Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By : David Parker, Senaj Lelic
Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By: David Parker, Senaj Lelic

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)

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