Combining a number of Visio Services web parts together,
and also with other web parts, on one page brings data to life. These
pages are known as dashboards.
Users understand data presented as diagrams and charts much easier than
when data is presented in a tabular view. It also helps to have related
data all on one page.
As you design these dashboards, you must try to make the
presentation of data meaningful for users who are not necessarily
technical people but can understand what the data means quickly and
easily. Users need not understand that the data is stored separately;
they expect related data to be incorporated into one or more pages. For
example, most users are familiar with mapping applications, such as
Google maps and Bing maps. The sophistication of such applications have
grown in power as the power of satellites has grown or the data from
satellites have become more available using the Internet and global
positioning satellite (GPS). Users can now display their current
location and nearby facilities on mobile phones with ease, and thereby
they can make better decisions quicker. Now, with Visio Services, you
can build similar dashboards, especially where the data is not suited
to be displayed in a graph or is too complex or too boring to be
displayed in a grid.
Visualization of data makes decision making quicker and easier.
However, Visio Services is just the presentation layer for your data.
Before creating your dashboards, you must get the data in the format
you want, the format that makes sense, and the format that is easy to
present using diagrams and shapes. To use the power of Visio Services,
the data will be stored externally to the Visio file, and therefore, to
get the data in the necessary format, you may have to work with a
number of data source owners. Visio is not an analysis tool, other
tools, such as Excel Services, may be suited if you need to slice,
dice, aggregate, or use formulas.
Building dashboards is not new to Visio Services in SharePoint
Server 2013, you could build dashboards in Visio Services in SharePoint
Server 2010. However, the following features are new with Visio 2013:
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Updated drawing templates with a more Windows 8–centric look, with improved containers and callouts.
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New themes, each offering four unique variants that you can use to
fine-tune your drawings. A set of Quick Styles, which is a style and
color pairing, is provided for each theme. You can use these to format
at the page, shape, or selection level. You can also customize the
default themes. You can apply themes by using the Quick Styles split
button, which is on the Home tab, in the Shape Styles group.
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The ability to exchange one shape with another by using the Change
Shape split button in the Editing group on the Home tab. The new shapes
can retain the position, connections, formatting, shape text, and/or
shape data of the originals. If another shape in the drawing references
the original shape in a formula, Visio restores this reference after
the operation and updates the reference to point toward the resulting
shape. Hyperlinks, connections, callout associations, shape comments,
container membership, and list membership are likewise restored.
Note
2-D shapes can only be replaced by other 2-D shapes, and
single-dimension shapes by other single-dimension shapes. For example,
a connector cannot be replaced with a rectangle.
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Additions to the shape sheet, including a range of visual effects
such as 3-D Rotation, that gives height to a two-dimensional shape, and
the sketch effect, that gives a drawing a more “penciled-in” look.
Other effects include reflection, glow, and gradients.
Visio is a very quick and easy diagramming tool. As the dashboard
designer, you should build as much as possible in Visio that is
supported by Visio Services, before uploading it into SharePoint and
building your dashboards. In this way, your dashboard will not be as
complex to build, nor will you need to use as many web part connections
or write client-side code, such as JavaScript or HTML.
Within the Visio file, you will define how to obtain the external data (known as data linking),
display information about the data within shapes, and then apply data
graphics to those shapes so that you can visualize the data behind them
without having to modify the shape. In the previous release of Visio
Services, it was only when you combined data graphics with the shapes
that you could enhance the visual behavior of those shapes. In
SharePoint 2013, shape behavior has been enhanced so that you can build
custom shapes that respond to changes in the shape properties, allowing
you to build really powerful diagrams that present the data in a manner
that is attractive to the eye.
Visio supports the refresh of
data from multiple data sources. You link the external data to the
Visio diagrams and connect the individual data records or rows to
specific shapes in your diagram. The external data fields are mapped to
the shape’s properties and as the values of those properties change so
the visualization of the shapes changes.
For many diagrams, once they are created, you may only need to
delete, add, or move a shape occasionally, but typically the diagram
remains the same—it is the data that changes. When you connect data to
diagrams, it is all about visualizing that data.
Complete the following steps to obtain external data within your Visio file:
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Open Visio and use a Visio template to create a Visio diagram. You
can also base your Visio diagram on other drawing products, such as
AutoCAD, by using the Open Backstage View option.
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Put shapes on the page if the template does not include any shapes.
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On the Data tab, click Link Data To Shapes in the External Data group, as shown next.
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On the first page of the Data Selector wizard, select the data
connector which matches where the external data is stored, and then
click Next, as shown in the following graphic.
Note
Access
data sources are not supported by Visio Services. To use Visio Services
to refresh data from an Excel workbook or a previously created
connection, then the workbook or the data connection (*.odc) file must
be located on the same SharePoint site as the drawing. For an Excel
workbook, that site must also have Excel Services enabled since Visio
Services uses Excel Services to pull the data from the workbook into
the Visio file. The Data Selector wizard will ask you to select a data
source from the workbook, such as a range and columns. You will be
asked which column in the workbook provides the unique ID so that Visio
Services can reconcile the row in the workbook that matches a specific
shape in the Visio diagram.
When an Excel workbook is linked to data in a SQL Server database,
and the data in the database changes, these data changes do not trigger
a data refresh in Visio Services. The data must be stored in the Excel
workbook to update data in the Visio diagram. To connect to an External
List in Visio, select Microsoft SharePoint Foundation List.
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Subsequent pages of the Data Selector wizard will be different
depending on the data connection selected. When Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation List is selected, on the Select A Site page, in the Site
input box, type the site that contains the list that contains the data,
and then click Next, as shown next.
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On
the Select A List page, in the List combo box, click a list and select
either Link To A List or Link To A View Of A List and then click Next,
as shown next.
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Click Finish. Note that you can have multiple data sources
in a drawing, and those data sources can be applied to the same shapes
or different shapes.
