Hello, Visio geniuses (genii..?)

The issue that I have is this – we might have an existing Visio file, with multiple pages, held in Sharepoint. Someone checks that out of Sharepoint, makes some changes relating to Project X, and checks it back it in. A few days later, they think of another change relating to Project X, so again they check it out, change it, check it in.

Now let's say that another user (or even the same user) are also working on Project Y, and for that project, they then check out the same diagram, edit it, in a different place or a different page to the Project X changes, and check it in again.

Finally, another change is required to the same diagram for Project X.

What the users currently do is manually mark the most recent changes in red, but trying to find all the changes relating just to Project X currently involves going through all the various versions, printing them out, and looking for anything red in each version – and you have to be careful about spotting unrelated changes e.g. for Project Y, which might be in the middle of the history.

Can anyone think of a way that Visio can track a set of related changes so it's easy to say 'show me all the changes relating to Project X', or 'what project was this change made for, and by who?'

I've been experimenting with Shape Data, but the authors of these diagrams point out that it relies on the user remembering to fill it in, for every shape that they add/change. Also, sometimes a shape might be deleted, and we need to track that change also.

I also looked into 'Track Markup', but it looks like this only supports tracking adding of new shapes, not making changes to existing ones; and accepting a suite of changes looks clunky, there is no 'accept all changes' like in MS Word.

I'm trying to avoid getting into VBA, because if I'm going to convince the users to take up a new process, it will need to be lightweight and easily maintainable. Any suggestions very gratefully received – I'm hoping there's some feature out there that I just don't know about!

James

I do this by keeping all files in XML format (i.e .VDX format for documents) and have a repository in a version control system, so I can then do a diff on any versions of a file.
It's not ideal and some changes are far too complex to track easily, but that does sometimes force you to make small incremental changes.

Thanks, Paul - that's a clever idea. Unfortunately, the users in question are not very techy - and resistant to change - so realistically, I won't be able to get them, and the rest of the readership, to start comparing XMLs. But I'll bear it in mind, depending on any other suggestions that come in.

You can add a table of history changes at the beginning of the document.  The table has the document revision level, date, what was changed (briefly), and who made the change.

There are formal systems out there for doing document control, but the above is reasonably effective without incurring cost. 

Wapperdude

BTW...this question highlights the potential for object storage.    In essence, what one really wants to do is go thru a bunch of visio drawings visually to sort out the ones of interest, then can XML or whatever for details.

The converses are messy....change tables require the discipline to update (surely after a while / getting lazy, some changes will be
omitted from change table).  Descriptive file names would be too long to be useful.   XML has potential but would then need a way
to translate the deltas into something user can easily interpret (I suppose one could pick up that a box is added or color has changed...but what about subltles like props field has a new value because this drawing is for Datacenter B - assuming not obviously called out somewhere else).

My only point here is that it would be great if there was a way to index/preview visio drawings visually to find the one(s) of interest.
then filter down from subset of interest as needed.   

Maybe its my way of working drawings....but I tend to end up with alot of multipage drawings in various subdirectories related to the content.  So when I need to go "fishing" for some old stuff....it can take a while  ;-)

Just some random thoughts.

The concept of visual tracking sounds really cool.  Would seem to have the potential to quickly locate changes, etc.

The discipline issue with the table, and any change tracking mechanism for that matter, is critical.  It requires management support.  It requires that changed drawings be reviewed before release to make sure laziness hasn't crept in.  For large aerospace corps, that infrastructure is usually in place.

Basically, regardless of tracking method, you have to "sell" the need, value, importance of tracking changes, and the potential (and/or actual) disasters that happen when you don't.  It has to become a religion of sorts.  Everyone has to buy into it to make it work effectively.

Thanks everyone - I agree that buy-in for the users for whatever mechanism is introduced is crucial. It would be one thing if these were my diagrams, but they are produced and maintained by another team, and I can't tell them what to do, only 'coax' What I'm really keen to get is some way of grouping together multiple change sets as being related. Thanks for the useful suggestions, I think I'll have to do a bit more digging..!

James

Assume users are lazy.   You could put all the visio behind doc library that would force "unique check ins" of content.   At least this way, you would get a brute force audit trail:   10 files all named foo.vsd but with different date codes.

Most of these library apps are paid....but I got to believe somebody in the open source world would have some free version.
(after all....linux code changes are managed somehow....doubt they are paying for some proprietary app to manage open source for all ;-)  )

Quote from: vojo on July 20, 2013, 03:10:29 AM

(after all....linux code changes are managed somehow....doubt they are paying for some proprietary app to manage open source for all ;-)  )

Git.
No, that's not an abusive response, just the name of the version control system created by Linus Torvalds.

np....though I thought GIT was for source/binary distribution and not for change management per se.....maybe there is alot more under GIT that is not all that visible on the web.

From Wikipedia:
"In software development, Git /ɡɪt/ is a distributed version control and source code management (SCM) system with an emphasis on speed.[3] Initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development, Git has since been adopted by many other projects."