Microsoft Windows Form and is launched from outside Visio. The available sample applications are shown below.

The Flowchart Chart Sample (available in C#, VB.NET and C++*):

The TreeView Sample* (available in VB.NET):

The Office Plan Sample (available in C#):

Add-on Wizards

The Visio SDK installs wizards for creating Visio add-on projects in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. These Wizards let you set up new Visio add-on projects in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Visual C#, and Microsoft Visual C++, and create corresponding setup programs to install add-ons. Once you have used the wizard to create a Visio project, you can explore the project code and settings to learn more about how Visio add-ons should work.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 also includes wizards to generate Visio 2010 VSTO add-in projects. The Visio SDK is not required to use these wizards.

Documentation*

The Visio SDK includes documentation like the Visio Automation Reference, the Visio ShapeSheet Reference, the Visio Save As Web Reference, the Visio Viewer Reference and the Visio XML Reference. In addition, it includes the Code Sample Library—a library of interesting code samples. Note that the documentation included with the Beta SDK is Visio 2007 documentation.

Libraries

We also include a number of support files in the SDK. We provide type libraries for three application programming interfaces (APIs) that Microsoft Visio 2010 exposes: the Visio type library, the Save as Web type library, and the Microsoft Office Visio Drawing Control type library. In addition, we provide support files to help C++ developers automate Visio. The Beta versions of these support files are in this release of the SDK.

Things to expect at RTM

Along with the content described above, we are working on some new features for the RTM version of the SDK. We are currently planning to release the following additions at RTM:

1. A new VSTO Add-in Sample Application that uses a "ClickOnce" post-deployment action to install Visio template and stencil files,
2. Guidance for reconfiguring the SDK sample applications to target the 64-bit version of Visio 2010,
3. New code samples in the Code Sample Library for API functionality added in Visio 2010, and
4. Documentation for new Visio 2010 API and ShapeSheet functionality.

Feedback welcome!

As you explore the SDK and use the tools provided, we encourage you to provide feedback about your experience. You can use the Office 2010 Send a Smile functionality to send us feedback about the SDK, or you can comment on the blog.

Visio 2010 Beta Released

This morning Microsoft announced that the Beta versions of Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010 are now available!  You can download Visio 2010 Beta here.  This is a public Beta, so anyone can install and use it.

Changes in the Beta

Visio 2010 Beta has numerous refinements based on customer feedback from the Technical Preview.  The most visible changes can be found in the Backstage View.  This area has been redesigned to feel more integrated with the rest of the Ribbon, as is explained in the Office 2010 Engineering blog.  Also there are several visual updates.  In the screenshot below, you can see the new look of the Backstage View found under the File tab.

Saving files to SharePoint is also different in Visio 2010 Beta.  Now saving to a SharePoint location, saving to a Visio Process Repository and publishing to Visio Services have been combined into a single place.  You simply choose a location and then select whether to save out a standard Visio Drawing or a Visio Web Drawing.

In the other ribbon tabs, you will find visual updates to Themes and a more functional set of Callouts.  For improved ease of use, we’ve refined the behaviors of several diagramming features including adjusting the sensitivity of AutoConnect.

You will also find functional and visual updates to Containers, Cross-functional Flowchart shapes, BPMN shapes, Data Graphics Legends and Wireframe shapes.  If you created diagrams with these shapes in the Technical Preview, please be aware that your existing diagrams will have the Technical Preview version of the shapes while new diagrams created in the Beta will have the new versions of these shapes.  Also for Cross-functional Flowchart diagrams, significant shape and functionality changes mean that Technical Preview diagrams will open in the Beta but will not be editable.

More information about the features of Visio 2010 can be found on this blog.  End user help is also available on the Microsoft Office Beta site.

Visio Services Beta and Visio SDK Beta

Coinciding with the release of Visio 2010 Beta, we are releasing the Beta version of Visio Services as part of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta.  You can download SharePoint 2010 Beta from MSDN here.   In addition we are releasing a Beta version of the Visio Software Development Kit, a download for solution developers.  We will provide more information about the Visio SDK Beta in an upcoming post.

