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)

Adding extra information to process steps

One of the best features of Visio Plan 2 is the ability to link data to shapes. So, even if we do not use Data Visualizer to create process flowcharts automatically, we can add data to shapes from a variety of data sources. This capability is covered in the book Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio Professional 2016 by Packt, and this is still current for Visio Professional and Visio Plan 2. This technique can also be used to enhance diagrams created by Data Visualizer.

For example, if we create another Excel table with a column name that matches a unique identifier of the process flowchart shapes in the diagram, then we can link more data, including hyperlinks, to specific shapes. In this example, we have used the Process Number column and added a Url column that contains more information:

Figure 5.27 – An Excel table with extra information

Figure 5.27 – An Excel table with extra information

The Data | External Data | Custom Import button...