In a previous blog post, we introduced the new themes, variants, and styles feature in the new Visio. Not only does this feature make it easy and fast for users to create professional looking diagrams, it also fully supports programmatic access. This post will focus on how to use the new API methods to apply modern and vibrant looks to any diagram.

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Visio has several features that are designed to make it easy to create a diagram quickly. Here are three examples of ways to help you create a simple flowchart in under a minute. Example 1: Capture a flow quickly Let’s assume you have a pretty clear idea of what the steps are that you want to diagram and the order that you want them in, so all you need to do is capture the flow quickly. Once you drop your first shape you can use the AutoConnect feature to fill in the rest of the diagram quickly...

It's easy to create beautiful, professional diagrams in Visio, but what if you need to print your drawings to review during a meeting or display as a poster? The new Visio provides a cleaner, quicker, and more streamlined printing experience. Along with the easy-to-use print tab in the backstage view, Visio now lets you print in the background so you can continue working while your diagram is printing. Read on to learn more about faster, simpler printing.

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The new Microsoft Visio, powered by interoperability with Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, provides a strong social, mobile and cloud-based infrastructure for Business Process Modeling (BPM). In addition to the newer workflows and collaboration features, it also offers several new diagram templates that support the latest industry standards, such as BPMN 2.0 and UML 2.4.

Look for us at the Gartner BPM Summit April 2-4, 2013 as we take our very compelling and well-recognized BPM story to the Washington D.C. area. Microsoft is a Platinum sponsor of the summit, and we are very excited to speak with a variety of customers, partners, analysts and press while at the event. Do join us if you can!

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The new Containers feature in Visio 2010 is great for adding structure and organization to Visio diagrams. In this post, we’ll walk through the creation of one diagram, the strategy map , which is easy to make using containers. The strategy map A strategy map is a way for companies to document their primary strategic objectives. It visually shows the goals being pursued by an organization and the relationships between these goals. Commonly, a strategy map is part of the documentation associated...

A new series of training videos have been posted on Office.com to introduce Visio users to Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). The videos are packaged as a course named BPMN Diagramming Basics . The course provides both an introduction to the BPMN notation and a tutorial on creating BPMN diagrams with Visio 2010 Premium. Along the way you can see some of the other new features of Visio 2010 including Swimlanes , AutoConnect , Subprocesses , and Diagram Validation . The complete course takes...

One of the things we all do a lot is reuse shapes or groups of shapes in several places and often the best way to do that is to Copy the existing shape and Paste it elsewhere. Even though you use it daily, there may be some behavior you’re not familiar with, especially with the Copy/Paste improvements in Visio 2010. So, here is a brief summary... Where to find it Copy and Paste is available in more than one way. Depending on your normal workflow and the result you want, you may want to use...

In a previous blog post , we told you about the new Connectivity APIs in Visio 2010 that make it easier for developers to create and to move across a connected diagram. We’ve shown you how to use some of the new APIs to create new connected shapes ( see here ); now we’ll examine techniques for traversing connected diagrams. One of the most useful APIs for analyzing a connected diagram is the Shape.ConnectedShapes method, which allows you to get a reference to the shapes connected to a...

Visio Services allows you to view Visio diagrams in SharePoint, and the Visio Web Access web part allows you to embed those diagrams on a web part page . This post examines how you can turn those diagrams into interactive mashups without having to write any code. SharePoint allows you to display multiple types of information on the same page by using multiple web parts. With web part connections, changes in one web part can drive changes in another web part. By connecting the Visio Web Access web...

Spring has arrived and baseball season is upon us! Whether you follow the professional leagues, play recreationally or coach in the little leagues, there is one thread that ties all baseball enthusiasts together – a passion for stats. In this article and the attached diagram, we present a baseball scoring sheet that you can use to track the action in each game. You can use the diagram as-is or customize it to your liking. Print and Go The Visio Baseball Scorecard is intended to be printed and...