During the past three months, we posted a short series of whitepapers on the Visio Enthusiasts LinkedIn group about the development history of some of our favorite Visio products and capabilities. But since that group is private, you might have missed it.
Now, all three whitepapers from our under-the-hood series are available for you to download at the bottom of this blog post. We’ve also included a short summary of each, so you can read about the product or capability that’s most interesting to you (although we hope you’ll read all three).
The Visio Enthusiasts group is a great place to interact with other professional diagrammers and the internal Visio product group. It’s also where you can find exclusive content, including an upcoming series about enabling remote work with Visio. Select the link above to send us a request to join. We hope to see you in there!
Data Visualizer: simple but powerful data visualization
Data visualization tools are essential for analyzing information, exposing unique data to everyone in the organization, and making data-driven decisions. To enable all this, we developed Data Visualizer, an easy-to-use tool that quickly converts your Excel process map data into visual diagrams. Read this whitepaper to learn how we tested early ideas before landing on the Data Visualizer wizard; taught the tool how to refresh diagrams, handle interactions, and write back to the source code; and, just last year, launched the Data Visualizer add-in for Visio.
Visio layout: automating flowchart layouts
With so many ways to visualize data, it can be difficult to find the best layout for an aesthetic diagram. That’s why we developed Visio layout, a set of algorithms that work in the background to help you make smart decisions about shapes and semantic logic. For example, if you insert a shape in a diagram, Visio layout will add the appropriate connectors; and if you remove that shape, it will connect the remaining shapes. Read this whitepaper to learn how we developed Visio layout to automate the design of professional-looking diagrams.
Visio for the web: from desktop to browser and beyond
Five years ago, you could only create and edit Visio diagrams on the desktop client. Sharing those diagrams required manual workarounds, making it difficult to gather, collate, and incorporate input from across the organization. It was these challenges that prompted the development of Visio for the web. This under-the-hood whitepaper takes you on the journey from Visio Viewer to the Visio web app and the design considerations it took to get there, from load time optimizations to extensibility.
For questions or feedback about Visio, please email us at tellvisio [at] microsoft.com. Keep visiting the Visio Tech Community and follow us Twitter to stay current on the latest Visio releases. Remember to join the Visio Enthusiasts LinkedIn group for access to exclusive content and networking opportunities with your diagramming peers. All three whitepapers mentioned in this blog are available to download below.
Whitepapers
Data Visualizer, simple but powerful data visualization
Visio layout, automating flowchart layouts
Visio for the web, from desktop to browser and beyond
Microsoft
