Dynamic Updating Org Charts in Visio!

[Visio Guy]

Dynamic Updating Org Charts in Visio!

Links to a relatively new video by fellow MVP and Excel expert Leila Gharani, which covers the new Org Chart capabilities of the Data Visualizer. It's a really well-done video with just the right amount of detail to get you started, and get you interested!

[Nikolay]

Hi Chris!

Can you share, maybe you know on what platform is this based? Is it javascript (so that it's available also in browser?)
It would be interesting to learn some technical details - did they build everything from the ground up, or Visio's OrgChart is somehow in the picture?
I mean, this org chart does not seem to look as Visio org chart as we know it at all (I'm talking about pictures, styles, text blocks, etc)

[Visio Guy]

I haven't had time to dig into it much, but I do know that when you open Data Visualizer diagrams in Visio, they have a special frame around them. These frames have special User-defined cells, and there may even be a few new methods that "do stuff".

John G has a five-part series on Data Visualizer, and I would bet that he digs into some of the structure. It starts here:

Visio Data Visualizer part 1 – the process

I don't know how much of a web-api is available for this yet, if any. I think there will ultimately be two levels of online automation:

1. working with static Visio drawings--where users can't edit anything, but Plan 1 users could run some scripting to get additional data or integrate with other web parts.
2. working with the actual online drawing interface.

I don't know if anything exists for #2 yet at all. I just haven't had time to investigate, plus the naming and licensing is so confusing, it has kind of turned me off to the whole thing. But we can't ignore it forever, because "Cloud Visio" is here to stay, I'm sure!