Send Us Your Feedback

We encourage you to download the Beta and give us your feedback.  We’re rapidly approaching the end of the Visio 2010 development cycle, and your feedback is essential to ensure a high quality final product.  You can comment on the posts on the blog or use the Send a Smile tool to let us know what you think.

Installing and Configuring Visio Services

With the past few posts we’ve shown you how you can share your diagrams with everyone using Visio Services. In this post, we’ll talk about how IT Administrators can provision and configure Visio Services in SharePoint 2010. Visio Services is included in SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Client Access License (ECAL). This post is intended to show you how to quickly get started with provisioning Visio Services, and to give you an idea of what things you should consider for configuration. The instructions in this post assume that you have already installed SharePoint 2010.

Quick Start with the Farm Configuration Wizard
SharePoint 2010 includes a Farm Configuration Wizard that makes it easy to quickly provision services, assign a service account, create a web application, and create a site collection. The easiest way to start using Visio Services is to use the Farm Configuration Wizard from Central Administration.

When you first install SharePoint 2010, you will be prompted to run this wizard. You can also easily run it again later from central administration:

Once you’ve launched the wizard, choose to have the wizard walk you through configuration. As one of the first steps of the wizard, you need to assign a service account, and then choose which services you want to provision. Make sure that “Visio Graphics Service” is checked. Visio Services is implemented in SharePoint 2010 as a single shared service called the Visio Graphics Service.

Select all the other services you would like to provision and click Next. (If you want to connect Visio diagrams to Excel workbooks, make sure “Excel Services” is checked too!)

(Note: image above does not show the full list of services available in the wizard)

The Farm Configuration Wizard will provision the checked services, and then prompt you to create a site collection. You can choose to create a new site collection, or do this step manually later. For a quick configuration, choose the “Team Site” template and create a new site collection:

(Notice the Visio Process Repository template! For more info see our earlier post: Using a Visio Process Repository)

After the wizard is finished, you can access your site with Visio Services enabled. To publish a web diagram to your site, see the following posts:

• Introducing Visio Services
• Publishing Diagrams to Visio Services
• Embedding a Web Drawing in a SharePoint Page
  

Configuration Options
The Farm Configuration Wizard gets you up and running quickly. If you want to work with all the configuration options, there are two ways you can do so:

• Central Administration (web user interface)
• PowerShell (command line interface)

Central Administration provides a web-based user interface for configuring all the service settings for Visio Services. If you prefer to use a scripting environment, you can use PowerShell to accomplish all the same tasks.

This TechNet article contains information about performing common configuration actions for Visio Services through both PowerShell and Central Administration. You can use also use the Get-Help cmdlet in PowerShell to see more information about and examples of specific cmdlets.

External Data Connections and Authentication
Recall that Visio Services allows you to share data-driven visualizations that are connected to live data. (For more info, see section “Refreshing data-driven diagrams” of this post). Supported data sources include:

• SQL
• SharePoint Lists
• Excel Workbooks hosted in SharePoint
• Any OLEDB/ODBC data sources that have recent drivers

When Visio Services renders drawings that are connected to Excel Services and SharePoint lists, permissions and authentication are managed by SharePoint, and Visio Services uses the identity of the person viewing the drawing. This way, if a user tries to view a Visio diagram that is connected to an Excel workbook that they do not have rights to view, they will not be able view the Visio diagram.

When connecting to data sources that are external to SharePoint, such as SQL or ODBC data sources, additional configuration may be required to enable Visio Services to connect to them. Visio Services can authenticate with external data sources in any of the following ways:

· Integrated Windows Authentication

· Secure Store Service (requires additional configuration)

· Unattended Service Account (requires additional configuration)

For more information about these authentication methods and how to plan for them, see this TechNet article.

Trusted Data Providers
Visio Services maintains a list of trusted data providers, so that you can manage what data sources the service is allowed to connect to. If a user creates a web drawing that is connected to a data source that is not trusted, Visio Services will not attempt to connect to the data source.

