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)

Understanding the importance of master shapes

Throughout this book, we have mainly been creating process flowchart diagrams via automation or by dragging and dropping master shapes from a stencil onto a page. We created connections between flowchart shapes with the connector tool or by dragging out the Auto Connect arrows from one shape to another. In each case, we have been creating instances of a master shape. So, what do we mean by a master shape, and why are they so important?

We have already learned how we can drag and drop shapes from stencils, but what we do not usually see is that every time we drag and drop a master shape from a stencil, Visio checks if we have used a master shape with the same name before. If we have not used it before, then Visio automatically creates a copy of the master shape and places it into the normally hidden Document Stencil, and then drops an instance of this copy onto the page. Then, whenever we drop another instance of the same master shape...