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The original Visio diagram: accurate, but jumbled

 We’ll start with a simple bottling process diagram, created in Visio 2010, with no links to any data, illustrated to the right.  Often, when creating a diagram, the emphasis is on making sure the correct steps are illustrated in the diagram and that the process is an accurate representation of the one used. Shapes are often added and taken out somewhat haphazardly during the drafting stage, leading to a jumbled diagram that is hard to follow and not visually appealing. Visio allows this type of fluid diagram creation by automatically adding additional canvas area if a diagram spans multiple pages and with the addition of the quick shapes toolbar, enabling fast access to frequently used diagram shapes.

2 Visio 2010 has three built in tools that help with aligning the shapes on the page to be easier to follow: on-screen aids, distribution commands and auto-align and space. The latter two commands may be found on the "Home" tab of the new Fluent UI tabbed interface.

3 Start by selecting all the shapes on the diagram (either by left-clicking and dragging to cover all shapes while holding the mouse button down or by pressing Ctrl-A). Once all shapes are selected, click the "Auto Align & Space" menu item. The diagram should now be on a single page with all the shapes aligned.

4 The diagram is now ready to be linked to data. In this example, the data for our diagram is in an Excel file, but can be in any data-store that Visio supports (such as a SQL database or other ODBC compliant data-source). Importing the data to the diagram is a simple two-step process. First, the data is imported into the Visio diagram via the data tab.

5 Once “Link Data to shapes” is selected, a wizard starts which provides guidance through the process of linking the data to Visio. Once the data is linked, you can either choose to manually drag and drop rows of data to the corresponding shape, or, if the data and shape have the same unique identifier, you can automatically link the data. Other than a small chain icon in the external data window, you may not notice any other visible indication that the shapes have linked successfully.

6 One of the main benefits of linking data to diagrams is that users can quickly get a visual representation of how their processes are doing and where bottlenecks exist. To illustrate how this could work, let’s add data graphics to the bottling diagram.

7 One of the main benefits of linking data to diagrams is that users can quickly get a visual representation of how their processes are doing and where bottlenecks exist. To illustrate how this could work, let’s add data graphics to the bottling diagram.

8 The following Visio Services diagram shows a completed version of the diagram: