Visio Insights : General Usage

Visio 2010: Better with Windows 7

Visio Team — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:40:19 GMT

Windows 7 is here, and it makes it easier to find and work with your favorite applications. This post details the work we did in Visio 2010 to take advantage of new Windows 7 features, to make working with Visio documents even easier.

Multiple Documents in Visio 2010 and the new Windows 7 Taskbar

The new Windows 7 taskbar presents a unified interface for launching and switching between applications and documents within them. With Windows 7 and Visio 2010, it is now easier to work with multiple Visio documents at the same time.

We received lots of feedback on the Technical Preview asking for the ability to preview open Visio documents as multiple taskbar items. We listened, and now in the Visio 2010 Beta you can see previews of each Visio document directly from the taskbar, similar to Word and PowerPoint:

By clicking on a thumbnail, you can switch directly to a specific Visio document. If you hover over a thumbnail, Windows shows you a full-size preview of what that window looks like, through a feature called Aero Peek. With Visio 2010 and Windows 7, working with multiple documents at the same time is simple.

For more on the Windows 7 task bar, see this blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.

Dual Display Support

Another common request we receive is to enable Visio documents to be edited on separate monitors, similar to Word and PowerPoint. While Visio still displays multiple documents in the same application window, there is a workaround to enable dual display support: launch two instances of Visio.

You can do this in Windows 7 by launching Visio, and then right clicking the Visio icon and clicking on the “Microsoft Visio 2010” item. This will launch a second instance of Visio.

Now that you have two instances running, move one instance of Visio to your second monitor. You can then open two separate files in two separate windows. Even though you’re running two instances of Visio, they are both represented by the same icon in the Windows 7 taskbar, so it’s easy to switch between documents.

Multi Touch in Visio 2010

If you have a touch-enabled device, Windows 7 allows you to interact with your PC with your fingers. This feature, called Windows Touch, brings a set of gestures to the operating system that can be used in the OS and several applications.

We’ve integrated support for several Windows Touch gestures in Visio 2010:

Panning: You can use one or two fingers to pan and scroll a document. This makes it easy to navigate Visio diagrams.
Zooming: With two fingers, you can pinch and pull on an area of your Visio document to zoom in on it or zoom out.
Two Finger Tap: If you tap the screen with two fingers, Visio will restore your view by invoking the “Fit page to current window” command.

The above scenarios work directly on the drawing surface, and in full screen mode! Check out the video below to see multi touch in action! (Note: there is no audio).

As seen in the video, we have also integrated the same touch support in the Visio Viewer and in Outlook 2010 preview mode. If you receive a Visio diagram as an attachment, you can use these touch gestures to navigate the diagram directly in Outlook 2010. Click here for more information about Windows Touch

As usual, feel free to drop us a comment on the blog or use the Send a Smile feature in the Visio 2010 Beta to let us know what you think.

Visual Updates to Shapes in Visio 2010

Visio Team — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:58:14 GMT

One of the goals of the Visio 2010 release is to make it easier to create attractive, presentation-quality diagrams. Previously on this blog, we have discussed our improvements to backgrounds, layout, routing, and themes. Visio 2010 also features improvements to the default look of many templates, as well as over 500 newly designed shapes. Below are a few highlights of these changes.

New default theme

Many Visio 2010 templates feature a new, consistent set of default line, font, and shadow properties that help make diagrams look more modern. Here is an example comparing part of a Visio 2007 flowchart with a Visio 2010 flowchart:

In addition to these general enhancements, below are some specific templates we made significant changes to.

Directional Map

The Landmark Shapes stencil in the Directional Map template has around 30 newly designed shapes. Here are a few:

Workflow

The Workflow Shapes template also has around 30 newly designed shapes. Here are a few:

Calendar

Here is a calendar created in Visio 2010, with our newly designed calendar and icon shapes:

Timeline

Visio 2010’s timeline shapes have a sleek new look. Here is an example:

The above are just a few examples. Here is a more comprehensive list of stencils and templates with new or updated shapes:

Six Sigma
Data Graphics Legend
Containers
Callouts
Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
BPMN Pools & Lanes
Basic Flowchart
Compliance
Cross-functional
SharePoint Workflow
Wireframe
Backgrounds
Borders
Timeline
Web site map
Calendar
Workflow
Landmarks

We are interested in your feedback on these visual updates. You can use the Send a Smile feedback tool or comment on the blog to let us know what you think.

