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Mark Shea: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We're going to be discussing Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003. We're going to be taking a look at the new features and benefits that you'll find in this new release.

This morning I'm going to be joined by Barb Way, who is our Delta Force and Escalation Lead for Visio. Essentially what that means is she is our third-level engineer, the person who handles escalations of support issues and provides liaison between the Visio product group and support. Later in the presentation, we'll also be joined by Beth Petry, who is one of the program managers for Visio. She'll be assisting with the question-and-answer session as well.

(Slide 2) What we're going to be discussing this morning is an overview of Microsoft Visio 2003, improvements in Visio 2003, and some of the new features that you'll be seeing. We'll be talking about Visio 2003 and integration with Office System 2003. There are some very exciting developments in Office 2003, and Visio integrates tightly with those Office improvements.

Additionally, we'll have a chance to take a look at Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™ services and some of the ways that you can use Visio to integrate with Windows SharePoint services.

Then we'll be finishing our session with questions and answers. We'll give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have regarding Microsoft Office Visio 2003.

(Slide 3) To begin, let's take a look at the system requirements for Visio. This is the level of machine that you will need to be operating, at a minimum, to work with Visio. You would want to have a machine that's running a Pentium III (or higher) processor at 233 megahertz (MHz) or faster, and you would want at least 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM.

For Visio Standard 2003, you would need 160 MB hard disk space. And for the Professional edition, you would need to have 210 MB hard disk space available. You would need to be running Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or later. So, if you are on Windows 2000, make sure that you have at least Service Pack 3 installed. You need to have a Super VGA monitor with at least 800 × 600 resolution, and you need to be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.

For more information about additional requirements and special features, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 829913. To get to that article, you could go to http://support.microsoft.com, and you have the option on that page to enter that specific article number, and it will bring that article up for you, 829913.

(Slide 4) Let's take a look at the two editions of Visio, Visio Standard 2003 and Visio Professional 2003. There are a number of features that are available in both editions, like drag-and-drop diagramming (being able to drag shapes directly onto the workspace) and wizards for generating diagrams. Some examples are business process diagrams or brainstorming diagrams, which can be initiated by using wizards. Both versions are available in 17 languages. We have integrated, local, and online shapes available. There is context-sensitive help: you can search for specific strings within help, for finding help on particular issues, relative to Visio. You are able to use shape hyperlinks. There are a few different types of shapes available that you can hyperlink within Visio drawings. You can use custom shape properties.

There is review mode. That's available in both versions. We'll talk a little bit more about review mode in a later slide. There is Microsoft SharePoint integration. You can use Visio 2003 with both versions of SharePoint: SharePoint Team Services 1.0, and now Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, which comes with Windows Server 2003. Tablet PC support is available to both editions, Standard and Professional.

The Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) Macro Recorder is available. We'll be doing a demonstration later in the presentation. I'll just show you how to find it, how it can work, and some of the ways that it will benefit you. There are some new wizards and diagrams that are available. The business process diagram and the brainstorming diagram are a couple of examples.

(Slide 5) There are certain features that are available only in Visio Professional edition and that are not available in the Visio Standard edition. Some of these are Web site maps, software diagramming with reverse engineering, and database diagrams with reverse engineering. Essentially, these are features that will allow you to, in the example of database diagrams, connect to a Microsoft SQL Server™ database. A SQL Server 2000 database would be one example, and you could reverse engineer, meaning pull in the tables and to set them up in a drawing, to view the way that the tables relate to one another. Visio will do that for you. It will draw those relationships for you in a very nice manner.

Engineering drawings are available: building space and floor plans; logical network diagrams; network rack diagrams, and directory services diagrams.

(Slide 6) Let's take a look at some of the improvements that you'll find in Visio 2003. We are talking today about Visio 2003, but I would mention for those of you who may still be using Visio 2000 and Visio 2002, and who are considering moving to Visio 2003, that we just released service packs for both of those versions yesterday. Those are available to you on the Web. They're live now. So if you're interested, and you are currently using either Visio 2000 or Visio 2002, you could go to the Office download site and find those new service packs for both of those versions.

(Slide 7) Let's take a look at the improvements for Visio 2003. There are new task panes available in Visio. This is something that is available across Office. It is a new way of getting help, a way to search for resources within Microsoft, and it helps you get started with drawings and documents within Visio.