By default, trusted data providers include Excel Services, SharePoint lists, SQL databases, and some other ODBC data sources. You can easily add to or remove from this list using Central Administration and PowerShell.

Visio Services also allows you to create your own custom data providers to connect to additional data sources. These custom data providers need to be added to the trusted data providers list before the service will connect to them. We’ll be talking more about custom data providers in future blog posts.

Visio Services Settings
Visio Services has some global settings that allow you to optimize performance, caching, and security. Specifically, you can control:

• Caching
  Visio Services caches web drawings to improve performance. Caching allows multiple people to view the same diagram without forcing the server to render it every time. If a diagram changes, it is automatically removed from the cache. You can control how long diagrams are kept in the cache.

• Data refresh interval
  Data-driven diagrams and the data sets behind them are also cached. Caching data sets allows a user to view a data-driven diagram repeatedly without forcing the server to query the underlying data every time. This affects how quickly a user will see a change in data reflected in their diagram. You can control how long data sets are cached for.
  
• Maximum File Size
  To safeguard performance, you can control the maximum size of a web drawing that Visio Services will render.

For more information about Visio Services settings, see this TechNet article. We will also be talking more about how to optimize settings in a future blog post.

This post was a summary of the various installation and configuration options you have for Visio Services. As you try out Visio Services, please let us know what you think, either by commenting on the blog or via Send a Smile.

Building Visio 2010 – A Look Behind the Scenes

The Visio Product Team has been working for several years to design, code, test and deliver Visio 2010.  It takes lots of coordination and collaboration to develop a complex software application.  While there are many roles involved in the engineering process, it is the Program Managers, Developers and Testers that work together the most closely from beginning to end.  Program Managers gather customer input and design the features for the release.  Developers are the coders responsible for implementation of the software.  Testers ensure both high quality and that the capabilities really address the customer scenarios we have targeted. 

Microsoft has created a series of videos describing Office 2010 (the full wave of products being released) and some of the roles people play in the engineering process.  Here is a video about the engineering behind Visio 2010 from the perspective of the Tester.

Embedding a Web Drawing in a SharePoint Page

Previously we showed how Visio Services lets you view diagrams in the browser. By default Visio Web Drawings open in their own web page for a full screen viewing experience. Visio Services also allows Visio Web Drawings to be embedded in other SharePoint pages.

Using the Visio Web Access web part you can embed either static or data-driven Visio Web Drawings in SharePoint pages adding visual flair and insights to portal pages and dashboards. By centralizing relevant information onto one page, viewers save time and can, at a glance, understand the state of their business.

Take a look below at a Supply Chain Dashboard featuring a Visio Web Access web part in the top left – in this case the data-driven visual quickly helps ground viewers in the current state of a supply chain, and its proximity to a relevant Excel chart, documents and links makes decision making and implementation easy.

Embedding the Visio Web Access Web part in a SharePoint page

To embed a Web Drawing in a page, you must be a site administrator for that page with either "Contribute", "Approve", "Manage Hierarchy", "Design" or "Full Control" permissions. Given you are an administrator, adding a Web Drawing to a page is as easy as editing the page and placing a Visio Web Access web part on it. To do so, follow the steps below:

1. Click on "Edit" tab and then hit the "Edit Page" button
2. Click on a web part zone on the page
3. Click on "Insert" tab and then hit the "Web Part" button
4. Select the "Office Client Applications" category and select the "Visio Web Access" web part
5. Press the "Add" button

At this point, an empty Visio Web Access web part should appear on your page. It looks like this:

To assign an existing Web Drawing to display in this Web Part follow the “Click here to open the tool pane” link, this will surface the UI see below and will switch the page into Edit mode. This is called the web part’s the tool pane.

Type in the URL to the Web Drawing you want to display in the text box, or better yet, use the browser button to navigate the SharePoint folder structure to find the drawing in question. Once the URL is in the input field, hit either the “Apply” or “Ok” buttons at the bottom of the configuration panel and voilà – your Web Drawing is now embedded in the page.

