Visio Reviews

Process modeling. 

It's not easy to share and modify by colleagues.

Drawing BPMN diagrams.

Sharing, and add timing features.

Documenting the enterprise architecture.

Helps us to quickly visualize the architecture.

The ability to draw models quickly.

I would like to see traceability. It doesn't have it. You cannot find one object amongst several sheets of Visio diagrams.

The stability is good. It's stable.

I find that it's very scalable from a small organization to a large organization.

To determine what product or solution you're looking for, talk to many vendors and get their opinions.

The most important criterion, for me, when selecting a vendor, is customer service.

I would rate Visio at seven out of 10 but I would give it a 10 if it had traceability.

• We design architectural and business flows for web/eCommerce and ERP systems. 
• We design web architectures, UML, and ERD.

Its ability to visualize complex data and process flows. We can easily add templates to SharePoint for collaboration.

The diagramming and swimlane features allow for separating business functions. Also, the web page architecture helps.

• It needs hyperlinked or narratives for page flows to make demos more effective.
• It could use easier custom icon sets.

• Network diagrams tools
• Flow charts

• Offers a wide range of diagramming tools.
• Being able to visualize an architecture for a network solution.
• Map a business process.
• Document fitout of a rack solution for on-premise.
• It allows the accurate recording and disseminating of information.

Importing templates can sometimes be a bit hit and miss.

More than five years

No, the product is quite straightforward to deploy.

Earlier versions would occasionally lock up, but recent editions have significantly improved performance.

I haven't pushed the limits of Visio. For what I have used it for, it has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it.

We've not had any need to raise a support issue in relation to Visio.

I can't comment on technical support for Visio. I haven't had to make any support tickets regarding it.

I used some basic open source drawing programs in the past, and came across Visio whilst looking to purchase Microsoft Office some years ago. I found it did everything I needed and never looked at anything else since.

Very straightforward.

In-house

Best way to express ROI for Visio would be the quick and consistent documentation that it helps create, provided that the product is used consistently for diagramming.

Just license alongside Office 365, the monthly fee is always up-to-date

No.

Does what it says on the tin, produces very nice standardized diagrams, and has some very powerful tools.

Valuable features for me include the different chart options and the ease of building them up.

It was very useful for the high level and detailed design phases of my projects.

There are some performance issues on a different operating system which could be improved.

I have been using the product for three years. It is used, mostly, for design phases.

The product is very stable.

The product is highly scalable for the design.

Not applicable.

It is very easy to install. You just need to get the Microsoft license.

This is great software for designing workflows for the HLD and DLD phases of the project.

It is a good diagramming application. I am an AV systems design engineer. I use it primarily to create functional drawings. I also use it for the basic floor plan and wall elevation drawings.

I don't have to hand-sketch my engineering concepts. The work that I hand off to other departments is clear and easy to read.

The ability to change quickly between tools, such as pointer, connector, drawing, and text tools. Perhaps utilizing right-or-center clicking of the mouse could be an excellent addition. Also, the means of turning off Dynamic Grid by default would be a good thing.

Currently, it is on by default and has a habit of getting in the way of what I'm trying to do. A long-time Visio glitch involves the length of lines.

Sometimes, if I use the size and position window to enter a specific length of any type of line, including dimension lines, Visio simply takes it upon itself to make that line a different length of its choosing. This glitch has persisted in every version of Visio that I have used since Microsoft bought the product from its original developer.

I have been a Visio user since 1995.

In the sense that the product has been on the market for more than 25 years and is sold by Microsoft, it is very stable. In terms of its potential to destabilize my computer, it is not dangerous.

In companies where I have worked, its adoption rate among people in similar job functions to mine is often left to the individual. Some may be more comfortable using other solutions (Adobe Acrobat, AutoCAD). I have not seen the Visio product ever rolled out across an entire company's engineering staff. However, I suppose that this could happen.

Technical support is hit and miss. When glitches come up, it can be difficult to engage with a true expert on the Microsoft side. Some glitches in this product have persisted through the years, and versions, even when they are brought to the attention of the Microsoft Visio team.

Computers and OSs get old and need to be replaced. When they are replaced, the newest versions of any software are the ones that run best under the newest OSs.

I have the product on both my home and work PCs. My company's IT department handled the installation and setup of Visio 2013 on my work machine. At home, I installed and set up Visio 2017 with no problems.

We evaluated Microsoft and AutoDesk.

