Visio 2007: More on Customizing Data Graphics: Icon Sets with Images

In the previous two posts on customizing Data Graphics, I covered general customization (using a text callout example) and customizing icon sets. If you are creating icon sets, often you’ll want to use existing images rather than trying to figure out how to redraw them. There are two main tips for creating icon sets with…


Visio 2007: More on Customizing Data Graphic Items: Icon Sets

In my earlier post on Data Graphics customization, I covered how to edit a text Graphic Item. A few people have asked for more information on how to deal specifically with Icon Sets since that is a place where there are most often domain-specific icons to be represented. We do have some documentation coming out…


New Office and Visio icons

It looks like the Office Design Group has gone public with the new icons for Office 2007. Visio is the one on the bottom left – we have the same basic flowchart metaphor.


Visio at the Worldwide Partner Conference

If you are at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2006 in Boston, make sure to head to the Data Visualization session since it will heavily feature Visio solutions. It is happening tomorrow afternoon at 4: IW008 Scale Up Your Business with Data Visualization Wednesday, July 12 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM, 103 Speaker(s): Sanjay Puri, Margaret…


Designing the floorplan of a personal 767

I’ve been following this story with great interest since it first broke in the Wall Street Journal. While I don’t currently have a 767, you can never be too prepared. With that in mind, I whipped together a Visio version of the airplane floorplan from the story using the default Home Plan stencil (the nice thing…


10 Tips for Creating Great Process Flowcharts

Here are some tips for building great flowcharts in Visio. The last three are specific to Visio 2007, but the rest are relevant to any version of Visio. Creating sub-processes and linked processes using hyperlinks. When you have a complex process or one that shares some sub-processes with other processes within your company, it makes…


Visio 2007: PivotDiagram Tips and Tricks, part 2

In the first PivotDiagram tips post, I talked about some of the alternate ways to create a new PivotDiagram. In this post, I’ll cover an alternate way to filter your data. Filtering by Using “Promote” After creating your diagram and hooking up your data source, the most frequent first step we see is filtering down…


Visio Conference 2006 presentations available online

If you didn’t get a chance to make it to the Visio Conference we held in January, we’ve put up audio/visual recordings from all of the sessions at http://www.visioconferencecontent.com/. There is a lot of great information there, whether you are interested in the developer sessions, hearing about Visio 2007, or seeing what partners are doing…


Visio 2007: Value Stream Mapping

Over the last several years, we have seen Lean become more and more prominent as a process improvement methodology. Although it has roots in manufacturing, it is starting to migrate to other industries like healthcare. One of the key parts of the Lean methodology is Value Stream Mapping, a form of process mapping that is…


Visio 2007: Test Drive

I’ve started focusing more and more on the new features in Visio 2007 and will definitely continue to do so. For those of you who are interested but aren’t quite ready to commit a machine to beta software just yet, there is a new option out there. The new Office test drive site lets you use…