Using a Visio Process Repository

Visio Team — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:36:12 GMT

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.

Themes and Live Preview in Visio 2010

Visio Team — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:23:20 GMT

In Visio 2007, we introduced the Themes feature to make it easy to apply a professionally designed look to a diagram. In Visio 2010, the Themes feature gets a whole new user interface that takes advantage of the Office Fluent UI. The theme choices are displayed in a gallery on the Design tab in the ribbon.

An improvement over Visio 2007 is that you can apply both theme colors and effects with one click on a thumbnail in the main Themes gallery, instead of having to visit two separate task panes. Each thumbnail is a pairing of a color scheme from the Colors gallery and an effect scheme from the Effects gallery.

As in Visio 2007, the color schemes include colors for text, fills, lines, connectors, shadows, and backgrounds, as well as a collection of five accent colors. The effect schemes include the font used in text, as well as formatting for the fills, lines, connectors, and shadows.

If none of the theme pairs in the main gallery are to your liking, you can choose from any of the schemes in the Colors or Effects galleries, which are located next to the main gallery.

As in Visio 2007, you can also click “Create New Theme Colors” or “Create New Theme Effects” at the bottom of the gallery to create your own custom theme.

Live Preview

Themes is one of the features that demonstrate the Live Preview capability of the Office Fluent UI. As you move the cursor over each thumbnail in the gallery, the theme’s formatting is previewed on your diagram. This lets you quickly experiment with various looks without forcing you to commit to the change. If you don’t click on anything, the diagram reverts back to whatever was applied before the preview.

Live Preview helps break the repetitive “Undo” cycle of applying formatting to content, deciding against the formatting change, choosing Undo to return to the original formatting, and then starting the cycle all over again.

Live Preview is available for many other galleries and menus in Visio 2010. Another feature that makes good use of it is the Containers feature discussed in an earlier post. When you move the cursor over the various container designs in the Container gallery on the Insert tab, the container style is previewed on the selected shapes so you can see what it would look like if applied.

If you’re running the Visio 2010 Technical Preview, check out the new Themes user interface and Live Preview and let us know what you think via Send a Smile or a comment on the blog.

SharePoint Conference 2009

Visio Team — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:02:38 GMT

The Visio team is anxiously preparing to introduce Visio Services to the world at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, which runs from October 19th to 22nd, 2009 in Las Vegas.

Visio Services is a new SharePoint feature that allows you to share Visio drawings across your organization in SharePoint. But it does more...

If you're interested in hearing what, register for the conference and come listen to our talks. Don't worry if you can't make it -- in the coming months, we'll be presenting conference highlights on the blog as well as an in depth look at Visio Services features.

Introducing Mr. Clarity

Visio Team — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:00:00 GMT

Harry Miller and Jonathan Foster in Office Content Publishing recently created a new educational video series called “Clarity," whose aim is to encourage people to learn more about how to use Visio. (Note that these videos feature Visio 2007, rather than the newer Visio 2010 Community Tech Preview we have been discussing on the blog recently.) Here are the first two episodes of “Clarity”:

Thanks Harry and Jonathan for the great videos!

Improved Flowchart Routing in Visio 2010

Visio Team — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:44:58 GMT

When creating and maintaining flowcharts, a pain point users suffer from is ensuring that the connectors between shapes look good. Visio introduced the dynamic connector many releases ago to help simplify diagram maintenance. Dynamic connectors in combination with dynamic glue allow Visio to choose the sides of shapes to glue your connectors for the best looking results.

In Visio 2010 we made improvements to Visio's routing engine to address some common flowcharting pain points. (For more on the dynamic connector and why you should use dynamic glue, see this previous post titled "Gluing It All Together". )

Improving Flowchart Readability

Clarity is important in flowcharts. Overlapping connectors flowing in opposite directions can create ambiguity about the meaning of the diagram. It is easy to get into a situation where two connectors appear visually to be connected, but were not explicitly connected by the diagram author. Visio 2010's routing engine detects such ambiguous situations and relocates connectors to actively avoid them.

Consider the example below where I draw two dynamic connectors: one from shape A to B and the other from B to C. In Visio 2007, this leads to an ambiguous drawing, where it appears as if shape A is connected to shape C. Visio 2010 moves the connector between A and B to an alternate side of shape B to resolve the ambiguity.

We made this design change based on user feedback. It scales to handle more than just a few connectors, and allows connectors to overlap when they are flowing in the same direction.

