Visio Web Access

Visio Web Access is another new web part in SharePoint Server 2010. As the name is similar to Excel Web Access, it also has the same functionality as Excel Web Acess but with respect to Visio. If the pervious statement is confusing it will be clear by the end of the post.

Visio is used in most of the companies when it comes to network design or if they want to have a pictorial representation of the infrastructure. For Example: If the company manager wants to know who the servers in his company are connected to one-another and would also like to know the where the firewalls are placed, where do they have Ethernet switches etc. visio is the tool used to give him the answer. Most of the work in visio (as far as I know) is done connecting the items in the visio page. It also gives us real time information.Say we have created a visio diagram for tells us details or SharePoint environment and say our Database server is down then we can configure the visio diagram to show us a RED color on the Database server.

Now lets see where and how can we use Visio in SharePoint. If visio file can be put into a SharePoint Site as a web part and if that visio shows us the status of all the servers of the company then wouldnt ot be great. The Network Administartor would easily come to know which server has the problem or which server is misbehaving and get it fixed. So keeping this in mind we developed the visio web access web part which helps us to put the web part anywhere in the SharePoint site and then have the visio present in that web part.

Now lets discuss that steps to achieve the visio web access:

• In Visio 2010 (Beta) create a network diagram ( a simple one)
• Next it is very important to save it as vwi file.
• Upload it into one of the document library.
• Next go to a page, click on edit page, click new web part and choose visio web access.
• Once the web part is added, then will click on modify edit web part. In the Diagram URL put the URL of the vwi (visio) file.
• Click Apply and OK.

If you have done all the above steps you should be done with the visio in the web part. You will also see that there is a zoom-in and zoom-out option.

Enjoy it!! :)