By default, you'll see these task panes on the right side of your Visio application. If the pane isn't open for you, one of the ways that you could make it available is to just launch help in the usual way. If you were to go under the Help menu in Visio and launch a Help session the way you would with any previous version of any Office application, the Help pane will launch on the right side of your application. There in the drop-down menu at the top of that pane, you'll see the various items that are listed on this slide. Like Getting Started; Help, which is where you'd be brought to if you were to launch a help search from the Help menu; you're able to look for clip art on the Microsoft site, directly from your Visio application. You wouldn't have to leave your Visio applications and launch Internet Explorer to go look for clip art. You could do that directly from your Visio application.

Likewise, you're able to do research. You can research Knowledge Base articles and white papers directly from your application in this panel. Search results are returned in this panel as well. So, if you were to look for a particular issue relative to Visio, you would have these search results returned directly in this task pane.

You can launch new drawings. You can obtain template help. You could view information about shared workspaces in these task panels. Shared workspaces is a feature available to you through Windows SharePoint Services. You would be able to see those people who are collaborating with you on the document, and you would be able to interact, give them feedback, or receive feedback from these people through this shared workspace. This could be done through document updates or reviewing.

Reviewing is a feature where you can mark up, add comments, or view the comments of others on a review copy of a drawing.

(Slide 8) Let's look at the user interface improvements. By the way, I'll show you some screen shots of Visio 2003 here momentarily, so we're not looking just at these static slides. I will also give you some screen shots of some of these things that we're talking about, so you get a chance to take a look at that as well.

User interface improvements: Search for Shapes. With the improved Search for Shapes feature, you can find shapes from right in the Visio Shapes window. If you are online, Visio will search the Web where there is a larger, continually updated collection to choose from. Drag the shapes you find directly to the drawing page, or save them on a custom stencil for future use. You also have, and we mentioned this earlier, personalized shape management. Visio 2003 makes it easier to organize the shapes you use most often on separate stencils, so you can find them quickly and easily. Use the new My Shapes folder to save shapes to a favorite stencil or appropriately named custom stencils.

New rotation handles: Now Visio shapes have Office-style rotation handles, so you can rotate easily without changing tools. The way that you move shapes in other Office applications will now have a similar look and feel for you in Visio, with the same kinds of rotation handles.

You can select multiple shapes. There are now three easy ways to select multiple shapes: use the pointer tool, use the lasso select tool to drag a selection net around all shapes, or hold down the SHIFT key and click each shape. So, in these three different ways, you can select multiple shapes.

Color schemes: all templates that implement color schemes include updated options to coordinate the colors of your shapes and drawings, giving them a polished and professional look. There is a DWG converter. The improved DWG converter assures you that the drawings you convert to Visio will have higher fidelity to your original CAD files, so you can work with spaces and shapes even more accurately than before.

(Slide 9) Documentation and analysis of the business process: this is a new template category. You can use the templates in the business process category to diagram business processes, including Six Sigma and ISO 9000, using diagrams types such as fault tree analysis, workflow, audit, event-driven process chain, and data flow.

You can find additional flowchart templates in the Flowchart category. So the way that you would get there is to click the File menu, click New, and then click Flowchart. There you would see Audit Diagram, Basic Flowchart, Cause and Effect Diagram, and Cross-Functional Flowchart. Some others are EPC Diagram, TQM Diagram, and Workflow Diagram, for example.

(Slide 10) Let's take a look at a screen shot of this. Here is the business process flowchart example. Here we have the DMAIC flowchart. Six Sigma uses the DMAIC methodology: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. That's the DMAIC. It's a roadmap for improving business process and cutting costs. With the new DMAIC flowchart template for Visio, you can start your Six Sigma project by documenting the requirement and steps for all five phases. As the project progresses, you can also communicate concepts, findings, processes, team structures, ideas, cross-group work, and schedules with Visio diagrams in as much detail you need; and you can link these diagrams and other documents directly from your DMAIC diagram to keep your Six Sigma information organized and easy to find. So, this is an example of one of those flowcharts.

(Slide 11) Let's take a look at EPC diagram. This is an even more complete view of the Visio 2003 interface with an EPC diagram. EPC diagrams illustrate business process workflows that are an important component of the SAP R/3 modeling concepts for business engineering.

EPC diagrams use graphical symbols, and you can see those here, to show the control flow structure of a business process as a chain of events and functions. Using the EPC diagram template in Microsoft Office Visio, you can quickly and easily create a high-level visual model of your business process. Here you see an example of that. The building blocks used in EPC diagrams are functions, which are the basic building blocks of the diagram; events, which occur before and/or after a function is executed; and connectors, which associate activities and events. After it is completed, you can use the EPC diagram as a reference for modeling the SAP R/3 system.

(Slide 12) Another new feature that's available in Visio 2003 is the ability to track comments. This new feature is named Track Markup. You can share a separate copy of the drawing with each reviewer, or make the drawing available to a workgroup. You can capture all reviewer's markup comments before finalizing the document.

You should note that each reviewer must use Microsoft Office Visio 2003 to add markup. So, if you were in a mixed environment where other users had Visio 2002, for example, only those who had Visio 2003 would be able to track comments, because this is a new feature, and it is not available in the previous versions.

(Slide 13) Let's take a look at another template that's available in Visio 2003. This is the Organization Chart. There are some fantastic new abilities that are available with the Organization Chart in Visio 2003. For example, you are now able to incorporate pictures in the Organization Chart. You're able to show dotted-line reporting relationships. You're able to experiment with different layouts without manually moving shapes. And you can liven up your diagram with new and redesigned shapes. So, there's a wider range of opportunities available to you with an organization chart in Visio 2003.

(Slide 14) Another template that's available in Visio 2003 is the brainstorming tools template. There was also the Mind Map Diagram in Visio 2002. We now have this template category, brainstorming tools, where you're able to capture ideas from a brainstorming session and export the brainstorming diagrams to other Microsoft Office applications. I've had an opportunity to sit in a couple of meetings, here at Microsoft recently, where I've seen this used. Someone was sitting in the meeting and building a brainstorming diagram as the meeting progressed, then they left, and they were able to print the diagram immediately upon leaving the meeting, so that everybody had this particular diagram available to them for review after the meeting.

(Slide 15) Here is an example of what that looks like. So, you have your central idea in this diagram with the offshoot ideas that stem from that central idea. You're able to highlight, map, and prioritize these ideas as they flow out from the main idea.

The main topic represents the central idea or theme. You can have more than one main topic in a brainstorm diagram. Connected topics form the levels of the diagram hierarchy. Topics that are subordinate to other topics are called subtopics. In this example, Assets, Weaknesses, and Strengths are peer topics, and they are subtopics of Product. You can see those coming off of Product. You can add a legend (you see that in the lower-right corner of the diagram) to display the legend symbols you've assigned some topics in the diagram.

(Slide 16) Another new feature in Visio 2003 is the Macro Recorder. Some of you may be familiar with macro recorders in other Microsoft products. This is now a feature that's available in Visio as well. This allows you to record frequently used Visio actions to a macro. You don't need to understand programming to be able to use the macro recorder, although I will say I think one of the really nice things about the Macro Recorder in Visio is, if you do want to understand some of the programming, if that's something you want to learn more about, the Macro Recorder is a good way to begin learning about code for Visio. I'll show you how to do that here in a moment.

One of the other advantages of a Macro Recorder is that you have the ability to complete several steps with one click. The other thing about the Macro Recorder, and I'll be able to show you this in a minute as well, is rather than capturing steps that you're not going to keep — in other words, if you do something and then reverse it — you don't get those steps that you've reversed. You just get the end result, the product that you want through the Macro Recorder. I'll show you what I mean in a moment.

(Slide 17) Let's take a look at the Macro Recorder. We're going to do a demonstration here.

(Demonstration) You'll notice in this particular demonstration session that I have also started Visual Basic, so that we'll be able to view the code with the Macro Recorder. One of the interesting things about the Macro Recorder is that it gives you the opportunity to see the code that has been written relative to the activity that you have just recorded. So, let's take a look at that.

Here in Visio, you'll see that I have a new document started. To start the recorder, we click Tools and click Macros, and then click Record New Macro. We have a chance to name our macro what we like. We'll call this TestNewMacro. Click OK. Now we have launched the Macro Recorder, and you'll see that we get this little toolbar that provides us with a few options, like to stop or pause the recording, and then there are also toolbar options, which basically allow you to add or remove buttons. We'll leave that alone for now.

Over in Microsoft Visual Basic, we can open a workspace. I've opened modules here that you can see, and then new macros. If I double-click that, you'll see the area where the code will be entered. So, we're going to perform a very simple process here. I'm just going to change the orientation of the page. You may want to do something far more complex with your macro, but this will give us an idea of how it works. Click the File menu, and then click Page Setup.

Here I have the opportunity to change from Portrait to Landscape. I select Landscape page orientation. Click OK. You see here in Visio that my page orientation has changed. Let's see what's happened in the code for the Macro Recorder. Here you'll see we've written about eight lines of code. This is the code that is behind changing the page orientation from portrait to landscape.

If you wanted to know more specifics about what the code is for page orientation, for example, in this last line you see the value of 2. That's the value for landscape. You can see this, and we'll do this just by changing the page back again. You can see this if we go to click File, click Page Setup, click Portrait, and then click OK. Again, you see that the orientation of the page has changed from landscape to portrait. If we look at the code, we have where the page was changed from portrait to landscape. Here, in the second piece of code, is the change from landscape to portrait. There you see in the last line of code the value is 1, which is portrait. This is a very simple process, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of things that you can do with the Macro Recorder.

So with this macro, with one click of the button you could change the orientation of your page from portrait to landscape, and then from landscape back to portrait. But, I think, even more interesting is the fact that you would be able to look at the code behind those steps and get some understanding as to exactly what you would need to do to write code to accomplish those tasks.

(Slide 18) Let's take a look at Visio integration. One of the new features in Windows Server 2003 is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. With every license of Windows Server 2003, you can use Microsoft Windows SharePoint services, and that's available for download from www.microsoft.com.

(Slide 19) Windows SharePoint Services allows you to do document management. You are able to produce Web sites that allow you to collaborate on documents, track versions of documents, and exchange information with other users regarding documents.

Windows SharePoint document libraries allow users to store multiple versions of their documents to provide a means for comparison and archiving. Each time checked out documents are checked back in, a copy of the document prior to the current changes is stored as a version of the document. This can be particularly helpful with Visio drawings. Every time the document is changed, you have a copy of the previous document. So you can compare the changes of the document over time.

That is a feature that we have here, called Versioning. Document Versioning and Document Check-in and Check-out: With the document versioning, a backup copy of a file is created whenever the file is saved to a document library. Users can also check out a file to lock it while editing, which prevents other users from overwriting or editing it inadvertently.

Within Windows SharePoint Services, you can have multiple document libraries. So, for example, for each project that you have, you could have a separate document library.

(Slide 20) We've talked about Microsoft Office Online a little bit already. Here is another opportunity to discuss it a bit more. Microsoft Office Online through Visio 2003 provides assistance. I'd also encourage you to take a look at some of the training opportunities. There are some terrific modules that have been created that will show you how to do various things relative to Visio, and other Office products, through Office Online. Again, this is available by default, on the right side of the application. It will drop down in a panel on the right side. These training modules will be labeled as training. If you're connected to the Internet, you'll be able to see these multimedia presentations on how to do various things within Visio.

You'll find Templates, Clip Art and Media, and various Downloads. You'll be able to find out more information about how to purchase other Office software, documentation, and books available for Visio and other Office products. Other product information will be available through Microsoft Office Online.

(Slide 21) Another terrific feature in Visio 2003 is the Outlook® integration. With Visio 2003, if you're running the Office suite, you will be able to integrate your Microsoft Outlook appointments, your Calendar, into a Visio calendar. You will be able to import Outlook data through the Import Outlook Data wizard to your Visio drawings. This will allow you to do things such as compare or combine schedules for multiple individuals. You'll have the opportunity to format the calendar as you like. In Visio there are a number of different shapes, clip art, and other drawings that are available to you, and you can add those to the calendar in Visio. These are not necessarily available to you through Outlook. It allows you a lot more range with your calendar, after you've imported it into Visio. There is a lot more customizing that you can do with it.

(Slide 22) Here's an example. This is a screen shot of an Outlook calendar that has been imported to a Visio drawing. As you can see here, you're able to do things through the Visio drawing that you wouldn't really be able to accomplish through Outlook. But you still have your Outlook data available to you in this drawing.

That's what we have for the presentation today. We'll move to questions and answers. I'd like to thank you for spending time with us here today and for watching our presentation. We'll open it up to questions now.

