Visio Reviews

We use Visio for mapping all the processes. It is a BPMN solution for us.

We are most probably using its latest version. 

It is a standard and easy-to-use solution from Microsoft, and you benefit from the general functions of Microsoft solutions. It integrates easily with SharePoint, which is a useful tool from Microsoft.

It is not flexible in terms of functions and modeling deliverables. When you speak of processes, the program has to describe the activities and the deliverables. You have to tell your robots how to deal with and input something, and you should have something more flexible from this point of view.

I got Visio just a few months ago.

I don't know. At this moment, it is just used to map and see where we are. We are just trying to use this. At this moment, we like it, but we'll see with time.

I didn't have to call Microsoft so far, but I might do so in the future.

I have used MEGA, and I feel Visio is better than MEGA because it is a BPMN tool, and it is standardized.

I have also used the free version of Camunda. It is a service, and it is easy and very fast, but it is not so well known. 

It is easy.

It is a free solution for us. It is integrated with our pack. We are trying to use the solutions that we already have. 

I am not sure if I would recommend this solution. It is not perfect, of course, but it is also not so bad. It is just a modeling system. If you want to go further and simulate the processes, you will have to use other tools. 

I would rate Visio a seven out of 10.

I work for BAM, which is the largest builder in the Netherlands. We have approximately 24,000 employees and we have a centralized IT that provides all products for our company. I use the solution for organizing many different types of visuals graphics. It has the ability to make drawings quickly with links, flowcharts, and organizational drawings.

I think the best part of Visio is that you can import drawings very well into Microsoft Word. For example, if you put the Visio drawing into Word, you can double click on it and it opens in Visio. It is a very useful feature and something which I miss switching to Enterprise Architect. In Enterprise Architect, if I import a drawing into Word it does not open the diagram in Enterprise Architect. This is one of the strongest features and the ability to create your own stencils. Additionally, it allowed the importation of AutoCAD drawings which was helpful because I did not have AutoCAD installed on my laptop.

They could improve the drawing function, other solutions provide easier drawing capabilities.

The UML drawings are quite limited, particularly the clause diagrams. You need to put a lot of effort to get everything right, compared to some other products I have tried.

In a future release, there should be more features in UML drawings. Generating drawings that belong to UML is quite an effort, everything is very tedious by hand and I prefer the methods which other competitors use which takes the effort away because some elements are done automatically. It requires fewer clicks with your mouse and fewer presses on the keyboard to accomplish the same result.

I have been using the solution for approximately 21 years.

The solution is stable.

I have also used other UML tools and almost all of them are easier to draw in than in Visio.

The implementation is done by our centralized IT team.

I evaluated Enterprise Architect and have now switched to it.

Visio is that it is a reasonable product.

I see Visio as something similar to Coral Draw, but more vector-oriented. For example, no picture, but vectors. I classified Visio more as a standard drawing program, it tries to be something else. I am drawing more and more diagrams in UML and Visio is not the ideal tool.

If I was going to rate Visio for generalistic drawings, it would be a solid eight. It is a good product, there is nothing wrong with it. However, this is not my main use case.

I rate Visio a five out of ten.

Our primary use case of this product is to create diagrams for the solutions I'm designing. Others may use it to provide graphical explanations of complex topics, or even for organizational charts. We have around 20 users in very different roles - IT, processing, design, or those in more technical roles. We are a customer of Visio and I'm a solution architect. 

Visio helps to depict what's on my mind, it flows between the different components that we're designing. Visio is very good at illustrating advanced topics which helps my team understand what I'm trying to get across

The valuable feature is the simplicity of drawing shapes and connecting them. It's very easy to customize and then group the activities so the solution offers a lot of flexibility. It really provides value. 

I'd like them to include more stencils for new technologies in the solution. There are plenty of stencils available on the web but it requires researching, downloading, and testing what works. There are some common ones such as when you're working with technologies like Microsoft but it takes me some time to download clip art and try to make them myself.

I would love to see an option to drill down collapsed sections of the diagrams as well as an option to navigate through different pages of diagrams, something that can be more easily summarized, and then go on to the details.

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

This is a stable solution and there's very little maintenance required. We have a software specialist in the company and that person takes care of all the laptops.

The initial setup is straightforward, it takes around half an hour. 

This is a very powerful and useful tool. You can create all types of diagrams and I consider it a must-know option.

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for tasks such as work charts, network diagrams, and process flows.

Process flows are probably the task we do the most. It's just how she diagrams, how a piece of software or a process should work. It's improved our organization.