A consequence of this change is that if you open a diagram that was created in older versions of Visio in Visio 2010, as you edit your diagram, you may see connectors relocate to different sides of shapes. Note that Visio doesn't move glue points of connectors that are statically glued.

Relaxing Constraints on Flowchart Direction

Visio flowcharts that use the "Flowchart" routing style have a routing direction, like "Top to Bottom" or "Left to Right". In flowchart routing, this controls what sides of shapes dynamic connectors (mostly) connect to. Strict adherence to this direction can easily lead to situations where a dynamic connector takes a path around a shape with 5 segments.

Using "Top to Bottom" as my routing direction, routes generally exit from the bottom of a shape and connect to the top of the shape, except in cases where shapes line up exactly.

In Visio 2010, we enable dynamic connectors to connect to alternate sides of shapes when the shapes are close to each other.

To strike a balance between having simple looking connectors and still adhering to the flowchart direction, Visio connects to non-standard sides of shapes when two shapes are close to each other in the axis of the routing direction.

As always, we're interested in your feedback on routing, so use the Send a Smile feedback tool or comment on this post to let us know what you think.

Using Visio 2007 Professional's data connectivity features with timelines

Visio Team — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:30:00 GMT

Visio 2007 provides data connectivity support for a number of data sources such as Excel, SQL and SharePoint Lists. One interesting scenario is to pull in schedule information from a SharePoint calendar (a special list type in SharePoint) to generate a Visio timeline.

Visio MVP David Parker has posted an article that illustrates how to use Link Data to Shapes and the External Data window to bring in the SharePoint data and drop linked shapes onto a timeline. As David shows, the "secret" is to map the names of the date data fields to the names of the Shape Data properties used by Visio's timeline shapes. That way the timeline shapes don't just carry the SharePoint data around; they use the data to control their position on the timeline.

This mapping technique is useful for more than SharePoint lists and for more than timelines. Use it whenever you want to link data to existing Shape Data properties on a shape. You don't need to go rework the data source to match Visio's property names.

Visio Conference 2008 videos posted

Visio Team — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

For anyone who wasn't able to attend the Visio Conference 2008 this February or has been itching to show everyone else the cool things coming in Visio "vNext", the wait is over! Videos from all the conference sessions are posted on http://www.visiotoolbox.com. Click on the conference link in the bottom-right corner of the page - or follow the links below.

Each session consists of the PowerPoint slide deck, speaker audio and video of the demos. Use the links below to jump to the sessions for each track:

Keynotes - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/Keynotes/start.htm

General Sessions - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/GeneralSessions/start.htm

Solutions Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/BusinessSolutions/start.htm

Developer Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/SolutionDevelopment/start.htm

End User Track - http://www.visiotoolbox.com/visioconference2008/EndUser/start.htm

For those specifically interested in Visio "vNext", here are the four sessions where we demonstrated some of the capabilities coming next release:

Visualizing Information Work Today & Tomorrow - Jeff Raikes keynote

The Visio Business Today and Software Development Process - Richard Wolf keynote

Visio Future Investments - Bill Morein

Visio Futures - API Insights - John Haug and Philippe Arida

Troubleshooting

You should be able to click on a link and then click on Play. The videos take a varying amount of time to load - a few minutes in some cases. If you find that the UI frame around the slides / video is missing, try refreshing the web page. This will reload the controls but the session will resume playing where you left off.

Extra drawings opening on Visio launch

Visio Team — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

This situation has come up frequently enough in the newsgroups that the solution should be widely circulated:

When Visio crashes, it will often restart and recover the document you were working on. This is generally quite helpful, but sometimes Visio doesn't know when to stop. Sometimes Visio will continue to recover that document and show it to you every time you launch Visio. This can be frustrating, but there is a solution.

Close Visio. Then look in the folder "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Visio" using Windows Explorer. Some of the folders in the path are hidden, but you can usually paste the path found between the quotation marks directly into the address bar and press Enter. Now find the file autorecover.ini and delete it. The recovered documents should stop reappearing when Visio is launched.

Shape Conversion in Process Engineering

Visio Team — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT

A recent newsgroup post asks for an explanation of the cells that get added to a shape when it is converted using the Process Engineering add-on.

The Shape Conversion command in Process Engineering allows you to make any shape work like the built-in Process Engineering shapes. We recognized that customers who made Piping & Instrumentation diagrams often had custom equipment or valves or instruments that they needed to include in the diagram. Shape Conversion modifies a custom shape to make it recognizable by the Process Engineering add-on and match the behaviors of built-in shapes.

