Some interesting New features in Visio 2007

I was going through some of the features of Visio 2007. Here is something within my work area that I found interesting. Few on Process Improvement and one ITIL Template.

Business Process Improvement Template

It’s not just visually more appealing, it has gone a step further in enabling you to visually represent relevant data such as
- Time taken for the activity
- Status of the activity/document

Since these fields used to be in the custom property tab, I believe we can as well represent anything else (like the functional role executing the activity) by adding in custom property. One step closer to telelogic style representation!!!

Process/Data Analysis with Visio:
You can actually link live data with the process diagram. Then see the visual diagram to find out the constraints/analyze the process. The diagram below would give you an idea.

The green boxes show actual data (picked up from an external source like xls sheet or access db). So in the diagram above Warehouse area could be a constraint!!!!

You can actually go one step further and make dashboards for process preformance tracking!! with a feature called Insert Pivot Diagrams.

Diagram and resize any businesses processes
Would really help solve the problem of how to place longer process in visio maps.
MS Website says “Diagram a business process on one page and enlarge it as much as you like, or divide the process diagram onto separate pages in the same drawing file. Keep the separate sections of a TQM process linked by using Off-Page Reference shapes that can include a hyperlink to the next section of the process on another page. And, specify whether you want to keep the text in the reference shapes synchronized.”

Value Stream Mapping Template: A new addition

ITIL Template: A new addition
MS Website says “Office Visio Professional 2007 also includes the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) template. ITIL is a framework that IT professionals use to identify and establish best practices for their IT service and incident management process flows. The ITIL Diagram template provides attractive and functional shapes to create and enhance existing diagrams that need to conform to ITIL standards.”

What i could clearly see is the new stencils for boths ITIL and Value stream mapping. There are shapes for different departments and different events for value stream mapping. For ITIL there are some required shapes like events, helpdesk, CMDB, various network components etc.

Have to wait till i get my hands on the software and start working on it...