It's pretty basic and fun to use.

You can go to YouTube and watch training videos. There's lots of information online about the product.

The solution can scale.

The product is quite stable.

It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward.

It's not the easiest software to use. It's not user-friendly out-of-the-box.

I've been using the solution for about 20 or so years. It's been two decades; it's a long time.

The stability is excellent. It never breaks, and I've used it for 20 years. Its performance is reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. 

The solution can scale. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with relative ease.

We have around 200 people who use it in the company.

As of right now, we do not have plans to increase usage.

Technical support is fine, as long as you can get a hold of someone. that can be tricky.

Prior to this solution, it's unlikely we had a different product. It was 20 years ago, and therefore it's been a long time.

I didn't directly deal with the initial implementation. We have a team in-house that handles deployments. I can't speak to what the process was like or how easy or hard it was. Likely, setting it up was pretty straightforward and deployment takes a day. At least, that is my understanding.

We have a dedicated team that handles deployment and maintenance.

We have our own in-house team that can manage the implementation. We did not need the assistance of an integrator or consultant.

After 20 years of using the solution, our company has definitely seen an ROI. I don't have exact details, however.

We have an enterprise license. We renew it on a yearly basis. We don't pay any extra fees and we partner with the Gartner group to help us when we have to renegotiate.

I'm using the latest version of the solution. I can't speak to the exact version number.

We use both cloud and on-premises deployment models at this time.

I'd advise any company considering using the solution should first have a Microsoft team in place.

I'd rate the solution at a five out of ten.

We use Visio extensively for creating architecture, network and workflow diagrams. Also used for UML Class diagrams and various types of flow charts 

We use it to create diagrams used for architectural review. It's a great tool to create diagrams to show how an infrastructure or software architecture has being designed and then review that with the other domain architects.

I like the way you can Hyperlink objects to a URL, local file or other tabs within the same diagram. I use this to create an Overview tab with a high level digram and then link objects in the Overview to other tabs with more detail on that object. You can also save the diagram as a html page and then host on a local server to create an interactive diagram. You can also automate the creation of diagrams with PowerShell

Would be nice if visio viewer didn't require active-x.

I have been using Visio for over 15 years.

It's a stable solution. It's Visio. It just works.

Scalability is fine. It runs on each individual client. I haven't used any of the team integration hooks. We have a lot of technologists that use it and we're trying to make a move to move those architecture diagrams to be more driven by code by leveraging C4 and then model driven design through MagicDraw and that's a new journey for us. I think there are still going to be a large number of teams that still end up using Visio as it's very versatile. 

It's all automated for our firm by our department. I run it on my Mac as well, and it's super simple to set up.

We do everything ourselves. We set up and deployed this solution.

It's better than using PowerPoint or something else to draw the diagrams. 

It's not the cheapest product, but it's extremely valuable.

I would tell potential users that it depends on how you use it. You can use Visio for everything from designing networks to organizational charts. You can also use it for so much more as it's a very versatile tool. There are a lot of Visio stencils that are available on the web. Use those.

Just do your homework. But there's just a lot of people who have contributed to creating various open-source Visio stencils. Most product vendors have already created those stencils. You don't need to go and recreate it on your own. You can go to NetApp or VMware, or Cisco and download the stencil for their products. Then it makes it very easy to use and integrate.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Visio a nine.

Company-wide, it is used a lot for flow charts. From an IT perspective, we use it quite a bit for network diagrams and documentation. The Human Resources team uses it for organizational charts.

In terms of deployment, we have a kind of mixed deployment. I tend to use an on-prem version that is loaded directly on my machine. We are all Office 365, so a bulk of our users use it as a cloud-based downloadable solution, which is a part of their Office 365 implementation.

It helps us to secure business and C-suite leadership approval on projects. For lack of a better term, it dumbs down technical solutions so that everybody can understand them. It provides a nice middle ground. We have a lot of really talented engineers on staff, but they tend to get lost in the technical minutia, and the business gets bored with that. 

A lot of built-in templates are really phenomenal. The templates assist in translating very complex design elements into understandable diagrams that non-technical folks can grasp.

Some of the improvements that have been made in Visio have not been beneficial, at least to me, personally. Too many things have been added to it, and it makes it kind of clunky sometimes. There is an overwhelming desire or competition to continue to improve it when the product is and has been pretty good, and some of what is done tends to clutter it. In some cases, the updates make it more difficult to use. It is already pretty feature-heavy and continuing to add stuff is not productive from my perspective. 

I have been using this solution for 10 to 15 years.

