Its time for Visio MVPs/Developers to help us *sorting* organization chart

[aledlund]

Nick,
Please don't misunderstand, I wasn't offended. I was hoping for discussion. In my career I was sometimes part of teams that had to review why applications failed to meet there expected results. I think everyone who participates here realizes there is phenomenal power in using it to visualize 'something', the challange is in merging the previous toolsets into solutions that don't overwhelm us with the minutia necessary to describe what we are working with.
al

[nashwaan]

Thanks aledlund for your feedback and your files. I am in the process of understanding the examples. I just realized there are much more things to learn in Visio than i initially anticipated. 

Looking at the picture from Nikolay made me feel immediately embarassed even before opening the attachment to its full size .  I see your point and it is a valid one. In fact, i used to give the example how Google kept their user interface extremely minimal all these years since the day it started is worth to follow. I just completely forgot about "keeping things simple" while develping the GUI   . but again, both of you are right specially when it comes to "It is challenging to find the right balance between simple GUI and provide more controls/powers".

I have few ideas in my head to make to tool more usable/understandable but i need to test them first.

Thanks again for the comments as i learned alot from them.
More comments are welcomed.

Yousuf.

[visiogal]

Following the advice from Aledlund "If it really annoys you, go fix it"  , i created some tools to help automating some common tasks in Visio org chart.

The tools are in beta stage v0.8, i will update once more functionalities are implemented. 

Meanwhile, have a look at the attachement file and provide your comments/feedback. 

Regards,
Yousuf.

i'm new to this discussion forum and i couldnt find the attachment mentioned in the above post. i'm trying to build a macro to sort an org chart and if someone has a already built such a macro , i'd really like to see it.

Thanks in advance

[pavane]

I have recently implemented a VBA process to import test scripts into a hierarchy chart and have implemented workarounds which partially solve the problems people have reported. When building an org chart in code, I can ensure that the layout is done "left to right", and that the final layout can be done horizontally (the arrange parameters cannot be provided to the add-in, as far as I can find). I have also implemented a "sort subtree" which can reorganise the selected subtree in correct sequence, and another procedure to select all owners of a selected shape (i.e. the owners to the top of the tree). Maybe some of this will be of use. 

[pavane]

When building a chart in code, when I want to drop a shape onto a superior shape, I first move the superior shape way above and to the right of the superior.

I then drop the shape, and rearrange the page. This sems to force the dropped shape to be at the right of the subordinates (Who knows why?).

I have also implemented a "Sort Subtree" function on a selected shape (Mouse menu) which scans its subordinates recursively and moves shapes if necessary so that the displayed order corresponds to the internal sequence.