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)

Exporting processes to Microsoft Word for documentation

We looked at some parts of the Process ribbon tab in previous chapters, but now we will concentrate on the Export | Word button that is available in the desktop Visio Plan 2 edition:

Figure 9.1 - The Process | Export | Word option

Figure 9.1 - The Process | Export | Word option

This command opens an Export To Word panel with two tabs: Preview and Settings, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 9.2 - The Export To Word panel

Figure 9.2 - The Export To Word panel

The Preview tab displays a preview image of each of the container shapes, titled with their header text, and other shapes that respect the options on the Settings tab. By default, all 2D (non-connector) shapes with a label are included.

The subject shape of each preview item is selected on the page whenever the preview image is selected. The preview image has a right-click context menu that displays the following commands:

  • Exclude from output: This prevents the item from being...