1 Introduction

The Visio WBS Modeler (WBS Modeler in the following) is intended to improve the project planning process by giving the opportunity to generate Project Plans from a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) using a graphical representation of elements.

A WBS structure is a hierarchical representation of the elements and sub-elements in a project.

The WBS Modeler can either be used to visualize and edit an existing project plan or to create a new project plan in Microsoft Office Visio 2010 Professional and then export it to Microsoft Office Project (2003+) to carry out the next planning steps.

The Application enables effective integration of Visio with Microsoft Office Project. It provides an approach to visually and graphically create, edit and modify project plans using Visio.

The WBS Modeler offers the ability to manage project elements in a graphical view, as well as offering functionality to layout a WBS in Visio. The WBS can be exported back to Microsoft Office Project into a new project plan. It is also possible to update an existing plan.

To organize the structure within a WBS Modeler the outline code from Microsoft Office Project is utilised.

2 Installation

· Microsoft Office Visio 2010 Professional or Premium

· Microsoft Office Project 2003 SP1 or later

· .NET Framework 4.0

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

Please ensure that Microsoft Office Visio is not running. To start the installation process, double-click the file WBSModelerSetup.msi and click Next in the following screen.

Figure 1: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) example

Figure 2: Set Up Installation Path and Disk Space Information

Click Next to Install in the defaul folder path or click Browse to select the destination folder path.

To Check the Disk Space Required, click Dist Cost.

Figure 3: Disk Space details for WBS Modeler Add-in

Note: If you want to make any changes to the installation settings or go back to the previous screen, click  Back.

Figure 4: Confirm Installation

 

The following window displays progress information of the setup process.

 

Figure 5: Progress window

The following window will provide progress information of the setup process.

Note: Please wait while the setup wizard installs the WBS Modeler Add-in. This may take a few minutes.

To cancel the installation click Cancel.

Once the installation is successful the Installation Complete screenappears.

 

Figure 6: Installation Complete

3 Getting Started

1. This section describes the basic flow of the reference implementation.

2. The Microsoft Office Visio 2010 Add-in for WBS Modeler is a Visio Add-In that starts up automatically with Visio. 

The Add-In when installed adds a new template WBS Modeler under WBS Templates Category.

1. Open Visio.

2. Select Add-ins from the Template Categories list.

3. Select WBS Modeler from the Choose a Templates list.

4. Click on the Create button or double click on WBS Modeler from Choose a  Templates list.

Figure 7: Seleting the template

 5. A new ribbon WBS Modeler is added as the template opens a new document.

Figure 8: WBS Modeler Ribbon

 

 

4 Import from Microsoft Office Project

The import process is designed to extract data from a plan in Microsoft Office Project to be used in WBS Modeler. 

Open Microsoft Visio and open WBS Modeler drawing type template as described above. Select the ribbon button Import from the WBS Modeler ribbonin in Visio as shawn above.

This will open a new screen allowing you to both browse and open existing Microsoft Porject file or select already opened Microsoft Project file, as shown below.

If you click Ok, then it will start importing the data from Microsoft Project File.

The import process might take some time depending on system performance. A window will indicate the progress.

Figure 11: Import progress window

After the process has finished the Project Element Selector window will automatically be displayed (see Figure 14).

Figure 12: WBS Modeler Ribbon

In this window you can see the starte and teh end level tasks that are ready to be drawn in Visio. 

The same applies if you choose to import the project summary element; the resulting WBS will in most cases be considerably bigger and due to limitations in the layout process not aligned as in the previous example. However, the layout can easily be improved using the functionality provided by WBS Modeler as described in the Modelingsection later in this document.

 

5 Modeling Process

The Modeling process in WBS Modeler offers a wide variety of options to manipulate the WBS data and layout.

In the following section the basic elements of the WBS Modeler are presented and explained. Based on this introduction, the process to create and modify a WBS from scratch is explained.

The modification of an imported WBS will not be explained separately as it is basically the same as creating and modifying a newly created WBS. The only difference is that the import process has to be completed beforehand.

 

The following chapter provides a brief description of the ribbon items and functions of the WBS Modeler.

This chapter covers the functionality of the WBS Modeler and how the functions and ribbon items briefly described in the previous two sections can be used.

5.4.1 Creating elements

5.4.1.1 Drag and drop

To create a new element simply drag and drop an element shape from the Shapes container to the drawing area.

Figure 13: Create new element

The prompt for the Element Name and Outline Number will open automatically after the element has been dropped to drawing area. The shapes should be connected by connectors. The Outline Number will be recalculated while exporting the diagram depending on the connections made.

 

5.4.1.2 Add child element / add sibling element

Right click the element to which you want to add child/sibling element/s. Choose the option, Add child elements or Add sibling elements from the context menu as shown below.

 
Figure 14: Creating new sibling/child element(s) #1

 

If you choose Add child elements or Add sibling elements you will be prompted for the element names to be added. Each line in this window resembles one element to be added.

 

Figure 15: Creating new sibling/child element(s) #2 – add child element(s)

 

If two child elements have been created will look like shown below.

 

Figure 16: Creating new child element(s)

 

If two sibling elements have been added, the result will be shown as below.

 

Figure 17: Creating new sibling element(s)

 

5.4.2 Hiding elements

To hide a set of elements select Hide Children option from Smart tag from right bottom.
Figure 18: Hide Children

 

If child elements are hidden, then that is visualized with a shadow line as shown in the following example.

Figure 19: Visualization of an element containing hidden sub-elements

 

5.4.3 Renaming elements

Renaming elements in WBS Modeler is straightforward. Double-click an element to open the Shape Data dialogue.

Figure 20: Shape Data

 

On this dialogue box you can view and modify the element information. This information may change depending on the selections made for the page properties. 

 

5.4.4 Moving elements

You can directly move element, the connectors will move as per the shapes.

5.4.5 Deleting elements

Select the element that you want to delete and press the Delete button on your keyboard. It will delete all the shape with all of its child shapes.

 

6 Reporting

The WBS Modeler also contains some templates to generate Reports for a WBS structure. To trigger a report in Visio choose Shape Reports from Review ribbon tab.

 

Figure 21: Reporting #1

 

On the following dialogue, one of the default templates delivered with WBS Modeler can be selected or a new one can be created. The process of creating a new template is not specific to WBS Modeler and is thus not covered in this document.

 

Figure 22: Choose Report

 

Select the report and press Run to generate the report.

 

Figure 23: Run Report window

 

Select the format for the report and click OK.

 

Figure 24: Sample Flowchart Report

 

7 Export to Microsoft Office Project

1. To export a plan to Microsoft Project selects the Export option from the WBS Modeler ribbon.

Figure 25: Export 

2. User is prompted for file and location of the new project file that will be created. The default location is My Documents and the default file name is the same name as the Visio drawing file name but with the Project file type.

Figure 26: Export to Project

4. The new project file is generated based on the shapes in the Visio WBS dioagram.

Figure 27: Result of the export process

 

8 Removal of WBS Modeler

Please ensure that Microsoft Office Visio is not running. To start the uninstall process click Uninstall a program in the Control Panel.

 
Figure 28: Add/Remove Program

 

In the Current installed programs screen select the entry WBS Modeler and click on Uninstall.

 

Figure 29: Remove WBS Modeler