You can try this by drawing a rectangle and choosing Shape Conversion from the Process Engineering menu. In the dialog, note that the shape Source is already set to Selected Shapes. Process Engineering can also bring in shapes from other documents or CAD symbols. Then comes the challenging part: you can optionally give the shape a Category and Tag Format. Categories are used to organize the shape in the Component Explorer window. You can choose an existing category or type in a new string. Tag formats are used for automatically labeling and numbering shapes. You must choose from an existing tag format. Visio only offers you choices for Categories and Tag Formats that already exist in the drawing, so if you want your shape to be a piece of Equipment you should drop a built-in Equipment shape on the drawing before converting your custom shape.

After clicking OK, you can open the Shapesheet window to see what changes were made to your shape. The primary change is the set of User-defined cells added to the shape. These cells identify the shape and control its behavior in the diagram.

Here is a brief explanation of each cell:

User.SOLSH	A GUID (unique identifier) that tells Visio what add-on is managing the shape. All shapes that are used with Process Engineering, need the GUID matching the Process Engineering add-on.
User.ShapeClass	The Category that the shape is assigned to. The shape appears under this name in the Component Explorer.
User.PEComponentTag	The current tag name (label & number) for the shape.
User.PETagFormat	The Tag Format name and expression for the shape. Unless the Component Tag has been overwritten, this is the automatically generated label displayed on the shape.
User.PETagNumber	The sequence number for the shape. Visio updates this value when components are renumbered. This value then feeds into the Component Tag.
User.PEHideTag	A Boolean value that determines whether the Component Tag is displayed on the shape. This is manipulated by an Action in the Actions section.
User.PEPageHideTags	A value that references the global page setting for hiding tags. If tags are hidden at the page level, then the local setting is ignored.
User.PELayout	This is a bit flag that controls the layout behavior of the components in the diagram. Mostly these settings determine how the split and heal features in Process Engineering work. Here are the bits: CAUSES SPLIT = 1 (Splits connector when dropped on connector) CAUSES HEAL = 2 (Heals connector when deleted) ALLOWS SPLIT = 4 (Connector splits when shape dropped) ALLOWS HEAL = 8 (Connector heals when shape deleted) ALLOWS JUNCTION = 16 (Connector to connector connection) JUNCTION IN USE = 32 (Temporary state) The default setting here is 31, which enables all the split and heal and junction behaviors.

There are a few other changes to connection points, action cells and text to complete the conversion. These are straightforward changes, and you can inspect the Shapesheet to see the details.

CAD Integration Announcement for Visio "vNext"

Visio Team — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

This morning at Day 2 of Visio Conference 2008, we announced that the next version of Visio will add support for AutoCAD 2007 DWG and DXF file formats. As mentioned in previous blog posts, this was a major request from Visio customers and partners.

General Manager Richard Wolf explained in his keynote address how Visio prioritizes feature investments that improve the entire Visio platform over changes that enhance just a single vertical market. CAD integration is valuable to a broad set of customers spanning the Engineering, Facilities Management and Information Technology markets. Richard then demonstrated an example of inserting an AutoCAD 2007 floorplan of a data center, overlaying Visio server shapes, adding Data Graphics to show cabinet temperatures and then publishing the diagram to Visio Services for display in a web dashboard. Thus, while CAD integration does not fall under the three investment areas described on Day 1, it was high on the team's priority list for Visio "vNext" given the applicability to data visualization scenarios across several diagram types.

Day 2 also featured demonstrations of new capabilities for developers and shape designers:

RibbonX

Visio "vNext" adds support for RibbonX, the API for the Office Fluent user interface. Existing Visio solutions with custom UI will work unmodified in the Ribbon, but solutions can use RibbonX for a much richer integration into the Ribbon.

Structured Diagrams

Visio "vNext" allows solution developers to work with Visio diagrams at a logical level instead of at the physical level. Visio exposes relationships between shapes that can be discovered and traversed to simplify the understanding of the diagram structure. Three common relationships are defined: connectivity, containment and callouts.

Visio Services API

Visio "vNext" provides a JavaScript API for accessing and enhancing diagrams rendered by Visio Services. Web page scripts can extract information about the shapes displayed in the diagram for use in another frame. Scripts can also highlight shapes, place overlays on shapes and manipulate the diagram's viewport for pan and zoom.

