Master template with external data linking problem

[Donboo]

I have a problem with my master template that I need some help with. I am not that experienced with Visio or VBA so I thougt it this might be done with some reading and hardwork and it would be an easy task but I am having trouble with the master linking.

Case is I have 50 customers that all share the same physical infrastructure but each has a unique logical.

My idea was to make a master template that I would link to each customers drawings and then link each unique data to the customer drawing. However I really wanted the external data link to be controlled from a central point too (not a need but a nice to have feature) so I tried to create a relative link to the external data source on the master template hoping that the data source  would be updated with the unique data from the customer when the link was created. I tried to do this in 2 different ways but ran into trouble no matter which I use.

1. If I created a master and inserted in the customer drawing as an object I would have the link-to-master but then I would be unable to link the unique customer data to the shapes as they are grouped when inserting and the object will loose the link to the master if ungrouped and the external data source wouldnt be available when linked this way.

2. If I created a master and just drag´n´drop it on the customer drawing I would get the external data source copied to the customer drawing and have the individual shapes but the link-to-master wouldn´t.

Is there a way to insert a master template with link and still be able to use external data sources on the shapes generated from the master template (linked either from the master or to the customer drawing) so I can update all 50 drawings from a central point and still have the shape data unique?

or have the master template inserted into the customer drawing with all shapes ungrouped and able to link the unique data to them but with the link to the master intact so updates in the master template still updates the customer drawings without removing the unique data on the shape?

[aledlund]

I'll preface with a question (or two). Are the individual shapes unique to a customer? Then your master drawing might put the individual shapes on different layers and you could use layer visibility to control what is displayed. Do your customers have access to the 'real' drawing? Then you might have a data security concern.
al

[Donboo]

The shapes on the master are not individual to each customer only the data that I want to link to the shapes in the customer drawing.


Its only me who will have access to the drawing at any given time so no worries there.

[aledlund]

What are you using for your datasource for the datalinking?
al

[Donboo]

The data source is an excel sheet generated from each customers unique data.

[aledlund]

Since recordsets can be built at an excel sheet level, you might consider separate sheets for each of your customers for linking. That way you just need to mirror the detail sheet data to your master sheet. An alternative is to write custom code to filter the recordset data programmatically to assign them to the shapes.
al

[Donboo]

The issue isn´t as much the data source as it is linking from the master with the individual shapes appearing on the customer drawing without being grouped so I still can link the data to each shape.

[aledlund]

Unfortunately the more we talk about it the more I suspect you will need some custom code to solve what you want to do, because it begins to sound like cascaded data calls.
al