The Org-chart Wizard Sucks

[Visio Guy]

I am proud at how polite and well-behaved the members of the Visio Guy discussion forum are. But it's always fun to complain and vent a little bit, so why not start with the org-chart wizard?

My two-cents:

- You can't updated existing org-charts, ie: CRUD (create, read, update, destroy)
- The layout is somewhat unpredictable - ie: "Layout children" - does it recursively layout out children, or just the first level. And if you select many shapes and do layout, the results can also be suprising.
- You can't substitute your own org-chart shapes - even if they "implement the correct interface" by having all the required cells. A good Org-chart solution should publish some sort of "shape interface" or "shape contract" so that Visio customizers/developers could create differently styled shapes that would be recognized by the solution.

[merlin777]

you've just (well, some time ago) all my frustrations with the org shart wizard.

no updating and unpredictable layout are the 2 big ones!

I'm about to post a question elswhere that might help me out a bit but I couldn't help endorsing this one first.
jc

[Visio Guy]

Let's add: can't control the order. So even if you somehow sort your data, say in an Excel spreadsheet, such that all underlings are ordered by last name, there's no guarantee that they will be in that order in the orgchart. Makes it hard to find folks when you've got 20 or 30 underlings!

[hOAGART]

Figures ... this is what I signed up for .... and you guys hate it to!


I have a 23 page org chart by department, but wanted to merge them all on one legal page.

Any know how on this?

[jastronomy]

go through the org chart wizard manually, and the final page of the wizard asks:
<a>I want to specify how much of my organization to display on each page.
<b>i want the wizard to automatically breakdown my organization chart across each page.

Select option a above; and then go and create your own page.
Specify who is at the 'top' of the company, include all sub-ordinates and name the page..

finish... and Voila!

[brhanks]

I don't know how many people are going to see this. I know it is an old thread but I think other people might stumble across this like I did and it would be nice to know about other Org chart wizard options. Lucidchart's org chart wizard is an alternative worth trying.