Visio Insights : Visio 2007

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!

Update: Visio 2007 Service Pack 2 and Visio Conference 2008

Visio Team — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:02:00 GMT

A few updates…

XMI Export

We recently reported the availability of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Visio 2007. We received a few questions about how to use the XMI export feature in UML diagrams. The behavior in SP2 is exactly the same as in previous versions. Integrating it into the UML solution and retiring the separate download should make life easier for everyone, including us! The following VBA example demonstrates the interface:

Application.Addons("UML Background Add-on").Run("/CMD=400 /XMIFILE=""C:\path\file.xmi""")

The XMI export acts on the active document, so be sure to set that if your application session has multiple documents open. If you’re not familiar with VBA, the extra quotation marks in the XMIFILE argument are used to escape the quote character – the value passed in must be wrapped in quotes.

Visio Conference 2008 Videos

Last year, we posted links to videos from the Visio Conference 2008, where we shared a few glimpses into the next version of Visio. The links have changed – replace the visioconference2008 part of the URL with visio2008 to get to the video site. Note that some of the videos are quite large and can take a bit to download.

Service Pack 2 available for Visio 2007

Visio Team — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:17:00 GMT

Yesterday, we released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Visio 2007. You can download and install it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=78e36742-8bda-471e-88e6-9b561bb06258

Among the issues we've addressed in SP2 are these:

A crash caused by early versions of the Broadcom “Send To Bluetooth” add-in occurs every time Visio is shut down. The first crash on exit will still occur, but subsequent crashes will not. The add-in will be disabled until it is updated to a newer version from Broadcom. More information on this and similar add-in issues is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937997
When the Reports feature is used to export a report to Microsoft Office Excel, Excel opens without any user interface except the worksheet window. The ribbon does not appear.
Script errors occur when Internet Explorer 8 is used to browse Web pages that are saved from Visio.
When a Visio drawing is inserted as a linked object in PowerPoint, Word, or Excel, and the link is updated, the quality of the image degrades.
If a Visio file name contains the -r- or -s- characters (for example, “filename -r-”), it triggers a repair of the application when the file is opened in Visio.
When a shape is dragged between two instances of Visio, the open regions of the shape are opaque, and this makes it difficult to position the shape on the new page.
Appointments in a Microsoft Office Outlook calendar do not import into Visio when the language version of Visio and the Windows locale setting are different.
Visio crashes when the 117th layer is added to the page.
In a UML Model Diagram, changing the Flow Kind of a Message Object does not correctly reset the Operation field in the UML Message Properties dialog box.

In addition, SP2 provides these new capabilities:

The ability to programmatically export an XML file compliant with the XMI standard from a UML diagram. This functionality was formerly available only as a separate download for Visio 2003.
The ability to disable access to CAD (*.dwg) files in Visio 2007. More information is available in this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938803/

Developer Reference for Visio 2007 Viewer released

Visio Team — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:00:00 GMT

The Visio 2007 Viewer Developer Reference is up on MSDN and can be accessed at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc297217.aspx.

The reference includes the full API reference and some short samples on how to embedded the viewer in different environments. The Viewer provides an application programming interface (API) that enables solution developers to perform the following tasks:

Load and unload Visio drawings
Select shapes
Follow hyperlinks
Display Viewer dialog boxes to the user
Customize the size and position of the Viewer window
Customize the user interface by changing foreground and background colors and displaying or hiding the grid and the scrollbars
Control the color and transparency of layers in the drawing
Control the color and visibility of reviewer markups (comments)
Customize the toolbar by adding or removing buttons
Respond to user actions in the Viewer interface

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 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.

Visio Toolbox Site

Visio Team — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Microsoft has significantly updated its Visio product information on the web. Check out the new site at http://www.visiotoolbox.com.

You will find articles, training and downloads that provide a wealth of information on Visio 2007. Those that found the previous IT Toolkit valuable will appreciate the free products and promotional offers on the site. Note that some items require you to register on the site first.

CAD Integration in Visio - Part 2

Visio Team — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:00:00 GMT

In the previous post we reviewed the problems users were encountering with the CAD Integration feature set in Visio 2003 and the fixes that were made in Visio 2007. In this post we look at the remaining issues with CAD and Visio.