It is very stable.

I don't have any input on that. In terms of the number of users, we probably have a couple of hundreds of users of Visio. They are from the IT and the infrastructure side. We have Applications users and Human Resources users. We have a manufacturing organization, so we have program managers who manage various customer products, and they use it as well.

It is used fairly extensively throughout the organization. Our usage is okay for now, but we're always one acquisition away from that going out the window.

I've never used technical support for Visio.

It has always been Visio. Prior to using Visio, it probably was Paint or whatever program was available at the time.

It is straightforward. It takes very little time to deploy.

It is done in-house. In terms of maintenance, because we're loading it from the cloud, if there's an update, that's taken care of with the regular Office updates. So, pretty much everything is on the front end, that is, getting it from a business standpoint, getting the approval for the license and the cost associated with the license, and getting it installed. Once it is in, it is usually off to the races.

We have definitely seen a return on investment.

We're in a Visio plan that is like $15 a month per user. At the moment, it is just the standard licensing fees that I'm aware of.

Be aware that it is easy to get lost in all the different things to do with it.

I would rate Visio a nine out of ten.

I analyze and model processes for optimization. We are customers of Visio and I'm a founder of the company, working as a process consultant.

It's a very agile product because I can map and model a process extremely quickly. It's user friendly and there are a lot of templates I can use that are really useful. I like very much that I can publish the different models I've created with my clients and they can view the entire process, it's really useful. It provides a lot of advantages because you can see the inefficiencies visually, and it's really easy to analyze and to detect different inefficiencies in order to improve the process.

I'd like to be able to extract different data from different relations between the objects I create and I'd like the ability to analyze the different relations between activities, positions and roles. Visio can't give me this functionality. I would also like to be able to introduce more information in each object. For example, to include some codes or name or description of the activity, to be able to introduce more data in the object. To have this information in the objects would be great. 

I've been using this solution for six months.

This is a stable solution. 

From my clients' perspective, it's really scalable. It can be used in any type of company. I think it's really useful for any person that is working for a company with a wide range of processes. I'm the only person in my company who uses it and I'll continue to do so because it's so user friendly. 

I used Aris for a short period of time several years ago. It was a good experience but a more expensive solution. I'm evaluating it again and depending on the conditions the company offers, I might start using it again. I can keep using Visio even if I start using Aris as well.

The initial setup is very easy. With 365 it's very fast. It's good. I think I was able to deploy in 30 minutes. I did it myself although I was in contact with the chat bot at the beginning to ask some questions.

I pay a monthly fee to Visio.

I would recommend the product and I think it's very useful for any person that works in a company where you need to visualize the process you work in and to analyze ways of improving. 

I would rate this solution more highly if it was easier to extract data but for now I rate Visio an eight out of 10. 

I build either diagrams for solutions or use Visio to create illustrations for slide decks and white papers.

There's a much better library of stencils than there used to be. But I still have to create many composite objects to illustrate a software-defined data center or software-defined networking. I like that once you create what you need, you can group that, at least within that drawing, and you have access to that new stencil object or that custom object throughout that drawing.

I do know that Microsoft has extended the ability of Visio to interact with other Microsoft applications. I know you can use Visio elements in spreadsheets and Excel. I know that doing a copy and paste from Visio into a PowerPoint slide is very easy and clean now. It used to be a nightmare.

The auto-routing feature could be better. Around 2018, the auto-routing of lines was pretty close to perfect, but it's started to go downhill from there. Keeping the lines attached to endpoints while you manipulate how they run and how they interact with other shapes or near other shapes is becoming very tedious. I would like them to give us the option of opening up the rules for auto-routing and make checkbox selections of what rules we want to apply and what rules we don't.

I've been using Visio for about 20 years.

Visio is stable. It's gotten to be much more robust since Microsoft took over. It used to freeze or crash with very complex drawings, and I haven't had a freeze or a crash in years.

I think it's scalable. I don't think I challenge what it can do the way I used to. I think Microsoft has probably improved how it uses memory, or they may have solved some memory leak problems because I did not have any issue with the size of a drawing. 

I've never reached a limit on the size of a drawing, and usually, autosave is turned on by default. Again, right about the time Microsoft acquired Visio, the autosave function took much longer than it does now. I can also open more additional applications while Visio is running, but it used to hit its limits on that. They have improved its ability to run in the same environment with other big apps.

The initial setup is getting much easier. The deployment piece was actually just part of my license. The IT team can set up definitions of which engineers get what features in Microsoft. That was completely transparent to me this time.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Visio a nine.