Note that you can only embed Web Drawings that are hosted within the same SharePoint farm as the site hosting the web part. Also note that Visio Services checks the permissions of page viewers before it renders a Web Drawing -- if the viewer doesn’t have at least “View” permissions, Visio Services will not render the Web Drawing.

To complete the dashboard shown at the beginning of this article, repeat the process by adding other SharePoint and Office web parts.

Further Configuring the Visio Web Access Web Part

If you look below the “Web Drawing URL” property in the tool pane (see the tool pane image above), you’ll see a host of other properties you can set to customize the Visio Web Access web part. They include: 

As with any SharePoint web part, the Visio Web Access web part inherits and will honor the settings found in the “Appearance”, “Layout” and “Advanced” sections of the web part configuration panel.

Try it out!
Try out various web part configurations to understand which configuration best suits your needs and tell us about it either by commenting on the blog or via Send a Smile.

Publishing Diagrams to Visio Services

In our last post, we talked about Visio Services--a new feature of SharePoint 2010 that extends the reach of Visio diagrams considerably. Visio Services lets you:

• View diagrams in the browser even if you don’t have Visio installed
• Refresh data-driven diagrams in the browser
• Integrate diagrams into SharePoint applications

In this post, we explain how to create a Visio Web Drawing (*.VDW) file using Visio Professional 2010 or Visio Premium 2010. The Visio Web Drawing (*.VDW) is a new Visio file type that allows diagrams to be rendered in full fidelity in the browser using Visio Services on SharePoint 2010.

When you save a file in Visio 2010, you will see the option in the Save As dialog to save your diagram as a Web Drawing.

You can also easily create a Visio Web Drawing using the Save to SharePoint billboard on the Share tab of the Backstage View. This billboard allows you to quickly select a SharePoint location and the Web Drawing file type for saving your diagram.

Clicking on Save to SharePoint at the bottom of the billboard opens the Save As dialog so you can confirm or refine your selection.

To use the default publishing options, press Save. You now have a diagram ready for viewing in the browser!

By default, Visio automatically opens a browser so you can see your diagram as others will see it in the browser. You can turn off this behavior from the Save As dialog.

You can also click on Options at the bottom of the Save As dialog to launch the Publish Settings dialog. Using this dialog, you can select the pages that display and, for data connected diagrams, the data sources that refresh in the browser.

Visio Services allows you to refresh data-driven diagrams in the browser to present the most up-to-date view of the underlying data. The data sources selected in the Publish Settings dialog will be the data sources that refresh. Visio Services supports refreshing the following data sources:

• SQL Tables & Views
• WSS Lists
• Excel Workbooks hosted in SharePoint
• Generic OLEDB/ODBC data sources

In addition to giving you the option to customize your publish options, the Publish Settings dialog also indicates publishing issues. For example, in the image above, the data source titled “Sales data” has a warning icon beside it. This sales data is stored in a local Excel Workbook: this data source is not supported by Visio Services because it is stored on a local machine. If you want the data from an Excel Workbook to refresh with Visio Services, you should save the workbook to a SharePoint site, link your diagram to the workbook on SharePoint and then save your diagram to the SharePoint site.

On save, Microsoft Visio 2010 generates a Web Drawing file which is in fact a package containing:

1. the native Visio representation of the diagram (a .VSD file), used to edit the file in Visio, and
2. meta data re-generated on each save, used by Visio Services to render the web drawing in the browser.

Once your Visio Web Drawing file is saved to SharePoint, you can continue to work with it in Visio. Visio Professional 2010 and Visio Premium 2010 both fully support Visio Web Drawing files. This means that you can edit Visio Web Drawing files using the complete set of features provided by Visio.

As you try out Visio Services, please let us know what you think, either by commenting on the blog or via Send a Smile.

Introducing Visio Services

Last week at the SharePoint Conference, the Visio team unveiled Visio Services – a new feature of SharePoint 2010 that extends the reach of diagrams considerably. In a nutshell, Visio Services lets you:

• View diagrams in the browser without needing Visio on your machine
• Refresh data-driven diagrams in the browser
• Integrate diagrams into SharePoint applications

Let’s take a look in more detail at the features behind each of these scenarios.

