Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By : David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić
Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By: David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić

Overview of this book

Every business has process flows, but not all of them are fully described to or verified for accuracy with each stakeholder. This not only presents a risk for business continuity but also removes the ability to make insightful improvements. To make these complex interactions easy to grasp, it’s important to describe these processes visually using symbology that everybody understands. Different parts of these flows should be collaboratively developed and stored securely as commercial collateral. Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio helps you understand why it is crucial to use a common, systematic approach to document the steps needed to meet each business requirement. This book explores the various process flow templates available in each edition of Microsoft Visio, including BPMN. It also shows you how to use them effectively with the help of tips and techniques and examples to reduce the time required for creating them, as well as how you can improve their integration and presentation. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered the skills needed to create data-integrated business flowcharts with Microsoft Visio, learned how to effectively use these diagrams collaboratively, but securely, and understood how to integrate them with other M365 apps, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Power Automate.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Customizing Master Shapes and Templates

Microsoft Visio provides many master shapes and templates for creating process diagrams, but almost all of them can be improved by a little customization to suit an organization’s particular requirements. These additional enhancements to master shapes and templates can be shared with others so that they can be made available to all, including Visio for the web users. Visio shapes get their smartness from a spreadsheet-like ShapeSheet, which contains formulas in each cell, just like Excel. These formulas control every shape property, from the size of a shape and the format of its lines and fills to the visibility of its parts. This chapter introduces the basics of custom shapes. The concepts are easy to comprehend for anyone who has dabbled with cell formulas in Excel. We will be covering the following topics:

  • Understanding the importance of master shapes
  • Reviewing existing selected process master shapes
  • Adding Description...