Converting CAD drawings to Visio shapes

Visio 2003 changed the way that CAD drawings are converted to Visio shapes. Instead of converting each entity and adding it as a Visio shape, the entities are converted in bulk to an intermediate document and then the entire document is merged into the current drawing in one big Paste operation. This change makes conversion up to 10 times faster – a significant improvement. However, Visio now requires quite a bit more memory to accomplish the task. On PCs without sufficient memory, performance degrades because Visio must page memory to disk.

Additionally we have found that some really large CAD files fail to convert. There is a limit to the number of entities that can be converted at once, though this limit is not easily expressed as a quantifiable number. Unfortunately the failure comes near the end of the lengthy operation rather than at the beginning. Visio 2007 does not remedy this situation. Your best bet is to divide up the diagram into more layers and then convert the layers individually. While Visio should handle this situation better, keep in mind that CAD programs are designed to deal with hundreds of thousands of simple entities and Visio is designed to deal with thousands of complex entities. It's difficult to scale up to support the largest CAD drawings out there. Simplifying the drawing before bringing it into Visio is recommended.

DWG file formats supported by Visio

A frequent complaint from users is that Visio refuses to open a DWG file because it was saved in a newer format. Visio 2003 and 2007 do not support the latest file formats used in AutoCAD programs. That means CAD files must be saved back to a compatible version before they can be used with Visio. Visio 2003 and 2007 support the R15 version of the DWG format. This was the default format used by AutoCAD 2000 and AutoCAD 2002. Newer versions of AutoCAD save to newer versions of the DWG format by default.

Additionally, Visio does not support all the entities defined in the R15 version of the DWG format. In terms of entity support, Visio handles the entities defined in the R14 version of the DWG format with a few exceptions. A specific entity list is beyond the scope of this blog post. The point is that the level of entity support and the version of the file format supported are not identical.

Note that there was a specific problem where files saved out from AutoCAD 2007 would not open in Visio 2007 even when saved back to the R15 format. This was corrected in Visio 2007 SP1.

What's next for CAD integration

It's too soon to announce our plans for the next release. We continue to gather information from customers about their needs for CAD with Visio. Your input on specific issues or the overall importance of CAD integration to your Visio usage is encouraged.

CAD Integration in Visio - Part 1

Visio Team — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Visio has long had the ability to display, import and export CAD drawings stored in the DWG and DXF file formats. If you are unfamiliar with the ways that Visio can work with CAD drawings, please read through this previous post.

In Visio 2003 the CAD feature set was overhauled to improve performance and reliability plus provide a better mapping of Visio shapes to CAD entities on Export. There were changes in the CAD Display Properties and Conversion dialogs as well. Unfortunately there were a number of serious bugs that impacted the functionality of the feature set. A few items have been fixed in Visio 2003 service packs, but many more were addressed in Visio 2007.

This post describes the problems in Visio 2003 that were corrected in Visio 2007. The next post will discuss the remaining issues surrounding Visio's CAD integration.

Insert CAD Drawing

There are two ways to display a CAD drawing in a Visio document. If you go to File > Open, you can point directly at the DWG or DXF file and open it. Visio creates a new blank drawing, chooses a page scale that will fit the CAD drawing to the Visio page and adds the CAD drawing. Another method is to start from an existing diagram and go to Insert > CAD Drawing. Visio shows the CAD Drawing Properties dialog and allows you to specify the scale you want to use. Unfortunately, there are several issues going this route in Visio 2003:

· Visio defaults to a custom scale that fits the CAD object to the page, but this scale does not match the scale of the Visio page. If you choose this default, the CAD object will be scaled incorrectly with respect to everything else in the diagram. When inserting into an existing diagram you should always choose the current page scale. The custom scale default is really only useful when you want to use the CAD drawing as an unscaled image in your diagram.

· Since CAD drawings don't explicitly define what units of measure are used, you must specify the CAD drawing units in the dialog to properly scale the CAD object. This can be confusing, and in Visio 2003 the setting doesn't work. The value is ignored, resulting in improper scaling for CAD objects drawn in Metric coordinates.

· For those who bravely tried to get the scale settings configured properly, there is one more problem: The preview pane did not update as you made changes to the settings. Thus the visual feedback about what you would get was also wrong.

These issues combined to make Insert > CAD Drawing very challenging in Visio 2003. Settings either didn't work or were configured improperly by default. This created unnecessary confusion and frustration for customers. Visio 2007 corrects these problems, although it is still the responsibility of the user to set the CAD drawing units properly to end up with the right scale.

