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    Visio Impact—Issue 2

     

    Visualizing Fun >

    We know that for many, Visio is their most important tool at work. For this edition of Visio Impact, the focus is on how those same people have fun with Visio. Below you'll find stories and resources highlighting some creative ways that people use Visio to enhance their personal interests with visualization and sharing.

    		   
      What strikes us about how people have fun with Visio is diversity. Diversity in what they want to accomplish, diversity in how they actually use the application, and diversity in what they can produce. We hope these stories provide you not just with know-how, but with ideas and inspiration to use and share Visio in new and enriching ways.
    Please let us know if you've got suggestions or thoughts on future topics or how we can make the newsletter better.

    		 
      - The Microsoft Visio Team


    		 
     
    Product Tips

    Be it a favorite sport or pastime, many people have a hobby that involves watching, debating, or helping to manage some form of competition. Regardless of how you participate, Visio might be able to help. For example, you can use Visio to help track or score progress (as a fan), help manage the comings and goings (as a manager or an official), or perhaps share results (as a community member).

    The Visio product development team recently authored a great overview of how to use Visio to officially score a baseball game. The article includes a downloadable sample diagram, and explores every facet of creating, customizing, and using the scorecard.


    		 




    		 
      Template of the Month

    For anyone who aspires to unleash their inner Scott Adams (Dilbert) or Randall Munroe (xkcd), it turns out that Visio can help! We came across this brief video interview with Office writer and cartoonist David Salaguinto, who's long-running and popular Office OFFline Comic appears regularly. From the interview, we learned how David uses Visio to so effectively and quickly turn his ideas into comics and why he values the tool so much.

    If you're looking at getting started with your own comic or simply want to see the shape customizations and stencils David uses, he was nice enough to let us post his Visio template as a free download.     		 




    		 
     
    Spotlight - Visio MVP, Scott Helmers

    		 
       

    		  A new Visio 2010 book is hot off the presses! We'd like to congratulate Visio MVP Scott Helmers on the publication of Microsoft Visio 2010 Step by Step.

    The book can help you set your own pace in learning and practicing how to easily create professional-looking diagrams with Visio 2010. In addition to explaining how to take advantage of some of the new templates and ease-of-use features, Scott's book also shows how and when to use some of the powerful new functionality (such as containers, sub-processes, diagram validation, and how to use Visio Services to share diagrams) in Visio 2010.


    		 
     
    News/Trends

    We've come across great content from a Europe-based academic research group that focuses on knowledge visualization. The group is Visual Literacy Org and while neither Microsoft nor the Microsoft Visio team has any affiliation with this independent, non-commercial organization, we highly recommend visiting their site and taking a look at their research and resources.

    This periodic table of knowledge visualization particularly caught our attention. We think it provides a great construct for the many different ways that one can use software like Visio to communicate specific ideas or convey certain types of information. The next time you're faced with a new diagramming challenge or just want to consider a new approach to share familiar knowledge, the interactive table might help you decide on which new diagram type to try. Whichever approach you choose, we think that you'll find an optimal starting point from among the sixty-five unique templates available in Visio Premium 2010.


    		 
     
    Did You Know?

    		 
       




    		  What happens when an IT Pro first starts using Visio 2010? Normally, we'd assume that the Rack Space and the Enterprise Application templates would be given a workout. In this case, however, things turned out a little differently as one IT Pro was thinking about a family challenge rather than a work challenge when he opened up a business template in Visio 2010 for the first time.

    The story describes how the author used Visio's Org Chart Wizard template (and the associated data importing from Excel feature) to easily create an information rich, and visually appealing family tree.

    After seeing how blog readers informed the author of additional features like data graphics and publishing to Visio Services, we're excited to find out what future solutions he comes up with once he starts using Visio for his professional activities.


    		 
     
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