• Illustration: Office System Integration in Visio 2003

Visio 2003, the latest version of Microsoft’s desktop product for line drawings, includes new templates for business process design and additional features to help developers embed Visio in applications. Both business-process design and improved features for developers are important future directions for the product, whose next major release could be two to three years away.

Integration, New Templates for Business Users

Visio 2003, which will be released as part of Microsoft's Office System launch in Oct. 2003, provides substantially similar drawing functions to previous versions but has several noticeable new features. Like the Office 2003 suite, it supports new Microsoft server offerings (particularly the Windows SharePoint Services document management and Web site hosting service), Tablet PCs, and online research services. (See the illustration "Office System Integration in Visio 2003".)

In addition, Visio 2003 delivers several new drawing templates, which provide standard shapes for specific types of diagrams and tools for tasks such as importing data from databases. Several templates relate to business-process analysis and documentation; for example, a new Fault Trees template enables organizations to document potential causes of quality or safety problems. Fault Trees are often used in business process–engineering efforts, such as those mandated by the Six Sigma philosophy. Visio also includes a template for event-driven process chain (EPC) diagrams, a standard type of diagram used in analyzing systems for SAP business applications.

Other new features include a calendar template that can import data from Outlook and improvements to existing templates (the OrgChart template now supports "dotted line" or nonhierarchical reporting relationships, for instance).

Control, Web Service Tools for Developers

Microsoft also aims Visio at software developers, who use it as a drawing and design component inside vertical or custom applications. For example, a Visio-based application used at Carrier Corporation enables its salespeople to draft heating and air-conditioning systems for customers and generate quotes on the resulting systems. Several new features in Visio 2003 could appeal to developers:

A Visio ActiveX control enables developers to embed editable Visio drawings in Web pages, an improvement on the read-only viewer supported in earlier versions (and still available). The control could enable broader use of Visio as a drawing component in Web-based applications; for example, an application for furniture salespeople might use the control to support a room layout feature that generates a bill of materials. Note, however, that all users of the control must have a licensed copy of Visio 2003 installed, which effectively prevents the control’s use on public Web sites.

A Web References tool enables developers using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to more quickly create Visio-based applications that communicate with Web services. The tool, which is also available in the free Office XP Web Services Toolkit, automatically generates code that enables a Visio-based VBA application to exchange XML messages with a Web service. It also enables developers to use the same VBA environment features they would normally use with COM objects; for example, the IntelliSense command-completion utility will indicate the data types expected by a Web service. As more software vendors and IT departments make their major applications accessible through Web services, this feature could become increasingly useful for generating drawings from data in those systems.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) import and export enables Web designers to convert Visio drawings into this XML-based format. SVG is the World Wide Web Consortium’s standard for line drawings on the Web, and it is supported in Internet Explorer (through a bundled Adobe plug-in) as well as in design tools from vendors such as Adobe and Corel. The feature enables Web designers to include Visio drawings on sites that visitors can view with a Web browser. It thus offers a useful alternative to the Visio ActiveX control (which requires users to have Visio on their PCs) and the Visio reader (which many users would have to download separately).

Some Features Removed

Visio 2003 removes some features that were present in earlier versions. Notably, it does not support import/export of data with Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw versions 7.0 (and prior), Encapsulated PostScript, Mac PICT, PostScript, and several other graphics formats. Customers who need these filters can retain a copy of Visio 2002, which has the filters and which can exchange files with Visio 2003.

Some tools for specific types of drawings have also been dropped; for example, the wizard for importing data into project timelines can no longer import Excel data. In some cases the missing templates have new equivalents. For example, the Mind Mapping template, intended for diagramming outlines and relationships among ideas, has been replaced by a Brainstorming template.

Finally, Visio 2003 does not include a version of the Visio 2002 Enterprise Network Tools. This discontinued product was able to automatically scan networks and generate Visio diagrams of the equipment it found, and it also provided templates for diagrams of physical network equipment layouts and port-to-port connections between components. IT staff can still manually create network diagrams with Visio 2003 Professional, which includes templates for diagramming rack configurations and network room layouts.

Future Directions: Development, Business Process

The cancellation of the Visio Enterprise Network Tools is part of a larger change of direction for the Visio product group. When Visio was acquired in Jan. 2000, it had been expanding into specific technical markets such as network management. Now the group says it wants to focus more on expanding its market of business users, and to leave vertical markets and complex technical drawing tasks to partners.

The group particularly hopes to line up ISV partners and solution providers to embed Visio in vertical design applications and custom solutions. A new Visio SDK aimed at these partners should appear in the fourth quarter of 2003. Among other features, the SDK includes a new Shape Studio development environment to help developers create new Visio shapes for specific applications.

Microsoft hopes to broaden Visio’s appeal for business users by improving features for documenting and designing business processes, although it has not announced specific plans.

One likely area for expansion will be workflow, also called business-process automation. Workflow systems enable organizations to automate and enforce business rules for processes that involve a mixture of employees and other applications; for example, a process for preparing job offers can require that offers be reviewed by specific managers and that they be recorded in the company’s HR application. A future version of Visio will probably include a workflow design tool that enables users to define business processes and deploy them to a workflow system. One logical target system would be BizTalk Server, Microsoft’s application integration product, which is adding a feature (called Human Workflow Services) to support workflow in its next release. Current versions of BizTalk Server already include a Visio-based design tool (called Orchestration Designer), but this tool is not specifically intended for workflow involving employees.

Finally, one immediate way Visio could increase its appeal would be tighter integration with the Office suite. For example, the bundled Word and PowerPoint drawing tools, which remain a heavily used diagramming method for business users, could conceivably be replaced by a more powerful bundled drawing tool based on the Visio engine. However, this use of Visio does not appear to be in the cards. Instead, Visio is more likely to continue to adopt additional Office features (such as the Shared Workspace and Research task panes supported in this release) and provide additional hooks into server products, such as Windows SharePoint Services.

In any case, major changes will have to wait for the next synchronized release of Visio and Office, which is planned after the release of Windows "Longhorn"—expected in late 2005 or early 2006.

Requirements, Availability, and Resources

Visio 2003 will appear on the Sept. 2003 volume price list and will be generally available on Oct. 21, 2003. The Standard Edition (which is intended for most business users) has an estimated retail price of US$199; the Professional Edition, which provides additional tools for technical tasks such as network design, software modeling, and database design, costs US$499.

Like the Office 2003 applications, Visio 2003 requires Windows 2000 SP3 or Windows XP; it does not run on Windows NT 4.0 or on Windows Me and its predecessors.

Visio’s Web site is www.microsoft.com/office/visio.