Viewing diagrams in the browser

A Visio diagram, saved to a SharePoint document library as a Visio Web Drawing (a *.VDW file) using Visio Professional 2010 or Visio Premium 2010, can be viewed in any web browser by simply clicking on its file entry in the document library.

The diagram renders in full fidelity in the browser if the person viewing the diagram has Silverlight installed on their machine or as a PNG if not; Visio Services renders seamlessly anything you can draw in Visio. Take a look below to get a feel for the experience:

Visio Services enables you to navigate diagrams using easy to use and familiar metaphors for panning, zooming, switching pages, following hyperlinks and discovering shape data. You can also open any Visio Web Drawing in Visio using the “Open in Visio” button. Note that the person viewing the diagram can do so:

• …in any browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc…)
• …on any platform
• …without leaving the browser
• …without installing Visio, the Viewer or the Drawing Control
• …without needing to accept multiple dialogs or browser warnings

Also note that because the diagrams are stored in SharePoint document libraries, diagram creators get a variety of useful document management features from SharePoint such as diagram access control using permissions, diagram change tracking using versioning and the ability to attach diagrams to SharePoint workflows.

Refreshing data-driven diagrams

Visio Services has ported Visio’s data connectivity features to the browser! In case you’re not familiar with those features please take a look at “Show it like it is: connect data to your Visio diagram” for a quick summary. Note this demonstration is in done in Visio 2007, but these features are also available in Visio 2010.

In a nutshell, before Visio Services renders a data-driven diagram it fetches the diagram's linked data from an external data source and updates diagram visuals accordingly. Note that once posted to SharePoint, your diagram is a living document that will always represent the current state of your data visually. You never need to update manually again!

Visio Services supports refreshing diagrams connected to one or more of the following data sources:

• SQL (using either Kerberos, Single Sign On & Unattended Authentication)
• SharePoint Lists
• Excel Workbooks hosted in SharePoint
• Any OLEDB/ODBC data sources that have recent drivers

If the data source you plan to connect your diagrams to isn’t in the list above, don’t worry: Visio Services supports “Custom Data Providers” which enable you, with a few lines of code, to wrap your existing data source into one that Visio Services can consume. We’ll talk about writing your own “Custom Data Provider” in subsequent blog posts.

Finally, note that Visio Services supports refresh on open, user-triggered refresh as well as automatic periodic refresh.

Integrating Visio diagrams into SharePoint Applications

Visio Services also enables you to embed Visio Web Drawings, regardless of whether they are static or dynamic, into SharePoint applications. Depending on your skill level with web technologies there are three ways of doing so:

The main take-away is that with very little effort you can add visualization to your dashboards and with a bit more page authoring or some coding you can add rich interactivity between Visio Services and other components on the page. For those of you hungry for details, we’ll be delving into the details of all of these integration features in future blog posts.

How it all works

For the curious among you, here’s a recap of the architecture of Visio Services:

Availability and Requirements

Visio Services is scheduled to ship as part of the SharePoint Services 2010 ECAL and will be available in the up-and-coming Beta and RTM releases of SharePoint in both hosted and non-hosted flavors.

In Conclusion

The complete breadth of Visio diagrams can now be shared and refreshed in SharePoint, regardless of whether the person viewing them has Visio installed on their machine. What’s more you can now integrate rich data visualizations into SharePoint dashboards and applications with little effort.

There is much, much more to tell you about this brave new world of browser-based data visualization called Visio Services… but for now, we’ll let you digest this high level overview and start thinking about how browser-based data visualization using Visio Services can be useful to your organization. Stay tuned to the blog, we should have instructions on how to set-up Visio Services and how to create Visio Web Drawings in the next few weeks.

As you try out Visio Services, please let us know what you think, either by commenting on the blog or via Send a Smile.

