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)

Editing the built-in ribbon to provide more options

The ability to customize the ribbon is only available in desktop Visio; however, this is where it is most useful since there are many more commands available to us in the desktop version than there are in the web versions. When Microsoft decided to rewrite the user interface in the Office applications many years ago, the ribbon interface with multiple tabs was introduced along the top of the application window. They based this concept on a hand-held clipboard with its ability to grip useful items along the top.

Previously, the user interface had numerous command bars with buttons that could be dragged independently around the screen, so locating them often wasted time. So, having a consistent location along the top saves time, but Microsoft had to limit the immediately available buttons to the most used ones because of space constraints and to provide simplicity. This means that many available buttons are missing unless you decide...