Collaborate on Visio files inside Microsoft Teams
Published Jun 20 2018 10:28 AM 63.1K Views
Microsoft

Microsoft Teams is your hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365 and is the simple way to create and share diagrams in your favorite browser. Until now, there was no easy way to collaborate on your Visio files inside Teams. Today that is changing! You can now view, edit, and collaborate on your Visio diagrams from inside Teams. Together, Visio and Teams can help you coordinate on diagrams more efficiently by keeping all Visio files and colleague feedback in one place.

All Team sites come with a dedicated file library for storing all your workgroup’s content. You can now upload Visio files to this library from your desktop or preferred cloud storage site, like This way, all your team’s assets are in one place for anyone with the right permissions to access as needed. And like with other stored files, you can link to Visio diagrams directly from team conversations.

 

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Edit diagrams directly in Teams

 

Teams is more than just a file repository, though. Thanks to editing capabilities through Office Online, you can make changes to your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly within Teams. We’ve extended these editing capabilities to Visio files, enabling you to make simple changes to your diagrams without leaving the Teams app. You also have the option to edit diagrams in Visio Online or in Visio itself for more robust editing features. Team members will see all your latest changes the moment they refresh the diagram.

 

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Provide diagram feedback in

 

Team members can work together on diagrams through in-app conversations to provide feedback in real time. Conversations are specific to the diagram you’re working on and appear the moment you submit them. You can also link to other files and use @mentions to get the attention of individual team members. Plus, your diagram comments show up in the team’s overall Conversations tab, along with feedback from all other stored files, giving a single view of all conversations across assets. Responses to a comment in the Conversations tab also appear in the diagram’s dedicated conversations pane.

 

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Do more with Visio Online

 

Viewing diagrams within Teams is free for most Office 365 customers, but editing is only available for those with a Visio Online Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription. Please note, neither of these licenses include Teams, which available through Microsoft 365.

Please visit the Visio website for more details on each plan, as well as options for trying the Visio Online experience and our cloud-first innovations for free. We also invite you to submit ideas for more cloud innovations on our UserVoice site. For questions about our latest releases, please email us at tellvisio@microsoft.com. To stay informed of the latest Visio releases, follow us on Facebook and Twitter and visit our blog and Tech Community sites.

21 Comments
Copper Contributor

I like the commenting as part of the Teams chat besides the diagram. Customers want that for PowerPoint slides as well.

Steel Contributor

Nice.
Can we view a Power BI Report embedded Visio diagram without Visio subscription?
I want to share the Power BI Report embedded Visio diagram with members, who does not edit, does not have Visio subscription.

Microsoft

Regarding "Can we view a Power BI Report embedded Visio diagram without Visio subscription?" - Yes, viewers of the dashboard with Visio embedded in the dashboard don't require Visio subscription. 

Steel Contributor

WoW @Saurabh Gaur, Thank you for your quick reply.
and WoW, The Power BI Dashboard which embedded the Visio Diagram don't require Visio subscription

Brass Contributor

Anything special about embedding a visio in a powerBI report and then displaying in teams? When I access the dashboard in teams, I see a big sign-in block where the visio should be and when I click sign-in it never updates.

Brass Contributor

None of the recent articles I've read about this new feature in Teams confirms one point: Can we co-author a Visio document while in Teams? Or does that require each author to have a Visio Online 2 license?

Microsoft

@Scott Abbotts, Thank you for your comment. At this point of time Visio Online does not support co-authoring inside Teams, irrespective of the license. This is part of our roadmap and we would like to learn more about your use case for this feature.

 

You can reach out on tellVisio@microsoft.com for sharing your scenario and feedback. For any feature suggestions, we also invite you to post it on our UserVoice site.

Copper Contributor

Hello I tried to share my powerbi with Visio embedded and the app wouldn’t work. Are there specific restrictions or guidelines on how to do this?

Microsoft

Hi @Meera Varsani, @Berney

 

If you are embedding a Power BI report with a Visio diagram in it, within Teams, your Visio diagram will need guestaccess permissions in SharePoint Online i.e. your Visio file should be accessible to anyone.

Please let me know if it solves the issue for you or reach us at tellvisio@microsoft.com if you need further help with this.

 

Thanks,

Shakun

 

Deleted
Not applicable

Hello,

 

is there any possibility to add a Visio tab in a channel, in Teams?