A note of caution for Visio 2007: The CAD Drawing Properties dialog does not remember settings very well. Once you close the dialog and reopen it, you will have to reset the Pre-defined scale to Page Scale again. Also do not manually resize the CAD object using the green shape handles since this just distorts the scale.

Export CAD Drawing

Visio drawings are exported to CAD files using the File > Save As > DWG / DXF command. If there is no existing CAD object in the drawing, Visio converts the Visio shapes to entities correctly. If there is a CAD object in the drawing, Visio 2003 fails to use the proper scale to ensure that the converted Visio shapes match up with the existing CAD object's entities. It also fails to position the converted shapes relative to the existing CAD entities. Additionally any cropping or rotation of the CAD object is ignored in the exported file.

Visio 2007 corrects most of the scaling and positioning issues. There are a few cases with dimensions that still are troublesome. Visio 2007 does not support cropping or CAD object rotation on export.

Customer Input

Many of the fixes in Visio 2007 can be credited to a group of customers that are passionate about Visio and its use with CAD drawings. At the Visio Conference in 2006 the product team showcased the upcoming Visio 2007 version with its emphasis on data connectivity. However, a number of partners and customers voiced concerns about the problems with CAD in Visio 2003. In an ad-hoc meeting, we sat down with all interested parties to understand the issues and hear firsthand how important the feature is for these customers.

Following the conference, the Visio team did an extensive review of the CAD feature set to uncover the bugs that were causing the most customer pain. These issues were corrected in Visio 2007 and released as part of the Visio 2007 betas to have partners and customers verify the fixes. The result is a significantly better experience in Visio 2007 over Visio 2003. We weren't able to address all concerns though. Next time we will look at the current state of CAD integration in Visio.

Visio 2007 Service Pack 1

Visio Team — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:00:00 GMT

It's been about a year since the release of Visio 2007 and Office 2007, and Microsoft has now published Service Pack 1. Here is the download link for English. You can choose another language from this link as well.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=496BC7C1-ABD7-4BC7-8366-B8A4CC85803B&displaylang=en

The goals of this service pack are to provide compatibility for upcoming releases such as Windows 2008 Server, improve security and address key performance and reliability issues.

A specific fix to note for Visio:

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 now properly redraws shapes when users apply a dynamic connector that is part of a group of shapes in Office Visio 2007.

The KB article with all the details is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937155

Publishing Visio 2007 Solutions

Visio Team — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:00:00 GMT

Saul Candib, our technical writer for Visio, has posted an excellent article on MSDN explaining how to publish Visio 2007 solutions. In this context "solutions" refers to the add-ons, templates, stencils and/or help files that you have created and want to distribute to other people.

We covered this topic in a previous post, but the MSDN article goes into greater depth. Saul describes the basic options of using path discovery (the classic way Visio content is found and usable in the application) or publishing content using Windows Installer (the method introduced in Visio 2003). There is a good summary of the benefits of using Windows Installer, which is repeated here:

By publishing content, you can better integrate it into Visio. For example, you can more easily control the location of menu commands that start your solution or open your stencils, how the commands are named, and when they are available to users.
By publishing content, you can more easily publish localized versions of your solutions together with the Windows Multilingual User Interface Pack (MUI). (The MUI is a set of language-specific resource files that allow the user interface language to be changed, according to the preferences of individual users, to one of the 33 supported languages.)
Published content offers better performance, because published information is stored in the registry, where it can be retrieved more rapidly.
The Windows Installer Setup wizard is familiar to users and easy to use.
By publishing content, you benefit from Windows Installer repair and add-and-remove software features.
Publishing your content makes it available to all users of computers with multiple users. Path discovery works only for individual users.

The bulk of the article explains in detail how to do publishing with Windows Installer. There are a number of steps and tools involved, so you should find this write-up quite valuable. The article is written for Visio 2007, but much of the information is applicable to Visio 2003.

Data Graphics Tips

Visio Team — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:00:00 GMT

One final post about Data Graphics before turning to other topics for a while. We've gotten some great feedback from customers about their usage of Data Graphics. Based on comments and observations of users, there are a few points of confusion that people are encountering. This post explains the most common issues with the Data Graphics feature.

