Visio Reviews

I utilized Visio to craft visual aids for my presentations, including diagrams that visually illustrate data, such as flowcharts. Additionally, the solution was used to generate diagrams that showcase a series of connected ideas using arrow charts.

A major benefit of Visio is its user-friendliness. Upon opening the program, you have access to a variety of pre-made templates, saving you time and effort. All you need to do is input your data into the template and you're ready to proceed with your project.

One issue I've noticed is that when working on a shared video link with a friend for Visio, there can be a delay in changes reflecting on their screen after I've made them. This also occurs when we're working on the same document. It would be beneficial if changes could be reflected in real-time. Additionally, I've experienced some text size issues with the flow task feature. Sometimes when I enter text, it appears very small, and increasing the size causes it to extend beyond the diagram, creating formatting issues. It would be helpful if these text and formatting issues could be addressed.

I have been using Visio for approximately a couple of months.

The solution is stable. I did not face any crashing or issues.

I would recommend Visio to individuals who don't necessarily use Microsoft software. With Visio, they can create visualizations and diagrams easily. Additionally, they have the option to download and share their work on their preferred platform, such as Google. Visio can be used for multiple platforms, regardless of whether you use Microsoft, Google, or other cloud-based services such as Amazon Web Services.

I rate the stability of Visio a ten out of ten.

In my experience, Visio is highly scalable. I've used it within an organization that utilizes Microsoft OneDrive and Teams for their operations. This allowed for easy integration of Visio with the organization's existing Microsoft software and made it simple to share diagrams and visualizations with anyone in the company, regardless of their position or location within the organization.

We have approximately 1,000 people using the solution in the branch of the company I am working in.

I have not faced any issues to need support.

Setting up Visio is a simple process. You can access it via the website and generate a link, which can be shared with others in just a matter of minutes.

I can do the deployment of the solution.

My organization has paid for the solution. However, I have used it personally without payment. There is a free option available.

I rate Visio a nine out of ten.

This tool is mainly used by our engineers for network layout designs, to either document what's being deployed for a customer or to put together a proposal. We use it as a tool to graphically depict the network we're proposing to the customers showing what it will look like and which components will be included. We are customers of Visio and I'm the product director with sector security. 

The solution has many readily available shapes and icons. Visio is a kind of industry-standard to some extent. Many companies have icon sets that can be imported into Visio and then used for network graphics or to specifically show a manufacturer's product model number. It's very useful. Visio has always been a pretty good product with continual updates. There will often be new features you didn't know you needed but once they're included, you can't imagine being without them. They're on the right track as far as I'm concerned.

If you get large networks where you're trying to detect everything in the network and you get lots of minute details, the drawings can get too large to send via email. You have to put it in cloud storage for people to access it. That's a byproduct of having a large, very complex graphic.

I've never had any problem with stability and all of them. 

I've never heard of any concerns regarding scalability. 

Our own internal IT department deals with any support issues.

Sometimes if you have to import icon or figure sets, it can be a little bit challenging. For the most part, it's pretty straightforward. 

I rate this solution 10 out of 10. 

I use Visio for visual rendering of technical concepts. I use the stencils that depict different workflows, data flows, or architectural structures from an IT perspective that I could render in other documents like PowerPoint or Word documents.

Since we work in IT, we deal with very technical abstract concepts. So having the ability to visually depict a concept that we're trying to get across is helpful. When we write documentation, we have to write it for the broadest audience possible. If you can reduce the number of words, either in technical documentation manuals or others, and do it visually, that seems to register with the targeted audience.

The thing I like most about Visio is the stencils. As the product has matured over time, it comes with more stencils and objects that you can just pick out of the menu and go with. 

It thinks that it knows what you want to do, but it doesn't. It has a way of behaving that can be very frustrating from time to time. Either it moves things about because it thinks its placement should be at a certain place, or it's keeping track of things that you don't necessarily see, so it moves something elsewhere. So when the software requires more keystrokes than one would think to either capture or register a placement, or a drag and drop function that you think should be easily executed, it sometimes doesn't always work that way. Regardless of the skill, the user experience can sometimes be interesting. The predictive behaviors of it at times can be a little bit of a drag.

I've been using Microsoft Visio for twenty plus years.

More often than not, stability is not an issue, it's a fairly stable product. I've noticed that when I have multiple products open, like PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft, and a couple of others, sometimes it begins to act flaky and then I have to start cutting down services or closing things. In general the Office suite, sometimes it can let you know that it's going to start acting funky, or the behavior begins to be flaky. You have to just know by experience that's your cue to cut down services, close windows, close applications, because the robustness of the applications are not allowing you to be as multitasking as you want to be.

Scalability is okay. It's like everything else, most people they use at most, 30% of the product's capabilities, so there's a lot of stuff in Visio that doesn't necessarily get used. You don't know that when you do the typical installation, that a good part of the product capabilities are never going to get used. The default configuration is to load everything, as opposed to custom, and it's just easier just to let it deploy everything. As a result of that, there's a lot of functionality that gets pulled in, and memory and CPU that may be consumed that the user would never benefit from. That's just the nature of the beast.

Setup is mostly straightforward, but there are occasions where the installation process can be prone to some issues that may not always be apparent until after you deploy it. Sometimes the installation experience requires expertise. Sometimes it's not always clear if you're going to have compatibility issues with the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version, there's been those type of subtleties in the past.

Since I've worked in different shops, sometimes I have installed it from my own product license that I purchased. So I've deployed it from a physical media and I've deployed it from an on-site provider because I purchased the key and there was no physical media. Then there are other times where the company that I worked for, their end user computing team, or their desktop support team, because they have to keep track of the licenses, they own the deployment and the push down to the user and make it part of their image. Because there's a cost to deploying that product in some variation of the product packaging, they tried to keep control of that. 

Just be mindful that the software, while it's helpful, it can behave in ways that can be a little frustrating. A lot of companies say go and find a Visio-like product that can do 70% of what Visio does, for free. There have been companies that I've worked for that said we will not pay the license fee for Visio, go and get a similar product that you can download from the web that can do 70% of what you need it to do. 

I would rate Visio an eight out of ten. It's a product that's been known. Many people use it. It's got an established install base. It's not flawless by any means, but since it does allow some intimacy with the Microsoft products, that's probably its greatest thing, and in a business environment, that's important. Because of its cost structure, a lot of organizations are trying to figure out if there are alternatives out there, which there are. Those other products can do much of the heavy lifting that Visio does at a cost point that, in some cases, is very attractive.

My use case could be anything. What I like to use Visio for is business process design work. Even when we're doing a systems implementation project, I'll use it. One of the things that I tell my clients is that "Before you implement a system, you really need to check your business processes that the system is automating, to make sure that you're not automating a bad process." Therefore, we have a whole methodology on how to do business process design sessions, facilitated sessions. The outcome of those sessions is documented largely in Vizio. 

Sometimes, for example, if I've got a good person working on my team, I'll be with the client, facilitating the session and we'll have sticky notes on the wall that represent the process steps, and the outcomes, and the inputs, and all that stuff. We'll be moving those around. And then somebody on my team will be sitting there with Visio, recreating it as we go. If they aren't able to do that, we just take pictures of it and then recreate it in Visio. We clean it up and make it nice looking. However, we use Visio primarily for business and/or project process flows. 

It's a very good visualization tool that helps package everything professionally. It helps clients see where we're going. We're able to capture what we need to capture and we're able to manipulate it the way we want and make it look the way we want, and present it to our clients the way we want. 

One of the features I like is the automation involved in creating a process. It's really improved over the years. At this point, when you have step one - let's say it's a rectangle with step one in it - and then you're ready for step two, you can just hover the cursor over one side, and then it will automatically add an arrow going to the next box and automatically add a new box. It saves a bit of time there. It's one less aggravation to deal with when you're creating things.

The solution hasn't changed much in 20 years. It's a very meat and potatoes type of product and isn't overly designed. It's very easy to find your way through the solution, as it's not too complicated.

Occasionally, the automation feature that helps you easily add the "next step" goes crazy and it will move a bunch of stuff on me. Usually, that's very easily recoverable, however, that's just a little aggravation we have to deal with. It's like an ongoing glitch of sorts. You need to be careful when you are moving the whole image.

If there was a way to make the finished product more interactive somehow, that could be interesting.

I've been using the solution for decades. It's been a very long time.

The solution is quite stable. To my recollection, I haven't really had to deal with any crashes or big bugs. It's reliable.

I'm just a small consulting firm. Basically, it's just me and a group of trusted subcontractors that I network with across the country. The biggest project and the biggest team of people I've ever had on a project is 25.

We don't have enterprises that we deploy to. We just put it all on our computers or on our laptops and that's it.

I don't ever recall using technical support, and if I did, it was likely well over ten years ago at this point. Therefore, I can't really speak to their knowledgeability or responsiveness.

The initial setup is very straightforward. All you do is implement or install it on your laptop. It has a few defaults that I don't like, however, that I can change. For example, the process boxes might be colored purple or something, and I just want them clear, so that's not a big deal. There are some pre-settings you can adjust so that it defaults to how you need it to look every time.

I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 that automatically updates all of the versions to whatever is the most recent. I have to have a special subscription to get Visio though. Therefore, I've got one subscription to Microsoft that has all of the basic Office products, and then another one for Visio and Microsoft Project.

I did run across at one of my clients several years ago, another process building software. I don't remember the name of it. I'd have to look it up, however, I recall it was really slick and nice and cool. In my mind, it was a little too over-engineered and overly complicated for what I like to do. I'd have to be careful that we're not losing sight. We're not missing the forest for the trees when we get into the business process design. Therefore, I didn't really feel I was missing out by not adopting it.

I'm a consultant.

I tend to use the latest version of the solution. I try to keep everything up to date. That said, I'm unsure as to which version I'm on right now.

We're a small consulting shop. Right now, there's three of us and the roles are generally around facilitating business process design sessions. That's what we usually do is. Typically, I will stand up and facilitate with the client. We'll have a room full of clients - maybe 10, and sometimes it has the vendor - and our team. I will facilitate, we'll capture all of the discussions. We'll put everything on sticky notes, on a wall, with our methodology. And then my folks will capture all of that on Visio and on Microsoft Word. Then we go back to clean it all up and make it presentable. 

Overall, it's very easy to use. It's very intuitive and if you're documenting business processes, it does the trick. It's not like there's no other software out there that will do something similar or something as well. However, I've used Visio for so long. It's just a habit and I don't see any reason to try anything else.

I'd rate it ten out of ten. There's a reason I've been using it for so long. It does everything I need it to do without having too many confusing bells and whistles

I wrote some Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripts in the background to graph with my stencils and use the database at the back. In general, I'm using stencils, and I'm using Excel database in the background. With those tables, I am able to grab the data out in the stencils, and then I place it Visio. So, the main drawing area is in Visio, but it uses data in the background.

I am not using its latest version. I am using one version back.

I use it for computer architecture. I make diagrams of various engineering domains such as mechanical systems engineering and electrical systems engineering. It is used for that purpose, and we're able to better organize our architectures to pictures.

The fact that you could program in VBA is most valuable. 

It is easy to use out of the box. It requires little training, which is readily available. You can learn things easily.

We need the place and route capability for the lines when we have a database. I use it for architectures, and between the boxes, there are lines or interfaces from one tool to another. I wish those lines could be easily drawn without having to place them mechanically. I wish that there was some kind of place and route capability, so I just press a button, and all the lines get drawn. 

I have been using Visio for at least 10 years.

It is definitely good. It works.

It scales, but there is a limit. There is only so much that you can do with the nature of it.

We don't have any intentions to increase its usage, but it is used as a standard tool.

I did use Microsoft technical support before but not necessarily for Visio. In general, they're pretty prompt.

In general, I have been using Visio.

It was straightforward to deploy. It probably took hours in reading instructions and so forth.

It was an in-house job.

We have an enterprise license. I'm not sure what the cost is. 

I would rate Visio a nine out of 10. 

As process improvement professional I map out current state processes either at the value stream or swim lane level, at times both. With current state I identify pain points and bottlenecks do root cause analysis, identify possible solutions, and make recommendations on which ones I think would be the most effective. Then incorporate them into a proposed future state. 

Once we developed custom templates and shape libraries it provided a common look and feel that our stakeholders have come to understand, which is helping them to develop a continuous improvement mindset. 

We are all familiar with it, and it is easy to use. There is a lot of flexibility, and you can create custom templates with standard shapes. 

It would be nice if we could develop a custom database. We have looked into this functionality, but all of the other solutions that have a database are very locked down, and you have to use them their way. You can't define your own systems, tools, and inputs etc. For example, if we have systems that are used in multiple processes, and we want to know what processes use those systems we should be able to query the database for processes that include a specific system. A uses case could be system X being phased out so we need to know what processes will be impacted, so that we can ensure that those processes are all taken into account in any decisions to replace that system.

Additionally, Visio should have the ability to capture metrics such as demand, work time, cycle time, .. for each step in the process. Then those metrics should be able to be linked to a spreadsheet to enable data analysis that remains aligned with the process map so that changes remain aligned between Visio and Excel. Other systems attempt to provide this functionality, but the spreadsheet functionality is not as robust as Excel. 

I have been using Visio for six years.

It is stable.

There are no scalability issues. We are a nationwide company, and there are around 5,000 users.

I never had to contact them.

I never used another solution long-term, but I have evaluated various and continue to see Visio as the best option. 

The initial setup was easy. It has been around for so long. All of us have used it before, so it is not like it was new to us. 

Good. 

Most other tools are expensive.  

I was already using Visio for years before evaluating other options.

I advise standardizing the file naming conventions so it is easier to find what you need when you need it. 

I use the tool mainly for project tracking. I also use it for the system design of sequence diagrams and the like. I use MS Visio for crafting my flowcharts and network connectivity mock-ups.

Visio is outstanding because it has features that are useful for project management. However, Visio lacks some features that are available on Jira and Trello. If these features are made available on Visio, then they can make your work easy. I was not guided by a person nor did I use any training for working with Visio. I just picked it up and started using it. Visio is not complex since it is a Microsoft product. Visio is always updated with new features that have made it more robust and enterprise.

The modeling features that aid my flowcharting, sequence diagrams, and project tracking are the most valuable. Creating network architectural diagrams has been made easier for me using Visio.

The Burndown chart for easier tracking of the progress of any task needs improvement. I would also recommend that the components of Visio be made to use colors to denote and differentiate them from each other especially when working with large diagrams. This will help to eliminate or at least reduce any form of confusion.

I have been using the solution for the past ten years.

I have not encountered any stability or performance issues with the tool.

Visio is not as scalable as other tools due to the proprietary restriction. You cannot customize it or scale it up like the way you do with Trello or Jira. Microsoft places restrictions on things that you can do with Visio.

MS Visio Customer Service has so far been incredibly professional. I get spot-on responses to my queries almost immediately.

Positive

I had used Enterprise Architect but I found Visio much easier to use.

Visio is quite simple to set up.

I implemented Visio in-house.

The time I invested in learning how to use Visio has paid off because I can use it to complete my projects quicker. My clients are also happy because the delivery timeline for the projects I did for them using Visio has reduced by 35%.

Cloud-based tools are always cheaper since they are subscription-based. I use the on-premises version of Visio hence the price is quite expensive. However, I believe that the cloud version may not be as expensive as the on-premises version.

Yes, I evaluated Enterprise Architect.

I would rate Visio an eight out of ten. The solution is more linear than Trello. Anyone looking to try the solution should go ahead. Visio comes with a trial version which you can use to learn about the tool. If you get familiar with Visio, it is then easy to use more complex solutions that come with a lot of features. However, the advantageous features can be destructive as well. For instance, you want to do something, but you may get distracted, and end up not doing that thing. Visio is quite straightforward and good for beginners.

We use the application for process mapping through architecture. It helps visualize the activities and interactions between 3,000 different systems on the network.

The product efficiently visualizes various business processes, including building and networking architecture. It is quite intuitive, and there is a lot of training documentation available. We can import an Excel Spreadsheet with all the essential data, and Visio can build the diagram using it.

In terms of features, it could provide more automation to display data flowing through architecture. It should give a real-time data update.

We have been using Visio for 20 years.

It is a stable application.

We have 30 Visio users in our organization, but soon, we will roll out the product for about 200 users. It is scalable.

I take help from our internal IT staff in case of technical issues. If they need further assistance, they approach Visio’s technical support team.

I have used Draw.io before. It is free software and designs diagrams quickly. However, it has very limited functionality and is not suitable for enterprises. I would recommend Visio for working on business processes on a day-to-day basis.

The product is easy to deploy and maintain. It takes a few minutes to complete the process and requires one admin executive to work on it. It received automated updates.

The product is inexpensive if you already have Microsoft products in your environment. The license encompasses all the required services.

I recommend Visio to others and rate it a ten out of ten.