Visio 2010 Beta coming soon…

It’s been several months since the Technical Preview was released and we started talking about Visio 2010 on this blog.  The product team has been hard at work responding to your feedback, fixing bugs and polishing the application.  Next month we are scheduled to release the Visio 2010 Beta, which will be open to the public.  If you haven’t had the opportunity to try Visio 2010 for yourself, this is your chance.

Sometimes it’s hard to wait patiently for new software releases, so to put your mind at ease we’ve created a special alert system that will notify you when you can download the Beta.  Head over to http://visiotoolbox.com/2010/ and click on the big green button.  You’ll also find a handy diagram explaining the software delivery process (approximately) and several other pages highlighting some of the new capabilities of Visio 2010 and Visio Services.

Using a Visio Process Repository

We frequently speak with Visio users whose organizations need to manage collections of process diagrams. Many of these users are employing basic methods such as storing these documents on network file shares. However, these methods leave much to be desired. For instance, end users frequently ask us questions like:

• How can I make sure I’m always editing the most recent version of a process diagram?
• How can I find out about updates made to the process diagrams that interest me?

Additionally, the administrators and managers who supervise these document repositories often ask us questions like:

• How can I monitor whether my organization’s diagrams comply with our internal standards?
• How can I easily find all processes that involve a particular department?

To address the above pain points, we have created the Visio Process Repository, a new SharePoint site template that is available out of the box with SharePoint 2010. It leverages SharePoint’s collaboration features -- including check-in and check-out, versioning, and workflow -- and integrates with several of Visio’s new process management features. The result is that in just a few clicks, a SharePoint administrator can create a Visio Process Repository that is pre-configured for easy storage and management of Visio process diagrams.

Here is the home page of an example Process Repository:

As shown in the sidebar above, a Repository site contains a library for documentation, a task list, and a discussion board. But most important is the “Process Diagrams” document library, which is designed to store processes. This document library comes pre-populated with several templates that can be used to create new process diagrams. (However, you can store other diagram types in a Repository; these particular templates are available simply for convenience.)

Let’s say you use the Cross-Functional Flowchart template to create the following diagram in Visio:

Once you’re finished and (optionally) have checked your diagram for errors using the Validation feature, you can save your document back to the Repository through the “Save to SharePoint” billboard in the Backstage:

Then, when you navigate back to your Repository, your process diagram will be listed in the Process Diagrams document library as shown in the image below. Note the two special columns marked by the red rectangles:

• The Keywords column displays the swimlane headings of each cross-functional flowchart in the document library. The diagram above had swimlanes titled “Engineering” and “Management”; these swimlanes are reflected in the document library below, providing useful at-a-glance information on who is involved in the process.
• The Category column displays the validation status of each document. This makes it easier for administrators and managers to monitor whether the processes in their Repository conform to their organization’s standards.

Since the Process Repository is built on top of SharePoint 2010, you can also take advantage of other SharePoint features. For instance, you can configure workflows, set up automatic email notifications for when documents change, and view revision history for a given document. Also, with Visio Services users can view the processes in their browser in a single click, even if they do not have Visio installed on their computers. For instance, this is what the above cross-functional flowchart looks like when viewed in a browser:

We hope this quick tour of the Visio Process Repository feature gives you ideas for how you can use a Process Repository (as well as related Visio 2010 features like Validation and Visio Services) in your organization. Please let us know what you think, either by commenting on the blog or via Send a Smile.

Announcing SharePoint 2010 and Visio Services

Yesterday Microsoft released details about SharePoint 2010 at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas.  SharePoint 2010 is a major release, covering a tremendous array of collaboration capabilities.  You can read the overview on the SharePoint team blog.  A notable feature in SharePoint 2010 is Visio Services.  Here is the summary of Visio Services from our original description of the Visio 2010 release:

Visio 2010 can take data-refreshable diagrams and publish them to SharePoint for broad distribution to anyone with a web browser. Visio Services performs data refresh and rendering on the server and delivers up-to-date diagrams in the browser. The diagram author no longer needs to repost the diagram every time the data changes, and diagram viewers no longer need the Visio client to see the diagram.

