Choosing the Best Visio Edition for Our Needs

Microsoft Visio is the most popular business diagramming application when coupled with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. It provides organizations with a familiar toolset that can create process diagrams to several visual standards that can be easily created, co-authored, collaborated with, commented on, and yet be securely stored with suitably assigned access permissions.

Meetings or workshops are often required to analyze and document processes, and now that many of these meetings are hybrid gatherings, it is important to use an application within Microsoft Teams that allows both physical and virtual attendees to participate.

All business users of Microsoft 365 now have Visio in Microsoft 365 included, and this provides everyone with an entry-level professional diagramming application. There are also subscription plans and one-time purchase licenses for Microsoft Visio available for the web and for desktop users who need more diagram types and functionality. Each edition has its own list of features and capabilities, which can become confusing. This chapter demystifies those differences and provides the knowledge to select the right edition for our specific needs and the type of diagram required.

Important note

Business process analysts are more likely to need Visio Plan 2, or at least Visio Professional, but others may be happy to use Visio in Microsoft 365 for occasional diagramming, or Visio Plan 1 for creating basic flowcharts.

All editions of Microsoft Visio include basic flowchart diagram types, whereas cross-functional (swimlane) diagrams can only be created with a subscription and one-time purchase editions. We will learn which editions can be used to create the four most common types of business process diagrams and provide an explanation of the differences between the Visio editions and their user interfaces:

• Understanding the different Visio editions
• Getting to know the Visio user interface