I modified the data graphic on one shape and all my shapes changed

Users encounter this when the same data graphic is applied to multiple shapes. They select one shape and edit its data graphic only to find that the data graphic was updated on the other shapes as well. When you edit the data graphic on a shape using the Edit Data Graphic command, you are actually changing the definition of the data graphic used everywhere.

If you really want to change the data graphic on some of the shapes, you need to assign a different data graphic to those shapes so that they act independent of the rest. Go to Data > Display Data on Shapes to open the Data Graphics task pane. Right-click on the data graphic currently applied and click Duplicate. Then select the shapes you want in the drawing and click on the duplicate data graphic to apply it. You can continue to modify the new data graphic and only affect the shapes you chose to apply it to.

How do I switch between Text Callouts and Data Bars?

With Data Graphics you can display information using Text Callouts, Data Bars, Icon Sets or Color by Value. These are the choices when adding new items in the Edit Data Graphics dialog. Unfortunately, once you choose the type of graphic for an item, you cannot switch to one of the other types. This is a limitation of the feature. You will have to delete the item you have and add a new one with the type you want.

Sometimes I can't select the data graphic in the diagram

Visio adds data graphics to shape in the diagram by inserting them as sub-shapes of the target shape. The ability to select the callout sub-shapes is then dependent on whether the target shape allows it. Go to Format > Behavior and look at the Selection property. "Group only" means that sub-shapes cannot be selected. Change this to "Group first" or "Members first" to all selection. A common reason to select callout sub-shapes is to apply local formatting to them.

My Data Bar doesn't show the correct percentage value

The default Minimum and Maximum values for a Data Bar are 0 and 100. This makes it seem like the Data Bar naturally displays percentage values with 100 being the largest data value and 0 being the smallest data value. However, that is not how Data Bars work. The Min and Max properties are actual values. If your data field has values in a different range, you need to update the Min and Max properties to match your data range.

How do I reset the position control handle?

Visio adds a control handle to target shapes for easy repositioning of the data graphic. This allows you to customize the location of the data graphic on a shape-by-shape basis. Changes to the position property in the data graphic definition do not override the custom position you designate.

If you would like to reset the position control handle so that it uses the data graphic position property, you must remove the data graphic and reapply it. Go to Data > Display Data on Shapes to open the Data Graphics task pane. Select your shape and choose the None data graphic. Then click on the previous data graphic to reapply it.

Data graphics don't appear when I apply them to pictures or images in my diagram

Data graphics cannot be applied directly to pictures or embedded objects. Visio is unable to convert these shape types to groups so that callouts can be inserted. The typical workaround in this case is to group the picture or object and then apply the data graphic to the group. You also have to move your data to the group shape. There is a KB article explaining the procedure: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923596/en-us

Want to know more about Data Graphics and visualizing information?

If you have mastered the basics and want to go further with Data Graphics, there's a new book available for Visio 2007. The book is Visualizing Information with Microsoft Office Visio 2007 by Visio MVP David Parker. You can read a review of the book on Chris Roth's Visio Guy blog.

Make Your Own Data Graphic – Icon Sets

Visio Team — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:00:00 GMT

This is the third and final post in a series demonstrating how you can create data graphic callout shapes for use in Visio 2007 Professional. The first post discussed Text Callouts. Data Bars were described in the second post. There is also an article on MSDN that covers the full spectrum of customization possibilities for Data Graphics.

An Icon Set is one of the four ways you can visualize data using Data Graphics. It shows information in a compact, visual form. Icon Sets are used to convey “state” – whether some condition in the data has been met. An Icon Set may be used to indicate exception conditions such as displaying a red flag next to a shape to indicate a problem. Alternatively an Icon Set shows one of several possible conditions present in the shape data such as in the image above showing completion state.

A Data Graphics Icon Set can contain up to five icons. There are two general approaches to Icon Set callout construction. One option is to assemble five bitmaps into a shape and add logic to show the correct bitmap based on the data. This approach is described in the MSDN article along with guidance how to do this efficiently by making an image strip. A second option is to create the callout using Visio geometry and formatting. This approach follows the multi-shape concept in Visio where the data controls the visibility and formatting of portions of the shape. We will use the geometry approach for this post.