The feedback received over the last two days at the Visio Conference has been tremendous. We're happy to see people so enthusiastic about our Visio "vNext" plans. There is still much work to be done, and we hope that the Visio community will continue providing feedback as we disclose more over time.

Visio "vNext"

Visio Team — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Tuesday more than 300 customers, partners and Visio community members gathered for Day 1 of Visio Conference 2008. Attendees were treated to an impressive array of partner solutions, product demonstrations and information-filled sessions. To top it all off, attendees got the first sneak peak at the next version of Microsoft Office Visio.

At this point Visio "vNext" is still in an early stage (pre-Alpha), but we wanted to give everyone a glimpse of the fantastic capabilities of the next version and outline our high-level investments. Keep in mind that plans can and do change as we respond to feedback and continue working toward completion. We are publicly showing just a few of the features planned. Here are the three areas where we are concentrating most of our efforts:

Process Management

Visio "vNext" reinvents the core flowcharting experience in Visio. Flowchart creation is faster and easier than ever. Cross-functional flowcharts in particular are improved. Going beyond a simple drawing canvas, Visio understands the logical structure of the diagram far better. This leads to more advanced process diagramming capabilities that put the user firmly in control over the graphical representation of their processes.

Ease of Use

Visio "vNext" adopts the Office Fluent user interface that you see today in Office 2007 core applications. The Ribbon and Live Preview components in particular take the guesswork out of finding Visio commands and choosing between settings. At the same time Visio improves a wide range of existing features, bringing the results-oriented concepts behind the Fluent UI onto the diagramming surface itself. The Shapes window, layout and AutoConnect are significantly enhanced. Visio is even easier to use and significantly reduces the time needed to create and modify diagrams.

Visio Services

Visio "vNext" introduces server-rendered, data-refreshable diagrams for the first time. Visio Services allows data connected diagrams to be published from Visio to a server and viewed by users directly in their web browser. There are no client bits to install. An API is also provided for creating mashups of diagrams and additional data.

There is far more to talk about with Visio "vNext". In future posts we will begin to provide more details and present screen shots. However, there are also plenty of things to discuss about the current Visio 2007 product. We'll cover both in the coming months. Please stay tuned and be sure to give us your feedback.

Visio as a Business Process Analysis Tool

Visio Team — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Visio had the opportunity to present at Microsoft's SOA & BP conference last November on using Visio as a Business Process Analysis Tool. A video of that presentation is now available for viewing. Mark Nelson from the Visio team describes how Visio 2007 helps bring BPA to the masses through its in-box feature set and robust solutions platform. Also Keith Sharp from partner Ascentn demonstrates their AgilePoint BPM product, which is built on the Visio platform.

Images and the Dynamic Grid

Visio Team — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:00:00 GMT

A recent newsgroup post described a problem getting the Dynamic Grid feature to work with images. The user inserted pictures into their diagram and wanted the same alignment aids that Visio provides for regular shapes. This can be done with a small modification of the image shapes. First let's look at the Dynamic Grid behavior for regular Visio shapes (i.e. shapes with geometry).

The shape on the right is being dragged near the shape on the left. When the Dynamic Grid is turned on (Tools > Snap & Glue dialog), Visio displays both horizontal and vertical alignment lines. The horizontal line indicates that the centers of the shapes are aligned. The vertical line indicates that the shapes will be separated by a standard spacing amount.

If you try the same thing with images, Visio produces different results.

The vertical alignment line is shown, but the horizontal line is not shown. These shapes do not have any visible geometry, which Visio uses as criterion for alignment. When you insert a picture in Visio, the resulting shape has a geometry section but the Line Pattern is set to No Line. It turns out that by making a simple adjustment in the shape, you can make Visio recognize the hidden geometry section and get full Dynamic Grid support. In the Shapesheet (Window > Show Shapesheet), find the LinePattern cell and set it to 1. This makes the shape work with Dynamic Grid. Now to hide the rectangle around the image, find the Geometry section and set Geometry1.NoShow to TRUE. This makes the border invisible once again but does not disrupt the Dynamic Grid behavior.

Here is the feedback when the Dynamic Grid is working with the modified image shapes. Note that the change must be made on the shape your are aligning to (i.e. the shape not being dragged).

Perhaps Visio can make this workaround unnecessary in the future. Meanwhile this is one way to make your images behave just like regular Visio shapes.