Beyond simply viewing the latest version of a diagram in the browser, Visio Services enables interactive dashboards or mash-ups.  You can show a Visio diagram in a web part and define interactions between the diagram and other web parts on a page.  For example, in the image above, selecting a computer shape in the diagram will display detailed information about that computer on the right side.  Additionally, choosing one of the radio buttons on the right side will select the shapes in the diagram that match that criteria.

The Visio team is showing Visio Services in depth at the SharePoint Conference this week.  Initial feedback from the conference attendees has been quite positive.  We’ll have a lot more Visio Services information to share on the blog next week, but there are other ways that Visio integrates with SharePoint 2010.  Coming up this week we look at one example.

Data Graphics Legends in Visio 2010

Many of you are familiar with the work we did in Visio 2007 to make it easier to surface data that exists in your diagram in a visual form. Data graphics allow you to add refreshable data visualizations to the shapes in your diagram. See our previous posts Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Released and Customizing Data Graphics for more information.

No data	Data graphics!

One thing users have asked us for is a way to describe the data graphics used in the diagram – a legend. Visio 2010 adds the ability to insert a legend that documents the data bars, icon sets and color by values in data graphics applied to shapes on the page. You can do this using the Insert Legend button on the Data tab.

Visio creates the legend at the upper right corner of the page. The legend contains a separate section for each data field referenced in the data graphics’ definitions. The descriptions for each legend item are obtained from the data graphics.

The legend is customizable, so you can add, remove and rename sections and shapes to make the legend look just right for your particular diagram. Legends also pick up the theme applied to the page, or they can be manually formatted.

The legend is made up of a number of shapes and uses containers to keep the different parts of the legend organized. The top-most shape is a list, a special type of container that arranges its members in a regular, linear pattern. The members of that list are containers, each of which represents a data field from the data graphics. Inside each container is another list, this one invisible, which keeps the individual legend items neatly arranged.

You can select a legend item and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to reorder them, or you can drag them around the list. You can also drag them out, delete them or drag your own shapes in. The same can be done with the containers that correspond to each data field. If you click the blue insert arrow on the outer list, Visio adds an empty container for your own use. While this will not have the inner list, you are free to add any shapes you wish.

To preserve the customizations you might make to the legend, Visio does not update it as you edit your data graphics or change which data graphics are applied to shapes on the page. Simply insert a new legend once you are done making changes. Delete the existing one or move it out of the way if you need to bring anything over.

Finally, for the developers out there, you can drop a legend using Page.DropLegend in the Visio API and specify custom outer list and field container masters.

We’re happy to be able to close this gap in data visualization and are interested in your feedback via Send a Smile or a comment here on the blog.

Data Graphics in Visio 2010

In Visio 2007, we introduced the data graphics feature to make it possible to display data on shapes using text callouts, data bars, or icons, or by coloring the shapes based on the data. As the data changes, the data graphics update accordingly.

With data graphics, Visio diagrams can be used to visualize dynamic data in powerful and succinct ways. For example, data graphics are used on these network server shapes to show their network name, operating system, and IP address as text callouts that appear next to them. Data bars show CPU speed and memory, and an icon is used to indicate each server’s current status. The data associated with each shape can be conveyed at a glance.

In Visio 2010, we’ve given the data graphics feature a makeover to integrate it into the ribbon and to address feedback we heard from users. We also added a legend feature, but we’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

As in Visio 2007, before you can display data using a data graphic, you first need to have some data in your shapes. You can add the data manually in the Shape Data Window for each shape, or you can import the data into the diagram from an external data source like an Excel worksheet or a SQL database, using the Link Data to Shapes button on the Data tab. The data will appear in the External Data Window.

Once you drag a row of data from the External Data Window onto a shape to establish the link to the shape, a set of data graphics is created in the Data Graphics gallery, which replaces the task pane used in Visio 2007. The first data graphic in the gallery is automatically applied to the data-linked shape.

You can also create a new data graphic or edit one of the data graphics that Visio built for you in the gallery.