Our sample Icon Set callout is a torus or doughnut shape. There are five possible states indicating how much of the doughnut is shown. Technically, an Icon Set can have six states, but by convention the first state is the “not shown” state. If the icon was intended to have some residual visual state, an image could be assigned to the “not shown” state. Each state in the icon set corresponds to a geometry section in the shape that can be made visible when appropriate. Also the fill color of the icon set changes with each state. Let’s start with the minimum set of tasks to create a Data Graphic callout and then add functionality from there.

We draw a circle on the page and open its Shapesheet. In the Shapesheet, we need to insert a User-defined section for the Icon Set properties. Three cells are required for Icon Sets. User.msvCalloutType identifies the shape as a Data Graphic callout of type Icon Set. User.msvCalloutIconCount tells Visio how many icons or images are in the set. This can range from 1 to 5. User.msvCalloutIconNumber tells Visio the default icon to show in thumbnails of the data graphic. Once the callout is applied to a shape, Visio uses this cell to tell the callout which icon to show.

This is all that Visio requires for a usable Icon Set callout. If you drag this shape over to the document stencil and then make a new data graphic, you would see this callout appear in the Edit Icon Set dialog. However, we have five icons that show the same circle. Our next task is to add the real geometry that makes up the five icons in the set.

Our callout shape has one geometry section already. This circle will be the outer edge of the doughnut. We need a second circle for the inner edge. We could draw this circle with the drawing tools, but we don’t want to create a new shape here. All of the geometry will exist in a single callout shape. The easiest method is to add the required geometry directly in the Shapesheet window. Note that circles are represented using the Ellipse section type. After inserting the new section, we update the A and D cells to set the size of the circle.

Now let’s tie the geometry to specific icons in the Icon Set. User.msvCalloutIconNumber controls which icon should be displayed. The index is 0-based, giving us a 0 to 4 range to work with. Additionally, Visio uses the value -1 to indicate that no icon should be shown. As a best practice, we will not show any icon for any value outside the 0 to 4 range. If we glance back at the example at the top of the page, we see that the full doughnut geometry is intended to be shown for index values 0 and 4. A partial doughnut is shown for index values 1, 2 and 3. Our two geometry sections should only be visible when the index is 0 or 4. We control the visibility through this formula added to the NoShow cell for each section.

Geometry1.NoShow = IF(OR(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=0,User.msvCalloutIconNumber=4),FALSE,TRUE)

Geometry2.NoShow = IF(OR(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=0,User.msvCalloutIconNumber=4),FALSE,TRUE)

This is a common expression for Icon Sets. The OR function can have any number of conditions in it, so showing the geometry section for an additional index value would be as simple as adding one more condition to the OR function arguments. We can test our expression by typing various numbers into User.msvCalloutIconNumber to see geometry appear and disappear.

We need an additional geometry section for each of the partial doughnut icons. You need to understand a little about how Visio defines elliptical arcs to get the geometry formulas correct. The basic idea is that you must specify the end point of the arc as well as a point along the arc’s path. Also note that changing the row type of a path (to switch from LineTo to EllipticalArcTo) can reset the shape’s alignment box. We need to prevent that by setting the LockCalcWH cell to 1 in the Protections section first. Here are the three geometry sections needed:

To display these icons at the right time, we need to tie their NoShow cell to User.msvCalloutIconNumber. Here are the expressions for geometry sections 3, 4 and 5 respectively:

Geometry3.NoShow = IF(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=1,FALSE,TRUE)

Geometry4.NoShow = IF(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=2,FALSE,TRUE)

Geometry5.NoShow = IF(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=3,FALSE,TRUE)

Now our callout shape shows the correct geometry for each value of User.msvCalloutIconNumber. Next we will make the fill color change with the index value as well. Our doughnut should be white for index 0, a reddish color for index 1 and a green color for index 4. Between 1 and 4 the color transitions from red to green. This is accomplished by using the BLEND function. For BLEND the two color extremes are specified along with a value between 0 and 1 to determine the balance between the colors.

FillForegnd = IF(User.msvCalloutIconNumber=0,1,BLEND(RGB(208,81,81),RGB(146,208,80),(User.msvCalloutIconNumber-1)/3))

Once the color is set up, we set the LockFormat cell to 1 to prevent changes by the user or theming. Our callout now produces all the icons as intended. One final step is to lock down the size of the callout shape so that it does not stretch when applied to a target shape. The following formulas are added to the Width and Height cells. Note that DropOnPageScale allows the icon to work in both scaled and unscaled drawings.

