Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show you how you can both get and also use Microsoft Visio.
What is Visio? It's a diagramming and vector graphics application. With Visio,
you can pull together flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans, and many other types.
We're going to walk through step by step so by the end of this video you'll be proficient and
ready to start using Visio. All right, let's jump on the PC and get started. To get Microsoft Visio,
open up your web browser and navigate to the following URL. Now you don't have to type it in,
I've included this link in the description so you can simply click on that. This will drop
you on the main Visio homepage. This contains information about what you can do with Visio,
but in a moment, I'll show you everything that you can do with Visio. To get Visio, let's click on
see plans and pricing. This opens up a page where we can compare all of the different Visio options.
Just like most software companies these days, Microsoft is pushing the subscription plan for
Visio. If you don't like subscriptions, in a moment I'll show what other options you have.
By default, there are two different Visio plans. You have the descriptive name Visio plan 1
and Visio plan 2. What's the difference other than the cost? Well let's start with Visio plan 1.
With Visio plan 1, it's five dollars per month and you get access to Visio on the web.
If you just have basic flow charting or diagramming needs, Visio plan 1 will probably
be sufficient. With Visio plan 2, it's a little bit more expensive at fifteen dollars per month.
You get access to Visio on the web in addition to the Visio desktop app. The desktop app has more
functionality than the web version. You're going to get more shapes, more templates, more styles.
You can collaborate with multiple people at the same time on the same diagram.
You can link diagrams to live data and you also get access to information rights management.
If you're in a professional setting, you might need that additional functionality,
so Visio plan 2 might make sense for you. Now I mentioned we'd look back at the other options if
you don't like subscriptions. They have Visio Standard 2019 and Visio Professional 2019.
Standard goes for 280 dollars and Professional goes for a hefty 530 dollars so it's quite
expensive. What I'd recommend doing is I'd probably go with a subscription plan
and use it for the duration of your project, and you'll probably come out ahead. Plus, the benefit
of a subscription plan is you get constant updates and you're always on the latest and greatest.
If you're not sure which option is for you, I just recommend trying it out. You can get a
30-day free trial of Visio so you can see if Visio is an app that you might be interested in using.
Once you finish installing Visio, go ahead and launch the application.
This will drop us on the start page and if you've ever used any other office applications like Word,
Excel, or PowerPoint, this experience will likely look very familiar. At the top of the home view,
you can kick off a new Visio diagram. If you're not quite sure what you're pulling together,
you can start with a blank drawing or you can start with one of these templates.
Especially in Visio, starting from a template's a very good idea and the reason why is each template
will come with an associated set of stencils. Those stencils will contain shapes and tools
that'll help you pull together your diagram. Now with a blank drawing, you can pull in all those
same sets of stencils, but it'll require a little bit of extra effort. You're not just limited to
this set of templates that appears at the top. If you click on more templates,
this will open up a more comprehensive view of all of the templates that you have available.
Here on the office tab, we see some of the most popular templates right at the front.
If I click on the templates tab over here, this will show me some of the popular categories, and
if I click into one of these categories, I'll see a wide variety of templates. Now once again, when
I mention stencils, let's say for instance you were to use the office layout diagram template.
Here you'll have some stencils and shapes such as a door, a window, a chair, and a desk and you
could easily insert them into your diagram. If you just started from blank, you'd have to find those
shapes and pull them in. Let's click on back. You also have access to a set of sample diagrams
if you need some inspiration to get started. For instance, here I could see some other examples of
floor plans that others have pulled together, and yeah they look pretty good. Back on the home view,
down below you can also access recent videos or diagrams that you worked on.
Here I see a recent list. If I hover over an item, I could pin it and I could get back to it
faster in the future. I could also see Visios that others have shared with me. If I want to find a
Visio and maybe I don't see it immediately in the recent list down below, I can also search for it.
Now some of you might know from watching other tutorial videos that I've done, I work at a
company called the Kevin Cookie Company and today I want to use Visio to map out our flow for making
cookies. We have a few different people who are involved in this process so I want to create a
cross functional flow chart, so to create it, I'll click on this. Once I click on it, it gives me a
few different themes or styles that I could create my cross functional flow chart using but I'll
simply go with the blank one and then click on create. This now drops me in a blank Visio diagram
and I could start mapping out what our cookie making flow looks like. The reason I started
from a template is over on the left-hand side, you see all of the shapes that I have available to me.
Because I chose the cross functional flow chart, I get access to all of the basic flow chart shapes,
and I also get access to these cross functional flow chart shapes. If I just went with just a
blank diagram, I would then have to click on more shapes and I'd have to go through and find all
the different shapes that I want to add to this left-hand pane. Now it's not that hard, here for
instance I'll click on business, brainstorming, and I'll check brainstorming shapes.
This pulls in an additional category under shapes but I don't need that for this diagram today so
I'll uncheck that and I'll just stick with the default that I get with this template. Not only do
I get all of these shapes on the left-hand side by choosing the cross functional flow chart template,
up on top, I also get this additional tab that has some controls that I could use related to a cross
functional flow chart. So once again, especially in Visio, starting from a template is a very
good idea. Okay let's start diagramming now. I mentioned that I want to pull together a flow
for the Kevin Cookie Company and how we make our cookies. First, I want to give my diagram a name.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit so it's a little bit easier to see. To edit this text
right up here for the title, I could simply double click and I could type in the Kevin Cookie Company
cookie making flow. I selected a cross functional flow chart because we have a number of different
individuals at the Kevin Cookie Company who are involved in making cookies. Down below, I see my
swim lanes and each swim lane will represent a different one of these roles. For the first one,
I'll simply double click on this and first off for the cookie making flow, we have management
kick it off. Next, the most important member of the team that pulls together our cookies
is the kitchen staff. We also have one additional role of quality control. That's another important
member of the team and I need to insert another swim lane for them. To do that, I could simply
click on swim lane, and I could drag it over and that'll attach it to the bottom of my diagram.