In addition to integrating the user interface into the ribbon, we made some improvements to the dialog boxes based on user feedback. First, if you want to change the way a data field is displayed in the data graphic, you no longer have to delete the data field item and add a new one. For example, if you want to make an item display as an icon instead of a text callout, you can simply edit the item…

…and switch its display type from Text…

…to Icon Set.

When you edit a data graphic, we now give you a choice between applying the changes to all shapes with that data graphic applied (the only option in Visio 2007) or only to the selected shapes, using radio buttons at the bottom of the Edit Data Graphic dialog box. The latter choice makes a copy of the data graphic and applies it to the selected shapes.

Visio 2007 users asked us for more control over the formatting of text and other elements in data graphics. In Visio 2010, you can choose the font size used for the value and label in a text callout or data bar, and you can specify the width of the callout.

Live Rendering Shapes in Visio 2010

For several releases Visio has enhanced the appearance of shapes in diagrams by adding isometric projections or themes with gradients and shadows.  All the while, their appearance in the Shapes Window has been unchanged.  The 32x32 pixel icons have been limited to 16 colors (reminiscent of the EGA color palette  from 1984).  Thus the Shapes Window icons have not kept pace with the visual updates on the drawing surface.

Visio 2010 remedies that with a feature called Live Rendering.  We briefly mentioned this feature in the Shapes Window article, but we’ll go a little deeper here. Live Rendering replaces a shape’s icon with an image of what the shape actually will look like on the page.  You can see the full color spectrum used in the gradient fills.  You can see the anti-aliasing applied to the geometry and text.  If there is currently a theme applied to the page, Visio will even show the shape with the theme applied.  What you see is what you get.

Supporting Live Rendering in Your Custom Shapes

Live Rendering is also available for any of your own custom shapes.  Visio 2010 takes the existing setting for automatically generating icons for shapes and repurposes it as a setting for Live Rendering.  If you right-click on one of your own shapes in the Shapes Window and choose Edit Master > Master Properties, you can see the revised property.

Of course, Live Rendering may not be the best option for every shape.  Perhaps you prefer the icon to be more of an abstraction than a realistic portrayal of the shape.  Sometimes the shape has so much detail that it is not understandable in 32x32 pixels.  Maybe the shape is oblong and does not scale down to a 1:1 aspect ratio well.  In these cases it is best to stick with the shape icon, which is still limited to 16 colors in order to maintain file compatibility with previous releases.

Custom Crop Regions

However, there is a common situation that we felt was important to support with Live Rendering.  Sometimes only a portion of a shape is visually distinct from other shapes in the same stencil.  After all, shapes that are found in the same stencil are probably related, so they may share some common visual attributes.  In these cases the distinction may be too small to be useful when displaying the shapes as icons.  To alleviate this problem, Live Rendering supports custom crop regions.  Instead of rendering the full extents of a shape and shrinking that to icon size, Visio can render a specific region of a shape and use that for the icon.

Let’s see an example from the shapes in Visio 2010’s SharePoint Workflow content.  There are dozens of workflow shapes that correspond to activities you can perform with SharePoint.  Each shape consists of a rectangle with a text label and a thumbnail image.

You can see that the thumbnails are the most visually distinctive part of the shapes.  What happens when you put these in the Shapes Window and turn on Live Rendering?  Unfortunately the details are lost.  In prior releases your only option would be to manually draw an icon using the 16 color palette and live with a very poor representation of the shape.  With a custom crop region, Visio only displays the relevant portion of the shape.

A custom crop region is specified by adding a User-defined cell to the Pagesheet of the master shape in the Master Edit Window.  Add a cell named User.msvPreviewIconCropToPage and set the value to 1.  Then modify the size of the page and the position of the shape on the page such that only the portion of the shape you want rendered overlaps the page.  You can look at the masters for the SharePoint Workflow shapes or the Callouts for more examples.

Live Rendering shapes in the Shapes Window is an important part of the overall user interface update in Visio 2010.  For shape designers, Live Rendering and custom crop regions provide new opportunities for showcasing your rich, graphical content.  Please let us know what you think by using the Send a Smile feedback tool or commenting on the blog.