Width = GUARD(0.25 in*DropOnPageScale)

Height - GUARD(0.25 in*DropOnPageScale)

This callout shape is complete and can be dragged into the Document Stencil to create a master shape. If you open the Data Graphics task pane (Data > Display Data on Shapes) and create a new data graphic, you can add a new Icon Set to see that the callout is available for use. One item to point out is that the second icon is shown at a different scale than the others. For the preview image, Visio zooms to fit the visible geometry into the available image size.

We can continue to embellish the callout shape if desired. It would be nice to set up the geometry of the icons so that it does not extend all the way to the edge of the callout shape. Leaving a small margin makes everything look better when Visio stacks several Icon Set callouts on top of each other. This requires changes to the geometry expressions to account for margin. An example of this can be found in the attached Visio document.

This concludes our series on building custom Data Graphic callouts. There are more tips and tricks about Data Graphic callout construction in the MSDN article. If you would like to see more on this feature or other Visio 2007 features, please send us an e-mail or post a comment.

Make Your Own Data Graphic – Data Bars

Visio Team — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

This is the second post in a series demonstrating how you can create data graphic callout shapes for use in Visio 2007 Professional. The first post discussed Text Callouts. There is also an article on MSDN that covers the full spectrum of customization possibilities for Data Graphics.

A Data Bar is one of the four ways you can visualize data using Data Graphics. It displays numeric data in a graphical form using the geometry of the callout shape to indicate the magnitude of the data value. Data Bars may also display text and can even display multiple fields at once. As with the other Data Graphics callouts, the visualization is as customized as you want to make it.

In this post we are going to create the “slider” shape shown above. This callout has two parts. A long, thin bar shows the full range of possible data values, and a circle slides along the bar to indicate the current data value. The circle also displays the current data value as text expressed as a percentage. Let’s start with the bar and perform the minimum tasks necessary to create a Data Graphic callout.

We draw a rectangle on the page and open its Shapesheet. In the Shapesheet, we need to insert a User-defined section and a Shape Data section. To make this shape a Data Graphic callout, first change the row name of the User-defined row to User.msvCalloutType (click on the row name and type "msvCalloutType"). In the Value cell enter "Data Bar" - including the quotation marks here. Next change the row name of the Shape Data row to Prop.msvCalloutField (click on the row name and type "msvCalloutField"). Data Bars also have Shape Data rows for the minimum and maximum values that the callout field can have. Add two more Shape Data rows named Prop.msvCalloutPropMin and Prop.msvCalloutPropMax. Enter labels in the Label column and the word “Number” in the Prompt column as shown in the screenshot.

Visio uses the User.msvCalloutType value to determine where to surface your custom callout shape in the Data Graphics user interface. This shape will appear in the Callouts list in the New Data Bar / Edit Data Bar dialog. Visio populates the Prop.msvCalloutField value (the Value cell in this row) with the data to display at the time the data graphic is applied to a shape on the page. Visio also will fill in values for Min and Max based on the data recordset, and these are exposed in the Data Bar dialog as well. This shape will now be treated as a Data Graphic callout if you drag it into the Document Stencil, but right now it doesn’t do anything with the data from Visio. We need to build out the rest of the shape to make it work like a data bar.

Label display

Our rectangle will serve as the long, skinny part of the data bar - indicating the full range of field values. It also is responsible for displaying the field label. We want this label to be optionally hidden as is the case in the sample callout above. Visio will place the field label in the Prop.msvCalloutField.SortKey cell (a strange place, yes, but the Label cell is already used for exposing properties in the Data Bar dialog). Enter some default text such as “Label” (including quotation marks) in this cell. Then select the rectangle in the drawing window and choose Insert > Field. Choose Custom Formula and then enter the formula: “=Prop.msvCalloutField.SortKey” (no quotation marks) and press OK. We want the label to be outside the rectangle on the right side. In the Shapesheet insert a Text Transform section and fill it out as shown below:

We want the user to be able to choose whether the field label is shown or hidden. Data Graphics allows us to create our own callout property to display in the Data Bar dialog. Add a new Shape Data row and name it Prop.msvCalloutPropShowLabel. The row name must include the prefix “msvCalloutProp” to be recognized as a callout property. Then place a human-readable name in the Label column and the word “Bool” in the Prompt column. The Label value appears in the dialog as the name of the property. The Prompt value tells Data Graphics what type of control to use in the dialog – in this case a simple True / False dropdown. Visio will put the user’s choice in the Value cell. Go ahead and enter the default value True here. A full explanation of the syntax for custom callout properties is included in the MSDN article. Finally tie the visibility of the shape’s text to this Value cell by entering this formula in the HideText cell: “=NOT(Prop.msvCalloutPropShowLabel)”.

