Jira hierarchy and dependency modelling in Visio

[TentDesigner]

Hi,
I am looking into how to quickly display a tree of dependencies in Visio.
Jira gives a flat csv table with one row per ticket and several columns listing  linkage to other tickets.
Initial thoughts for a solution:
-create a nice template
-From VBA:
   - create some shapes
   - read the ticket details into the set of shapes (ID, Description, Ticket Type, Link in/out)
   - set linkage to match what is in each ticket i.e. add lines to other tickets.  (Sort connecting points, connecting lines and arrow heads)
   - tidy up what is onscreen with a bit of manual drag-and-drop.
This sounds ok but I wonder if there is a quicker way to do it?

Also, eventually there will be hundreds of tickets and many different views of them (by project,  by release, changed since last week etc)

Thanks
/Louis

[vojo]

<soapbox> 
Confluence and Jira are really solutions looking for a problem, any problem, to solve...just a total kludge!!!!!!
Some truly bonehead software
(for example, who would have thought an editor like 40 year old VI would be cool...no better half assed editor, available??)
Got to keep people away from the opioids and the scissors!!!
<!soapbox>

This will take some reasonable VBA to do completely in visio.  May want to use Excell as a "database" for the
the data then write some VBA in visio to read in excel data and generate the visuals.
Probably want a shape in a stencil so that you can drop it and added the data
(shape connection to other shapes would be more VBA related)

One point to note, you probably should add a "handle" in the data so that you can make connections in VBA
(it will be hard to relate sheet.123 to sheet.456 for a connection).

[TentDesigner]

@vojo thanks for that. 
I disagree with your comments on Jira, but I think that your Visio outline makes good sense 
I've had a play and got my linkage data, along with the ticket data into a spreadsheet so I am going to have a go at visualising it in Visio.

/Louis