Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By : David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić
Book Image

Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio

By: David J Parker, Šenaj Lelić

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)

Controlling the layout

We learned how we can set up the defaults for layout and routing in the Aligning shapes with Smart Guides and Dynamic Grid section in Chapter 3, but we also need to know how to apply different arrangement options to selected shapes.

Aligning shapes

We can select multiple shapes and align them relative to the first shape selected. In the following screenshots, the Align Middle option is chosen from the context menu:

Figure 6.7 – Aligning selected shapes

Figure 6.7 – Aligning selected shapes

Desktop Visio has an additional Auto Align option that will align either horizontally or vertically, depending upon the selection. We earlier added the Align button to the My Extras ribbon group, and this, or the shortcut key F8, can be used to open the following dialog for the selected shapes:

Figure 6.8 – The Align Shapes dialog

Figure 6.8 – The Align Shapes dialog

This dialog has the extra option of adding a guideline and gluing the selected shapes to it. We can also...