Microsoft Visio 2013 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn doing the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to be looking at dynamic connectors and flowcharts. Control + 3 is the shortcut for connector which does the dynamic connections. Alternatively you can use home/ connector. If you drag a connection to the outer part of a shape it will always be connected to that point even if you move it around. If you drag to the centre of the shape it will take the shortest route and the attachment point will move if the shape is moved. If you look in view/ autoconnect and tick the check box you will get the autoconnect feature and if the mouse cursor comes close to a shape arrows will appear to signify it can connect to that shape. You simply click on the arrow. The shape menu lets you click on a shape and if click home/ change shape it will change the shape but retain the properties like colour etc. Quick styles lets you change the properties to something pre defined and is also under home. If you click file/ new it takes you into the templates and predefined drawings including flow charts. Obviously there are more options for this in the professional version. You choose a predefined flow chart and then drag and drop the shapes on to the workspace. There is a design/ orientation command which can position the shape either landscape or portrait style. You usually click on a shape and then type to add text. Many of the flowcharts have their own tab when selected. The cross functional flowchart or swim lane flowchart on account of its similarity to swim lanes is a chart that shows who is responsible for what in addition to showing processes and each swim lane is labelled with the person's name and the person's tasks are placed in the relevant swim lane or column. In file/ new you can do a search for a particular flowchart in the search box. If you click on chart/ import the command is a wizard where you can either import data from something like a database or enter it manually. You locate the file and it tries to make sense of it automatically so if for example you do this with job titles it is important the titles aren't changed as it will look for matches.