The new containers feature in Visio 2010 is fantastic. If you have not heard of this feature then check out the product team blog article about containers, here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/archive/2009/08/25/organizing-diagrams-with-containers.aspx What I want to point out to all you shape developers how you can use some simple new ShapeSheet formulas to allow shapes to base calculations…
Year: 2011
Using Page Images from Visio Services
Visio Services does not have a REST style API to allow you to get to shapes or data within the published Visio diagram, however you can access PNG versions of each page in a published diagram using a URL. For example, say you wanted to get the image of Page-1 in Sample.VDW that is stored…
A WMI based dashboard for Visio Services
The Data Linking and Data Graphic features in Visio 2010 give you the ability to create very interesting and artistic dashboards, but the trick is to get the data that you need into a data source that Visio and Visio Services can refresh from. For this article I wanted to highlight a method that some…
Visio Services External Data Refresh Part 4
Refreshing diagrams from SQL Azure using SQL Authentication If you did not read Part 1 of this series, do so now as it will help ensure that you have Visio Services, Excel Services and Secure Store Service configured properly. There are a few scenarios that you can configure in order to publish Visio diagrams to…
Visio Services External Data Refresh Part 3
Refreshing diagrams from SQL Server using SQL Authentication If you did not read Part 1 of this series, do so now as it will help ensure that you have Visio Services, Excel Services and Secure Store Service configured properly. There are a few scenarios that you can configure in order to publish Visio diagrams to…
Mixing Office and Visio bits
I get asked this question quite often so I thought that I would post my view. There are various documents that discuss client requirements and version compatibility for various Office applications, including co-existence as referenced here… 1) System Requirements : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624351.aspx#section15 2) Coexistence: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2121447 There is a lot of information in both of these articles…
Visio Services External Data Refresh Part 2
Refreshing diagrams from SQL Server using Windows Authentication If you did not read Part 1 of this series, do so now as it will help ensure that you have Visio Services, Excel Services and Secure Store Service configured properly. There are a few scenarios that you can configure in order to publish Visio diagrams to…
Visio Services External Data Refresh Part 1
It is no secret that Visio allows you to connect the shapes in your diagrams to a variety of data source, most of which are also compatible with Visio Services once your diagram is hosted in a SharePoint 2010 document library. What seems to be a secret is how to configure Visio Services to refresh…
Enterprise deployment for Visio Templates using Content Types in SharePoint 2010
I recently finished an engagement with a customer who developed their own custom shapes and template to help enforce a corporate standard for all process diagrams authored by business owners within the organization. Once the template and stencils were finished, the focus shifted to maintenance and deployment. Visio is a client based application so most…
Data Linking to a Stored Procedure
Visio allows you to link to data from external data sources so that you can visualize the data on the shapes within your diagrams, and one of the external data sources that Visio supports out of the box is SQL Server. The Data Linking wizard in Visio 2010 Professional and Premium will allow you to…