Help, Stencils that drop different shapes to different pages

Started by sockmonkeyrevolt, February 03, 2016, 04:29:12 PM

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sockmonkeyrevolt

What I'm trying to accomplish is pulling a shape from the stencil and having it drop a single shape on the page it's dropped to (as an off page reference) and dropping another shape (which is a grouped flowchart shape) onto a new tab. (Ideally it would drop the flowchart shape plus a return link off page reference to the original).

Can anyone point me in the direction of a article/thread/search term/book? My searches thus far only turn up creating a shape, or creating multishapes controlled via the context menu, which isn't quite what I want.

A little background. We use visio to design caller interaction flows. Development is going through a project to build drag and drop widgets for frequently used components and I'm creating a stencil of some various mini- flow charts pre built with common logic for reusable components, to increase use of them. It's easy enough to make the flow stencils, but to avoid the possible problem of differentiating between the straight no customizing needed components and ones where tweaks are needed, it would be better if a as-is component  would be represented in the main flow as a "widget" shape that would link to the flow for that component. (the logic still has to be represented in the document because of some non-code related unique considerations)

I know I could do this separately by just making the widget shape a separate shape on the stencil that just took care of the off-page reference link, and then having each flow just be the flow, but I really want to combine all of that for a couple of behind the scenes, hide complexity, make it tougher for the user to do it the wrong way than the standard :) reasons.

If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate the nudge in the right direction.  Thanks,
~Chloe

JohnGoldsmith

Hi,

If you're using Visio Professional then it sounds like the 'Subprocess' tools (see image) might be what you're looking for.

If you're looking for a code answer then there are associated methods to do the same thing:
Hope that's helpful.

Best regards

John
John Goldsmith - Visio MVP
http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/

sockmonkeyrevolt

Damn, that looks pretty much like what I'm trying to do, but we're using 2013 Standard. (another bullet point goes on my ever lengthening list of reasons why I need Professional my Director is tired of me sending every couple of months :) ) Thanks!

JohnGoldsmith

My pleasure.  You could do this with code, but if you're doing much process work then going for Professional is defintiely the way to go.

Best regards

John
John Goldsmith - Visio MVP
http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/