SharePoint 2010 : Business Intelligence - Visio Services

Visio is a tool that ships with Microsoft office and allows users to create diagrams. We have been creating diagrams since we were kids and since we were prehistoric apes. Diagrams are an excellent way to communicate a complex concept. Even though high-level languages have evolved, sometimes a picture does speak a thousand words.

Visio helps you create beautiful looking diagrams, but until the last version of SharePoint these diagrams were mostly static pictures. That is about to change starting this version. In SharePoint 2010, there is a component of SharePoint called as Visio Services. Visio Services allows you to view any of your diagrams created in Visio, right through the browser. Also, it allows you to give that diagram life. In other words, the diagram can show live data by formatting itself in different ways or presenting indicator icons depending upon the state of the data. The data can come from various sources. Let's look at an example.

I am a really busy guy, so I like to maintain all my tasks in a tasks list in SharePoint. Figure 1 shows my tasks list in SharePoint after I populated some tasks in it.

Figure 1. My simple task list

Let's say I intend to communicate to everyone in a graphical way the percent complete on all these tasks. What I intend to do is present these tasks using a web browser interface served in SharePoint. To do this, create a blank Visio diagram in Visio 2010, and start by inserting a new container under the insert button from the ribbon. Inside this container drag and drop three "To do" shapes which you will find under the Schedule\Calendar stencil. If you can't find the "To do" shape, just drag and drop any other shape. You're just learning here, so you don't need to be all artsy about it. At this point, your Visio diagram should look like Figure 2.

Figure 2. My Starter Visio Diagram

Next, click the data tab then click the link data to shapes button in the ribbon. In the ensuing wizard that pops open, choose to import data from the tasks list using "Microsoft SharePoint foundation list" as your choice data source.

At the bottom of your Visio window, you should see the various rows that have been pulled from the linked data source. This can be seen in Figure3.

Figure 3. The linked datasource

As the tooltip prompts you, drag and drop each one of the three rows onto the three "to do" icons you had placed earlier. Dragging and dropping each one of these three rows one by one will link the row to the target shape that you drag drop the row to. It will also create a default data graphic for you, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The linked datasource showing data in the visio diagram

The default data graphic shows the title and start date. The default data graphic is fine, but I'd like it to be little bit more interesting. For example, let's show some decent formatting. Therefore, maybe the text should be a little bit wider and also show the percent complete as a progress bar.

In order to do so, click the data graphics button in the ribbon and choose to create a new graphic. In the new data graphic window that pops open, click the new item button. Choose to specify the new item being driven from the data field percent complete, displayed as a data bar, in the style of progress bar. This can be seen Figure 5.

Figure 5. Customizing the data graphic

Repeat the previous step for the title and start date columns as well. The title and the start date columns are to be shown as text. You will also have to play a bit with the width. The final changes are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Customizing the data graphic

Finally, click OK and apply this newly created data graphic to the three shapes that you had earlier on the screen. After some formatting, aligning, and final touches on color, your Visio diagram should look like Figure 7.

Figure 7. Your final visio diagram

Go ahead and save this on your disk. Next, you need to make some changes to your SharePoint site collection. Activate the SharePoint enterprise features under site collection because Visio Services is a part of those enterprise features. Also, create a document library called "Visio diagrams".

Next, in the backstage view of Visio 2010, click on Save and Send\Save to SharePoint\Save as Web Drawing (Data-refreshable drawing for use with Visio Services on SharePoint). Choose to save it at http://sp2010/Visio Diagrams. Save the file as "Sahils Tasks.vdw". Saving the file will immediately open this Visio diagram in the web browser. If it doesn't, you need to activate the SharePoint enterprise features on your site collection, and you should have created a document library called "Visio Diagrams".

On the default.aspx page of your site collection, choose to drop a "Visio Web Access" WebPart. Configure this WebPart to point to the http://sp2010/Visio Diagrams/Sahils tasks.vdw file. Also, you may need to configure the height width, etc., of this WebPart. Once the WebPart is configured, you should see it running in the web browser.

This looks very good! So let's say that I've started on task one, and let's say that I'm only 25% complete with that task. Therefore, I go to the tasks list and update the percent complete of this task to 25%. Now I come back to Visio Services diagram running in the browser. Note that the percent complete is beautifully reflected on the diagram, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. My task list in a visio diagram running in SharePoint

As you can see, I've barely started stopping the Icelandic volcano that is disrupting European air travel at the moment. But, hopefully, that problem will figure itself out. Let me start talking about Excel Services.