Embed Visio Drawings in SharePoint (Visio Services)

Note: Requires SharePoint 2010 Enterprise CAL (As Visio Services needed) and Visio 2010 Professional.

Below given a small sample on,

Embedding Visio Drawings in SharePoint Pages and linking with SharePoint List data !

i.e Visio Drawings will be dynamically refreshed based on the SharePoint list data. The steps have been briefed below.

1. Create the SharePoint List that will serve data to Visio

Here I’ve created a custom list named ‘Visio Source List’, which having two columns Title and Slice Value and having 3 List Items.

2. Create the drawing in Visio 2010 Professional

My simple diagram contains 3 simple Text Blocks, corresponding to each item in the share point list

3. Bring in the SharePoint List to Visio (Using Link Data to Shapes)

Opt Microsoft SharePoint List. Enter your SharePoint site URL and then select the SharePoint list that we’ve created earlier.

This will now show your SharePoint list in the bottom pane of Viso

4. Now Drag SharePoint List Item1 to the first Text area (Slice 1)

5. Right click and choose ‘Edit Data Graphics’ menu option

6. Configure ‘Slice Value’ column, as the Text Value. See below figures.

7. Take out the Default Value, from Text Area.

8. Now repeat steps 4-7, using Share Points Items (2^nd and 3^rd) with other Text Areas (2^nd and 3^rd)

9. Now directly save the Diagram to your SharePoint site (as VDW file)

I’ve created a document library in SharePoint named ‘Visio Diagrams’

10. Now Create a new ‘WebPart’ Page

11. Add Visio Web Access, web part and link it to the Visio Drawing we’ve just saved

12. Add the ‘Visio Sources’ list as well

13. You’re done. Now stop editing the page and browse to the page

14. Change the list values and that will be reflected immediately

 

15. Check ‘Visio Service’ Settings, if you face issues in Updates

By default, Visio Diagrams will be cached by the Visio Service, and hence list updates may not immediately reflect in the diagrams. To make a live update, tweak the Cache settings of ‘Visio Service’

PS:-
Though this specific examples shows integrating SharePoint list. You can follow the same approach to link an Excel or ODBC etc. You can also edit the Visio diagram live, if you've Silverlight installed on your client machine.

Again the above examples shows a very small Visio-SharePoint integration and shows what you can do with it. Consider a full blown Visio diagram, with each picture element properties are driven SharePoint lists.

Similar to Visio Services, There are also Excel Services, Word Services and Access Services, that help us to have a seamless integration with Office system with SharePoint. 

Hope you've enjoyed this feature. Thank you!