Otto Cate: At this point we'd like to hear from you, our listeners, about this topic. If you find that you need some more complex technical assistance, feel free to contact Product Support Services directly, either through support.microsoft.com or by phone, to work directly with a support professional.

If you'd like some more information on future Support WebCasts, or to review any of our sessions on demand, visit our main Support WebCast site at support.microsoft.com/webcasts/. For this particular session, we plan to have a downloadable version of the slides and on-demand streaming media available within 24 hours, and a full, written transcript should be up there within two to three weeks.

So, with that, let's answer some questions submitted during the presentation. That brainstorm recording feature reminds me of what is currently being done with Microsoft OneNote™. Where is Microsoft going with that? Is this something that we could maybe comment on?

Beth Petry: This is Beth. I can't speak for what the path for OneNote is, but I do know that during the Office 12 time frame, all the Office applications are going to be more streamlined and more integrated. So we can hope that that's something that they're looking at.

Otto: Can you get pre-made shapes, such as audio rack systems?

Barb Way: Yes. This is Barb. There are a variety of shapes that are kind of generic that are built into some of the solutions, but for specific shapes, you can find many by searching the Web. There are a lot of third-party shape developers out there who provide shapes. Some of them have packages available for sale. Sometimes people share their stencils, at no charge, within a certain application. But I don't know specifically. On those particular shapes, I'd suggest you might want to try searching the Web to see what you can find on the Internet.

Otto: I see this as an excellent tool for manufacturing. Can you elaborate with some examples on how we might be able to use it in that environment?

Beth: Specifically speaking for manufacturing environments, the process flow diagram would be an excellent tool for you to map your internal processes. ISO 9000 requires you to continuously improve your processes. This is a good way to diagram what you have existing, and then to review those with a core team, and figure out where you need to go from there.

There are other ways of diagramming your workflow. There is a workflow template that allows you to depict what processes you have on your manufacturing floor. Those might be some areas that you guys are interested in.

Otto: As a follow-up, they're mentioning BPM, BI, KM. Do you know what those acronyms are referring to?

Barb: If you're talking about our solution, BPM is business process management. I didn't catch all of them.

Otto: Yes. It's BPM, BI, and KM.

Barb: BI is business infrastructure. In reference to the diagrams that we have, we just used industry domain terms. So, those would be what people who were doing Six Sigma type projects would find relevant to the kinds of processes that are worked through in a full-on Six Sigma project. I'm not a Six Sigma black belt, green belt, or any of the levels of Six Sigma, so I'm not very familiar with all of those specific terms in that solution.

Otto: I've experienced a very specific problem going between flowcharts that are created with Visio 2002 and then are updated to Visio 2003. There are not a lot of specifics, but are there any general issues that you guys have seen, or would this possibly be better handled either by support incident or possibly through the newsgroups, or something like that?

Barb: In general, I couldn't say that there is a specific issue with the flowchart solution. There is none known. There are certainly some changes in maybe the styles and the way that things open by default in Visio 2003, but if the issue has to do with flowcharts actually not being able to go back and forth, I would say that's a specific issue that probably would be best worked through a product support incident.

Otto: Is Visio 2003 available for 30-day trial as a download?

Barb: Yes. It is. If you go to the main Visio product site, which I will get you the address for in just a second, you can link to a site where you can order a CD for the 30-day trial, or you can download the 30-day trial. One of the things that's new with the Office 2003 suite is the ability to convert a trial into a full version, if you decide to do so, after completing the 30-day trial.

I'm looking up the address here. I know that it'll be found under [http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/prodinfo/trial.mspx], but I don't know the exact link. So your best bet would be to get to the Visio portal, which you can also get to by going into Help, and then Microsoft Office Online in the Visio 2003 program. If you don't have the product and you need the trial, the best thing to do is to go to [http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/prodinfo/trial.mspx] and find the trial link there.

Otto: It appears that will be the final question, so I'm going to wrap up our session here.

I certainly wanted to thank our presenters for coming out and giving us a great presentation, a lot of really good information here. Of course, as always, we'd like to thank you, our listeners, for attending today's session. We certainly hope that this information has been helpful to you and your business, and we look forward to your participation in upcoming WebCasts.

Thanks everyone, and have a great day.