Visio Reviews

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 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.

I am a health and safety professional. I use it for flowcharting, but I also use it for drawing diagrams. 

I will do a technical assessment of a workplace scenario of equipment as well as noise measurements, and I will use Visio to draw out the scale.

There are many images that you can put in there and data to create images of workplace exposures.

It has improved the way our organization functions.

It's a tool that helped me diagram complex procedures. More as a picture versus words. 

It also for training and letting other people know how to do that same procedure.

It works really well for flowcharting, it can label.

Also, being able to pull the finished drawing out and put it in a Word document is easy, and very useful.

It allowed me to do some things and save them really well. And I found many different things to do with it. It's beyond flowcharting.

The latest version has taken some transitioning and it's a bit of a workaround, but it's also been good. I found the ctrl 1,2,3 buttons that I didn't know about and have been very useful. If you hit ctrl 3 it lets you do your line draw.

I just uploaded the latest version and using it now, and I'm struggling with it. It's very different than the other version I have used, and I haven't done any tutorials. 

The previous version was easier. It was easy to intuitively figure out what it did. I learned it on my own and it didn't require the review of tutorials. But with this updated version, I am definitely struggling with it. I need to go through the training and go through the tutorials. So far it seems more complex, but maybe it's just different.

It may handle images well, but I don't know yet. It is something that I would like to see in this solution.

It should be easier to transition into a new version without having to spend so much time in just one area. Providing information on what has changed and how to do it would be very helpful.

I would like the option of going back to the way of doing things in the previous version. I don't understand the block system. I had the favorites that I have to build again because somehow they got lost with the upgrade.

In my favorites, I had shapes, fans, and other things. You pull up all of your basic images or search for them, and you could drag them over into your diagram.

I have been using Visio for approximately eight years.

We are using the latest version.

I have not had any issues with stability. It's a stable solution.

It is easy to scale this solution.

I have never contacted technical support.

Previously, I did not use another solution. It was a discovery. 

I came across Visio, I saw what I could do with it, and I just continued to expand my uses.

The initial setup is straightforward. With this new version, it is a bit confusing. 

With the previous version, I was able to have all of my favorites, I was able to pull objects and do an arrow as a connector, and I had to stop and learn how to do that.

I like the way it was earlier, but it could be just my learning curve.

If you have a need for flowcharting, organizing, or creating diagrams, I think you should check it out. It's worthwhile.

Based on my previous experience with the previous versions, I would rate Visio a nine out of ten.

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 use Visio for diagramming configurations.

It has improved the way my organization functions because diagramming is almost similar to mind-mapping. It's a good way to get the message across and for people to understand at all levels.

Just the fact that a majority of the industry uses it, and you've got third-party templates that were created. All my vendors have templates for their products and services. It's also easy to use Visio.

I would help if they had something like a Microsoft Viewer. They also need to make this available across other platforms and not just Windows.

It would also be nice to have a portal within the product, with some agreement with third parties to get those templates through the Microsoft project portal and not have to go out there and spend time locating the templates. 

The only downside to Visio is the learning curve. Nobody off the street can pick it up that quick, and they have to learn it. They need to get some training, some tutorials, which applies to just about anything these days.

I have been using Visio for more than 15 years. 

Visio is a stable solution.

If they allowed cloud deployments, you could scale it laterally or vertically.

The initial setup is a lengthy process, but it's easy to install. But you have to import your templates, depending on whether you want to use generic ones or specific ones.

I think costs are on a per user basis.

I would advise potential users of Visio to explore the third-party templates and not limit themselves to what is provided because it's not enough.

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