Meet Maya, Class Supervisor at Contoso, an e-Commerce firm. Speaking successfully is on the core of all the pieces she does. Maya works visually. She’s an avid consumer of Visio with a Visio Plan 2 subscription and sometimes creates diagrams to assist clarify her ideas and concepts clearly.

On this specific workday, Maya is utilizing Visio to visualise her workforce construction, assist to enhance operational effectivity, brainstorm a brand new undertaking together with her workforce, and create a professional-looking infographic for an upcoming presentation.

Visualizing workforce construction

At this time is the beginning of the brand new fiscal 12 months, and Maya desires to visualise her workforce construction to assign tasks for the upcoming 12 months. To do that, she makes use of the Visio Information Visualizer add-in for Excel to shortly create an org chart for her workforce of analysts and different assist employees. Every pattern diagram comes with a data-linked desk and pattern information; all Maya must do is substitute the pattern information within the Excel desk.

She selects the Vertical org chart and shortly updates the values for Title and Title throughout the desk. When she’s accomplished modifying the worker information, she selects Refresh to replace the information within the Visio diagram. She then opens the file in Visio for the net, the place she will additional edit the org chart utilizing the predefined, color-coded shapes with choices that populate the initials of every worker’s title and might simply be dragged throughout the canvas. She additionally makes use of the Grid and Snap to Grid options, out there in Visio Plan 1 and Visio Plan 2, to simply place and align the shapes on the canvas. After connecting all of the shapes, she shortly modifies the format by choosing the Hybrid, Vertical Proper choice from the Layouts drop-down.

To personalize the org chart, Maya provides worker pictures to the assorted shapes (additionally known as nodes). She additionally provides new fields, together with Location and Division, and modifications the type of a number of shapes utilizing the Form Type choices out there from the Group Chart activity pane.

Observe: All options on this paragraph are coming quickly to Visio Plan 1 and Visio Plan 2.

Enhancing operational effectivity

Later within the day, Maya is tasked with automating the corporate’s e-commerce order movement. To perform this, she creates a Enterprise Course of Mannequin and Notation (BPMN) diagram utilizing the brand new BPMN Shapes stencil out there solely with Visio Plan 2 on the internet. She begins by including the swimming pools and swimlanes, which permit her to construction the diagram and clearly designate which workforce is chargeable for what. She then maps out the movement utilizing the BPMN 2.0 shapes, dragging and dropping the assorted movement objects from the stencil onto the canvas. Maya connects the shapes utilizing the three connection choices—sequence movement, message movement, and affiliation—and provides the suitable symbols to the movement objects. She then works together with her distant workforce utilizing collaboration and real-time coauthoring options in Visio for the net to finalize the workflow.

As soon as the diagram is accomplished, Maya opens it within the Visio desktop app, the place she’s in a position to validate the workflow in opposition to the BPMN rule set and examine for any points. She then maps the shapes to their connectors in Energy Automate, resolves all points, and exports the Visio diagram to Energy Automate for automation.

Brainstorming a brand new undertaking

That afternoon, Maya and her workforce meet through Microsoft Groups to brainstorm for an upcoming undertaking. Minutes earlier than the assembly, Maya creates a brand new Visio drawing immediately from the Recordsdata tab in Groups. She then shares the Visio file within the assembly chat and provides it as a tab, so her workforce can simply discover, entry, and collaborate on the file.

Maya likes to make use of thoughts maps when working together with her workforce on new, complicated initiatives as they assist to maintain the workforce’s ideas and concepts organized and in a single place. So, Maya opens the Visio file immediately in Groups and provides the brand new Thoughts map stencil to the Shapes pane. She then invitations her workforce to collaborate on the file throughout their brainstorming session. They shortly define their concepts, breaking down the undertaking into sub-projects by dragging and dropping the shapes onto the canvas. When wanted, Maya can shortly check with the thoughts map conveniently saved within the assembly chat to develop the ultimate undertaking plan.

Observe: Thoughts maps are at present in growth and coming quickly to Visio for the net.

Making a professional-looking infographic

Previous to wrapping up her day, Maya begins to work on a presentation for an upcoming technique assembly to enrich her latest analysis on the rise of sustainable e-commerce. She opens the Extra templates web page and scrolls by means of the huge library of templates and starter diagrams and selects her most popular template.

Maya begins by including related stencils to the Shapes pane. With 30+ new Icons stencils—together with Nature and Outdoor Icons, Schooling Icons, and Individuals Icons—and greater than 1,000 new shapes out there in Visio for the net, Maya finds all the pieces she must create a professional-looking infographic. She drags and drops a number of shapes onto the canvas, then reformats the shapes to create donut charts and bar graphs. She additional customizes the infographic with vibrant shades of inexperienced utilizing the Extra Fill Colours choice and, in lower than an hour, she has created a complementary visible for her presentation. Lastly, she saves the infographic as a PNG file with a clear background and provides it on to her PowerPoint.

In conclusion…

With an increasing library of ready-to-use templates, starter diagrams, and stencils, Maya can create easy-to-understand visuals with confidence. And she will collaborate and coauthor diagrams together with her teammates in real-time, rising the general effectivity of her work. Visio additionally shares lots of the similar security measures as Microsoft 365 apps, together with Data Rights Administration (IRM), to make sure that delicate data is protected against unauthorized entry through the collaboration course of.

Do you know? The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is the place you will get the newest updates on productiveness apps and clever cloud companies. Take a look at what options are in growth or coming quickly on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap or, view Visio-specific roadmap gadgets right here.