Here I'll type in the name. I now have all the different individuals involved in the cookie
making process, but this is a diagramming app and I want to map out what the flow looks like.
Now whenever we make cookies at the Kevin Cookie Company, management always kicks off the process,
so to pull in different shapes into my flow chart, I could simply select the shape and
I could drag it over into my flow chart. Now one of the nice things is when I hover the shape in,
I have these nice guidelines that tell me that I've centered my shape. I could simply drop
it there and now my shape appears. If I double click on it, I could insert text and I'll simply
type in start for the first step in the cookie making process. As the next step in our flow,
management then notifies the kitchen staff to kick off the cookie creation process. So, I can
pull in my next step in the flow, once again, I could simply drag and drop the shape over;
however, there's an easier way to do that. I could simply hover over the first shape. There's an
arrow icon that appears around the shape and then I could choose what the next step in my flow is.
I'm going to click on this rectangle shape. Here you see it automatically inserts a connector and
here now I have my shape. Here again, I can double click on it and paste in what the next step is and
management is going to notify the kitchen staff to kick off production. Management really plays an
important role at this company and they're really good at delegating work. Next, this is when the
kitchen staff takes over the flow. Here again I could hover over the shape and I'm going to insert
my next box for the kitchen staff and they're going to kick off with mixing the ingredients.
Now something else you could do in Visio is you're not just limited to inserting text on shapes. You
could also insert text on your connectors. Here for instance, I'll double click on this connector,
and I'll call this the keep path. Once the kitchen staff packages their cookies, at that point we're
all done. I'm going to hover over and we're going to end this process. If we decide to discard
the cookies that too also ends the process. I'm going to add a connector. To add a connector too,
I could go to the top bar click on connector and here I'm going to drag a connector from
discard to end as well. You now have an inside look at how we make cookies at the Kevin Cookie
Company. I now want to show you some additional functionality in Visio that'll help make your flow
chart look amazing. Now one of the first things I want to show is you're not just limited to
this simple color set. Let's say that maybe there's a very critical step in my process flow
and I want to make sure I highlight it. We want to make sure we don't cook our cookies for over
15 minutes otherwise our cookies just don't taste very good. I can click on this box in my flow and
then I could go up on the home ribbon over to fill and I could apply a different color. Here, maybe
I just want to give it a dark red color just to make sure the staff doesn't miss this step. Along
with changing the look and feel of an individual object, I could also change the look and feel of
all of the shapes on my flow. Here for instance, I'll highlight all of these and if I hover
over shape styles, I could change the style for all of my different shapes. Now maybe I don't want
to just change the shapes, maybe I want to change the overall look and feel. To do that I'm going
to go up to the top ribbon, click on design, and I can choose from all of these different themes
and then apply these themes to my cross-functional flow chart. Now along with selecting a theme,
I could also choose different variants of that theme over here on the right-hand side,
so it's very easy to choose a look and feel that'll make your flow chart look as good as
possible. You can also use Visio to very easily make sure that all of your items are in alignment
and that the spacing is very even between all of the different items. Let's say for example,
maybe I position this step in the process up there, so the spacing is a little off plus with
the connectors you see this weird zigzag effect. I could simply highlight all of my shapes and then I
could go up to home on the ribbon and over on the right-hand side, I can auto align all of my items.
You still see the spacing is a little off. I could click on position and I could also
auto space. Alternatively I could have clicked on auto align and space and that would have ensured
that everything was aligned and spaced properly. We're getting near the end and I want to call out
a few final features that you can use in Visio. Let's say that you want to call out some steps
in your process flow. If you go up to insert, you can insert a container. With a container,
you could place it around steps in your process to call something out. Maybe placing cookies in
the oven and then cooking for 15 minutes, this is a critical step, so I'm going to call that out.
Along with being able to insert containers, within Visio you're not just limited to one page.
You can add additional flow charts on subsequent pages. If you click on this plus icon,
this adds another page where you could build out another flow. Along with being able to
simply create Visio from scratch, if we go up to the top ribbon, we can click on data,
and you can create a new Visio diagram from data. You could import data from Excel. You could also
import data from other sources like an Access database, a SQL database, and other sources as
well. This is outside of the scope of today's tutorial, but I wanted to call out that this
is possible. Lastly and one of my favorites, once you have your beautiful diagram all done,
you likely want to show it to others. To show it to others, you can go up to view on the ribbon,
and then there's a presentation mode. When we click on presentation mode,
this throws your diagram into a full screen preview where it's a lot easier to show the
flow to others on your team. Throughout this whole tutorial, we've been looking at how you
can create flow charts using the Visio desktop app. You can also use Visio on the web. To use
Visio on the web, log into the website office.com. If you have Visio available, you'll see it on the
left-hand side as an app icon. When you click on this, this will drop you on the Visio start page,
and similar to the desktop client, you can either start from blank or you could choose a template to
start from. Just for demonstration purposes, I'll click on basic diagram. Within a basic diagram,
you have many of the same tools that you have in the desktop app and you could insert all of
your different shapes. It doesn't have quite as much functionality but it's a fairly good app,
and especially if you have basic flow-charting needs, the Visio web app will serve that purpose
quite well. All right, well that was a quick look at how you can get started using Visio.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. To see future videos like this,
hit that subscribe button. If you want to see me cover any other topics in the future,
leave a comment down below and I'll add it to my list of videos to create. All right, well,
that's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.