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)

Setting the scope with context diagrams

A context diagram sets a helicopter view of an organization with the external entities and actors involved in a process. It should not be too complex but provide the main interactions between the actors and the organization. It is normal for the central organization to be represented by a circle, surrounded by the external actors as rectangles, but often, the simple circles and rectangles are replaced by suitable symbols. The main interactions are merely labels on arrows depicting the direction of flow. Multiple interactions can be labeled on each arrow, rather than extra arrows being added.

For example, the following diagram shows the context of this book:

Figure 1.1 – A typical context diagram

Figure 1.1 – A typical context diagram

This diagram type is often created during a workshop, which is increasingly taking the form of a hybrid meeting, so the ability of Visio to co-author and collaborate in Microsoft Teams is a great advantage, but...