For example, I would like to access my visio file which preview or display it, through a tab in a channel, such as Files or Wiki for example.

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Steel Contributor

Add the Visio tab to Microsoft Teams, I want the feature. :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:
for easy / clear the Add the Visio Tab

 

like add Excel tab, PowerPoint tab, Power BI tab.

Brass Contributor

It's already possible to share a Visio Online diagram in Teams using the Website tab.
To get the link to the diagram, click Share in the top right of the page.

Then click the Copy Link icon at the bottom of the popup dialogue box.

Then copy the link.

Open Teams, click the + button to add a tab and search for Website.
Enter the title of the diagram and add the link.
Now your Visio diagram is available to other members of your Teams group. 

 

Hope this is helpful.

Copper Contributor

Great, except that it doesn't work for me.  I have saved an O365 Visio document (.vsdx) into my Team space, but attempts to subsequently edit it in Visio get "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program".  This remains the case after exiting and restarting the Teamsapp, and rebooting my computer (running Windows 7).

 

I can download a copy and then edit the .vsdx file, but that doesn't help with config control.

Also, I cannot delete the file from the Team room.  There's an error message that pops up in a balloon but for whatever reason I don't get to see the whole message.

 

  Useless error...Useless error...

 

Anyone know what's going on?

Microsoft

Hi @MikeH_1963,

 

Thanks for getting in touch. I'd like some more details from you to look in to the issue better.

Could you please drop us a line at tellvisio[at]microsoft[dot]com?

 

Thanks,

Shakun

Product Manager, Visio

Copper Contributor

Hi,

I would also like to have the possibility to add Visio in a tab inside a team. Until further I have used the method mentioned above to do this. 

But - the problem is that those who wants to look at the diagram have to log into Office 365 when opening the tab. Even I have to do that when its a while since I have been there. Its bothering when people shall look at the diagram and they have to log in (and they are already in teams).

 

Why is that?

 

I would much appreciate answer to this :)

Brass Contributor

An easy solution @Engberg_nte would be to save the Visio diagram in a Teams files tab in vsdx format.

The user are then able to open and view the diagram without needing to login, since they are already logged into Teams.

You could then create a tab for a specific diagram that is stored in Files.

 

Hope this is useful.

Copper Contributor

Got this tip off Microsoftteams.uservoice.com forums: Visio as Tab in Teams 

 

"Create a new webpage in the sharepoint site and add a 'file viewer' webpart to feature the visio file. Then save and publish the page. Copy the URL and PIN it as a tab in the team."

 

This worked great for me. Just don't add the new page to Navigation.

Copper Contributor

Any progress on (or intent to make progress on) collaborative editing? Updates/saves from other other users take a long time to show up for viewers. After someone on the Team closes the doc, it takes minutes for the next person to be able open the document for editing. We see an error that the document is locked for editing by a user after they have closed the editor and navigated away from the document. I'd love to see something closer to LucidCharts implementation. A tabbed app that multiple people can manipulate together in real time. We just signed 9 of our team members up for the Visio Online Plan 1 in order to have this feature, and I don't think it will work for us without collaborative editing. We might switch to the paid LucidCharts plan in lieu of this.

 

Microsoft

Hi @kepanoegg 

On behalf of the Visio team, thank you for providing your valuable input. I do have some good news to share. We recently launched real time co-authoring in Visio for the web. With this, multiple users can now simultaneously work on the same diagram by editing, and co-commenting in Visio for the web. Please visit the tech community blog for more details.

Hope this meets your requirements. Please try the new experience and share your thoughts with us.

 

Thanks,

Tripteesh Kaur

Product Manager, Visio

Copper Contributor

@tripteeshkaur This is awesome. Thanks for the quick reply, and I'm sure part of it was lucky timing on our part, but we're very happy to have this implemented now.

Copper Contributor

I have a Visio that is in teams.  Inside it there is a process that has a link to another file (Word Doc) that is also in teams.  When I clicked on it will not load the word document.  It just spins?

 

Note, if I open this same Visio outside of teams and click on the link it will navigate to teams an open the Word Document.

 

Final note, if I change the link to just go to the channel->Files->directory where the Word Document exists this works.  It just doesn't seem to want to open the Word document when I click on it from within Visio, while within Teams.  Is this a bug?

 

Appreciate the help so that I can automate my process and make it easier for users.  

 

Thank you,
Steve

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‎Jan 26 2021 01:54 PM
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