Microsoft Visio

Microsoft Visio is a vector graphics editor that allows you to create and edit flowcharts and diagrams, that is, solve tasks that employees of various departments of any company regularly encounter.

2013: Microsoft Visio 2013

The new version - Visio 2013 - significantly simplifies and accelerates the rather tedious, but necessary work on building flowcharts and diagrams thanks to the emergence of new convenient tools. It allows multiple users to edit charts together at the same time (in the Professional version), has an improved menu and is well suited for working with touch screens under the control of OS Windows 8. In the new version, the library of templates, figures and elements has been significantly expanded, the ability to design diagrams and diagrams has been improved. In particular, there are opportunities to design 3D schemas, replace individual shapes or several shapes in the schema at once with the preservation of all elements of their appearance and connections between them, 3D rotation of shapes, etc. In the new version, you can create charts in accordance with BPMN 2.0 or UML (Unified Modeling Language) 2.4 standards.

By associating a chart with a data source - such as an Excel table or SQL server - you can enable automatic updates at specified intervals, and then the chart will change, constantly displaying the current state of the data in the table. Another convenient functionality is the ability to connect photos to the diagram.

Visio 2013 uses a new file format - VSDX, created on the basis of the updated Office 2013 XML format and allows you to reduce the size of saved files, simplify user interaction when editing schemas, etc. It retains the ability to work files with the old VDX format and save new diagrams and diagrams in the VDX format, which ensures the exchange of results with those users who work with old versions of Visio.

Using Visio 2013 in conjunction with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 or 2013 allows you to view charts created in Visio by other users in the browser, without installing it. They can participate in the chart work by leaving their comments. In this case, users can only see the data and only those chart components that they are allowed to access according to company policy.

Visio 2013 will be available in two options: Visio Standard 2013 is designed to work individually and build static charts, while Visio Professional 2013 allows you to collaborate and create professional charts related to data. In Visio 2010 there was a version of Premium, now its functionality is included in the Professional version. In addition, you can now purchase Visio 2013 by subscription as part of the Microsoft Office 365 cloud service.

2007-2010: Visio Development

In 2007, Visio became able to connect to business data, in 2010 - templates for professional groups - for example, the BPMN (Business Process Management Notation) schema and integrated sets of schema validation rules created on the basis of templates.

1992-2000: From release to rebranding

The original version of Visio was released in 1992 by Visio Corporation and was regularly updated until 2000, when this company was acquired by Microsoft. After that, the product was rebranded and new versions of the product integrated with the Microsoft Office package were already released under the name Microsoft Visio.