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)

Assigning line weight, style, or color by Owner

Each of the flowchart shapes has an Owner Shape Data row, which can be any entered value, but often, there is a list of potential owners that could be selected from a list. So, we can change the Type to 1, which is a fixed list. Then, we need to enter a semi-colon-separated list and start it with a semi-colon so that the first option is empty, which means none:

=";HR;IT;Facilities"

Whenever a value is selected from the fixed list, a formula is entered into the form by Visio, with the index number of the selected option in the list:

=INDEX(1,Prop.Owner.Format)

However, we want to use the index number in other formulas, so we will create a new row in the User-defined Cells section, which we have named OwnerIndex, with the following formula in the Value cell:

=LOOKUP(Prop.Owner,Prop.Owner.Format)

This will return the index number, which we can then use in the Line Format section, as shown here:

Figure 10.18 – Changing the line format with the Owner selection...