In my evaluation, my main criteria/question I asked was: "Do they have the best product to accomplish what I need to get done?"

Whatever you use, it has to work for you. If the GUI is not intuitive from your point of view, you won't want to use it, and it won't be a good investment.

The feature that I like the most, as simple as it may seem, is the addition of the vendor's vectors and shapes. I'm able to utilize the actual brands of our network appliances as devices to have a more accurate picture of our actual network and the server room setup.

By utilizing Visio, we have been able to put on paper our network design, server room setup, and network connections. It makes things a lot easier to troubleshoot and figure out where the issues, errors, or disconnects may be happening. This also helps when explaining to the upper management any questions in regards to our network environment.

At this point in time, it serves its purpose. I can't think of something that could be improved as of today. I'm sure there is something that can be improved, but nothing for my current needs.

I have been using Visio probably since 2008, so it has been almost 10 years now.

I, primarily, started using it in school to do basic network diagrams, but now I've used it to even draw out full floor plans for our network designs based on our building floor plan.

There were no stability issues experienced.

There were no scalability issues experienced.

I haven't requested any technical support for this tool. I'm sure it is great as I have used Microsoft Support in the past, and it has been great. So, I don't doubt that it would be the same for this product as well.

Previously, I was using PowerPoint. It was obvious why I switched over to this solution. It is the product that we needed back then when drafting the floor plans and networks.

The setup is just like any other Microsoft program, it is straightforward. Get the software, follow the prompts to install the products and it just works.

As most Microsoft products, the price is not the cheapest but you just cannot pass this tool. So when you buy it for you/your team, save money and buy only what you need. We installed it in our Techroom computer so that all the members can use and access it. Thus, one license serves the purpose of all three of us.

When using this tool, research your current vendors and manufacturers to get their most up to date shapes and vectors, so you can always design or draft your Visio projects using the most accurate picture.

I would highlight BPMN 2.0 validation, as it eases the standardization of the Business Process Model within multi-disciplinary teams. Visio integrates seamlessly with the rest of the Office suite as any other Microsoft product, which is also worth mentioning.

Compared to other products we used in the past, modelling with Visio is faster and the final result in terms of appearance is more professional. Making changes to a diagram is also easier as the items and lines get re-arranged properly with few tweaks required.

It would be nice to have the possibility of exporting and importing XPDL, also considering that the Surface series are the MS flagship, there is much room for improvement when it comes to inking or drawing diagrams using pen input (which behaves like a mouse pointer).

XPDL stands for XML Process Definition Language, it is used to interchange business process model definitions between different workflow modelling tools. (e.g. Oracle Fusion Middleware)

Currently, MS Visio does not support import or export of XPDL files. Although some tools like Oracle Fusion have built in support for Visio files, I personally think this capability would be nice to have as would help companies using workflow tools modelling with Visio. As an example, the project I am working for right now uses Vitria Businessware which supports XPDL import, however as Visio does not have XPDL export capability workflows have to be created manually increasing the time to market.

WRT inking and pen input support; Microsoft Surface series lovely integrate with the MS Office suit with a functionality that allows the user to write on top of documents as if it were a printed copy just by using the pen on the screen. This functionality supports ink to shapes which transforms handwritten squares or circles into perfectly drawn shapes. This is not the case in Visio where pen support is non-existent and using it on the screen just emulates the mouse. This is just disappointing as the functionality is there for programs like Word but it is completely missing on Visio.

I’ve been using this tool for three years.

The product is pretty stable. We stumbled upon some bugs during these years of intense usage, but nothing major that couldn’t be solved by restarting the application.

This product is a desktop application, but coupled with SharePoint, it allows for concurrent editing of files without any issues.

We’ve never had to use the technical support for this product.

We started using Dia (free open source drawing editor) but we required a more fast and collaborative tool with better MS Word integration and better appearance.

The initial setup was as simple as installing any other MS office product.

Pricing and licensing depends on your needs and the time you expect to use the product. If you plan to use it for an extended period of time, Visio has two versions Standard and Professional where the Professional costs almost twice as the Standard edition with few more stencils and functionalities, but on the other hand Microsoft also offers the 365 option with one year commitment where you can use Visio Professional for almost three years before hitting the single license price.

We explored Lucidchart and Sparx Enterprise Architect as alternatives.

I would recommend anyone looking into purchasing this product to review thoroughly each version features as both are quite similar.