Visio users tend to do one of two things after creating their diagram--share it or present it to others. Both of these scenarios require your diagram to look visually appealing. So, unsurprisingly, one piece of feedback users continually told us was that they wanted to make professional and modern looking diagrams.

This week, we'll give you an overview of the changes we've made to Visio templates and shapes--what we call "content". Ultimately, when you combine Visio's new features with new content, it's easier than ever to produce professional and modern diagrams.

The Microsoft Visio Viewer is a free download that lets anyone view Visio drawings without having Visio installed on their computer. If you have Visio, you can still benefit from the viewer because it allows you to preview drawings in both Outlook and the Windows Preview pane. We recommend that everyone with Windows 7 or Windows 8 download the latest viewer to get the best experience viewing drawings.

In this post, we explain the Microsoft Visio Viewer in more detail.

Visio 2003, 2007 and 2010 all had the same primary Visio Drawing (VSD) file format. For most users, this was great: files could be shared easily between these three versions of Visio. There were, however, some drawbacks. Most notably, the primary format was binary, which limited both the information stored in the file and how easily IT professionals and developers could work with it.

For the new Visio, we introduced an XML-based file format to provide new capabilities in Visio and improve interoperability with other applications. Other benefits of the new file format include a single unified format for end users and developers, smaller file sizes and reduced security concerns. This post provides an overview of our new file format.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standard maintained by the Object Management Group that allows businesses to document and communicate business processes uniformly using graphical notation.

The new version of Visio supports BPMN 2.0, which is the current version of the standard, and corresponding Diagram Validation rules. Using these rules, a user can check the visual correctness of a diagram against logical rules specified in the standard. This article explains more about our new BPMN 2.0 support.

Developers and IT professionals frequently use Visio to design and document software and database systems. They recognize the benefits of visualizing complex systems to understand relationships and dependencies, and Visio makes it easy to communicate and socialize designs across the team. As a result the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Database diagrams in Visio are widely used today by an enthusiastic audience, and our developer and IT community provide invaluable feedback on these diagram types. We have addressed this feedback in the new Visio with a significant refresh of the UML and Database templates. 

The new Visio has a variety of improvements designed to make your diagramming experience easier and more fluid. Below is a list of 10 new ways you can be more efficient in the new Visio. Give them a try the next time you create a diagram and see how much time you save.

In the new Visio, we have re-envisioned our Unified Modeling Language (UML) templates in a fresh, modern way.  We updated our five most popular UML diagrams, with all new shapes to make it easier and faster to create beautiful, professional diagrams. Our new UML templates allow you to create class, sequence, state machine, activity and use case diagrams that match the UML 2.4 standard.  The templates focus on a freeform, on-canvas experience. Each template takes advantage of the full capabilities of Visio, including shape effects and themes, as well as collaboration and commenting to share your diagrams across your organization. In this article we'll introduce each of the new UML diagrams and present a few tips about using the new model.

Visualizing processes is at the heart of Visio’s DNA and in Visio 2010 we took a big step forward in that area by including support for SharePoint workflows. This lets users create a workflow in Visio, import it into SharePoint Designer, and make it an executable workflow on SharePoint.  In the new Visio we’ve added SharePoint 2013 workflows and made SharePoint Designer an even more integral part of creating workflows visually.

When we started our planning process for this version of Visio, we made it a central goal that it would be easier, faster and more pleasant to create beautiful, professional looking diagrams. To achieve that, we made a host of improvements to the application - far too many for us to cover here. So, for this post, I'll aim to give you an overview of all the changes we made and cover a few of the most highly requested new features. Later posts will cover everything here in much more detail.

With the new Visio you can quickly create modern looking, organized timelines that make it easy to order events and share information. Improvements we made across the product allow the new timelines to take on a variety of different looks to create beautiful, professional diagrams. Specifically, we made it easier to do the following tasks: apply themes, customize dates and elements, reposition shapes and switch between timeline styles

This blog post will walk through making a timeline to highlight the new features and demonstrate a few tricks and hints.