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)

Inheriting the labels of built-in containers

These container shapes displayed in the gallery are just more master shapes from a built-in stencil. We can enhance them by adding similar properties to the Swimlane shapes. The following diagram has had the names of each one added:

Figure 11.9 – The built-in container shapes

Figure 11.9 – The built-in container shapes

We can enhance as many of these as we want to, but first, we must copy the master from the built-in stencil to Document Stencil. To do this, we just need to add each one to a page in our document and then delete the copy on the page. This will leave the master in Document Stencil, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 11.10 – Creating a copy of a built-in container master shape

Figure 11.10 – Creating a copy of a built-in container master shape

Then we can edit this local copy of the master shape and add the User.visNavOrder and User.visHeadingText rows, as we did in the previous section for the Separator shape. Again, check which of the sub-shapes contain...