Data bar value

Next we will create the circle shape that represents the current value for the data bar. The rectangle and circle together form the callout shape, so we need to make a group. Select the rectangle shape and choose Shape > Grouping > Convert to Group to make this the top-level group shape. In the rectangle’s Shapesheet set the LockCalcWH cell to 1 so that further grouping operations do not change the shape’s size. Also set the DisplayMode cell to 1 so that the rectangle will appear behind its subshapes. Now draw a circle on the page. Select the rectangle, then Ctrl-click on the circle to select it as well. Choose Shape > Grouping > Add to Group to make the circle a subshape of the rectangle.

The position of the circle is dependent on the current field value and its relative size versus the Min and Max values. We’ll add a User-defined cell to the rectangle shape to calculate the percentage of the total range. In the rectangle’s Shapesheet add a User-defined row named User.PercentFilled and enter this formula:

=BOUND((Prop.msvCalloutField-Prop.msvCalloutPropMin)/IF((Prop.msvCalloutPropMax-Prop.msvCalloutPropMin)<>0,Prop.msvCalloutPropMax-Prop.msvCalloutPropMin,1),0,FALSE,0,1)

This expression calculates the current percentage of the field value between Min and Max. It also prevents division by zero and checks to make sure that the result stays between 0 and 1 so that our data bar behaves predictably.

Value display

The User.PercentFilled value will be used by the circle subshape to control its position and to display the value as text. We’ll start with the value display. In the circle’s Shapesheet insert a User-defined section and add a User.PercentFilled row that references the value from the rectangle. Since we will use this value multiple times, it is good practice to use a single cross-sheet reference and then multiple local cell references. (Note that your sheet ID’s may be different than those shown here.)

Now select the circle in the drawing window and choose Insert > Field. Choose User-defined Cells and select the PercentFilled cell. Before closing the dialog click on the Data Format button. Choose Percentage and 0 decimal places. Then click OK twice. Next we want to tie the size of the circle to the size of the text so that the text always fits. Add another User-defined row named User.CircleDiameter to track the size of the circle. Then add this expression for the value: “=CEILING(TEXTWIDTH(TheText),2 pt)” (omit quotation marks). This expression calculates the current width of the text and rounds it up to the nearest 2 pt to get rid of tiny variations in text width based on proportional character spacing. We add formulas to the Width and Height cells of the circle to tie its size to User.CircleDiameter. The formulas are GUARDed to prevent accidental resizes by the user. Set the NoObjHandles cell to 1 to hide the resize handles since they are not needed.

Value position

We’re ready to tie the position of the circle to User.PercentFilled. The circle should move from one end of the rectangle to the other. We must account for the circle diameter when calculating the range of movement so that the circle does not move overlap the ends of the rectangle. Add this formula to the PinX cell:

=GUARD(User.CircleDiameter*0.5+User.PercentFilled*(Sheet.5!Width-User.CircleDiameter))

Also set the PinY cell: “GUARD(Sheet.1!Height*0.5)”.

Finishing touches

Our callout is now functional enough to test. Open the rectangle’s Shapesheet and enter sample values for Prop.msvCalloutField as well as the Min and Max properties. You should see the circle move and display the proper value as text. The only remaining work is to enhance the appearance of the data bar. The rectangle height should be a fraction of the circle diameter. Actually, the height of the rectangle shape should encompass both the rectangle and the circle, so we’ll just make the geometry of the rectangle shape smaller. Add a User-defined row named User.CircleDiameter to the rectangle and reference the circle’s User.CircleDiameter cell. Then add a User-defined row named User.BarHeight and set it to be a fraction of the circle size. The geometry of the rectangle is then modified to depend on User.BarHeight as shown in the screenshot below.

The overall size of the callout should be fixed; the width is set to a constant value and the height is large enough to hold the circle. Enter the formulas for Width and Height as shown in the image below. Note that DropOnPageScale is a factor that adjusts the size in cases where a scale other than 1:1 is used in the drawing. This is a good practice whenever hard-coding measurement values like the ones in these formulas.

