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)

Creating Visio for Desktop and Excel process diagram templates for others

We have been using the instance of master shapes from the Basic Flowchart Shapes stencil in this chapter. We have seen, for a given shape, that in addition to pre-defined shape data fields, additional shape data fields with values as specified in our source data table are appended to Shape Data when the diagram has been created using Data Visualizer. The pre-defined Shape Data fields on each of these shapes will have no data placed in them apart from the Function row. These pre-defined fields are explained here:

The default Shape Data rows (or fields) are as follows:

  • Cost: This must be numeric and is displayed as currency
  • Process Number: This must be numeric
  • Function: This is inherited from the text of the swimlane that it is contained in
  • Start Date: This must be a date
  • End Date: This must be a date
  • Status: This can be selected from a default drop-down list or any other text value...