One final change is to set the LockFromGroupFormat cell to 1. This prevents formatting changes applied to the main shape from propagating to the callout. Generally we want the callout to retain its own formatting unless the user directly selects the shape and modifies it. Our callout shape is complete. The rest of the look is achieved through Themes. Apply a color theme and effects theme to the page. Our sample uses the “Office” color theme and “Button” effects theme, but the callout will pick up whatever theme is applied in your document. Sub-select the circle shape and change the fill color to make it stand out from the rectangle. Accent 2 is a good choice here. The finished shape is below.

Testing the callout

To use this callout, we need to make it a master shape in the Document Stencil. Go to File > Shapes > Show Document Stencil and then drag the shape in. Rename the master to “Slider”. Now we need to apply it to a shape. Draw a text box on the page and type some text. Then right-click on the shape and choose Data > Shape Data. Answer Yes to define new shape data. Add a Label, set the Type to Number and enter a sample Value before clicking OK. Click OK once more to finish adding data to the text shape.

Right-click the shape again and choose Data > Edit Data Graphic. Choose New Item > Data Bar to open the New Data Bar dialog. Choose “Rating” for the data field and make sure that our Slider master is selected as the callout. Then turn off the label by setting Show Label to No. Click OK twice to apply the data graphic.

The final result is shown below.

As you can see there are quite a few steps. However, most of the work is creating the custom behavior and appearance you want. The end result is quite professional and easily integrates into the Data Graphics feature. In the next post we will create the final type of callout used in Data Graphics: the Icon Set.

Make Your Own Data Graphic - Text Callouts

Visio Team — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Data Graphics is a great new feature in Visio 2007 Professional for displaying data on your shapes. One key to the feature's popularity is that you can make or customize your own data graphic callout shapes. There is an article posted on MSDN that covers the full spectrum of customizations possible for Data Graphics. Also check out this post that discusses customizing a data graphic callout. In this post we're going to create a text callout from scratch.

A text callout is one of the four ways that you can visualize data using Data Graphics. It performs the basic role of showing data as text labels on the diagram. In the picture above, there are four text callouts to the left of the Server shape and one below the shape. Some callouts display just a value; others include a field label. The formatting and geometry are as customized as you want to make them.

To create a brand new text callout, we need to create a shape with the look we want and then configure it to work with the Data Graphics feature. For this example we'll do just the minimum steps needed to get things working. We draw a rectangle on the page and open its Shapesheet. In the Shapesheet, we need to insert a User-defined section and a Shape Data section.

There are just two things needed to make this shape a data graphic callout. First, change the row name of the User-defined row to User.msvCalloutType (click on the row name and type "msvCalloutType"). In the Value cell enter "Text Callout" - including the quotation marks here. Second, change the row name of the Shape Data row to Prop.msvCalloutField (click on the row name and type "msvCalloutField").

What's missing from this shape is the actual display of the data as text. This is typically done using Text Fields. With the shape selected in the drawing window, go to Insert > Field and choose the msvCalloutField in the Shape Data category.

Now we can test this shape. Drag it into the Document Stencil to create a Visio Master shape. Give the master a name.

Now drop a shape on the page and give it some data. The Basic Flowchart Shapes are a good test bed since they have three built-in Shape Data fields. You can right click on the flowchart shape and choose Data > Shape Data to fill in some values. Now right click again and choose Data > Edit Data Graphic to create a new data graphic with your callout.

Because we set the User.msvCalloutType to "Text Callout", we need to go to New Item > Text. In the New Text dialog open the Callout dropdown to see the custom callout shape we made.

Choose the custom callout and then a Data field to display in the callout. Finally click OK twice to see the callout applied to the flowchart shape as a data graphic.

Go ahead and change the Shape Data in the flowchart shape to see it update in the data graphic. Now we have a functioning text callout. What remains is whatever customizations you want to make to enhance the visual appearance of the callout. Perhaps you want to apply formatting or tailor the geometry. Perhaps you want to add configurable settings that the user can select in the New Text / Edit Text dialog. See the MSDN article for more information about adding this functionality. As always, you can look at the callouts that are built into the Data Graphics feature for examples of more sophisticated behaviors.

If you have some suggestions for new data graphic callouts, post a comment. We'd like to hear from you. In the next post we will look at an example for Data Bar callouts.