When Microsoft first acquired Visio in 2000, it was a general-purpose diagramming tool for drawing flow charts, floor plans, org charts, mind maps, and network diagrams by dragging shapes onto the canvas and make connections between them.
Combining it with Visual Studio and including add-ons that can automatically discover the network topology to generate those network diagrams (or connect to other data sources including metadata) has made making it a popular tool for IT admins and architects. The fact that it is always a separate purchase rather than included in the standard Office suite – where Word and PowerPoint have basic diagramming features – reinforces the view that it is more of a specialized tool.
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But most people need to draw diagrams from time to time, especially to explain or design processes.
Visio as an online service
As with PlanBy making Visio an online service, Microsoft is able to create a simpler version of the software that is useful to more people on more platforms (such as the Mac version of the Visio desktop software). desktop), while the gradual addition of options such as network mapping and Common Modeling Language support have made it popular with more advanced users – but keeping the desktop software to desk for those who need full features.
The online version of Visio has hundreds of shapes and dozens of templates for block diagrams, business matrices, Venn diagrams, cycle diagrams, flowcharts, org charts, network diagrams, and pyramid diagrams. towers and flowcharts, plus many business-specific diagrams such as infographics, roadmaps, and visual timelines.
This includes popular business frameworks like the 5 Reasons, 4 P’s of Marketing, PESTLE Analytics, and other specific ways to present information visually that you now don’t have to recreate from head.
You can also create your own diagrams from different shapes, with smart guides to help you align them on the page, then drag connectors from one shape to another.
Diagrams are automatically saved to OneDrive by default in the Documents folder, but you can move them individually and export them as images, PDFs, or HTML to embed diagrams on a web page). If you have access to the desktop version of Visio, you can send diagrams from the web app, just like opening a document into any other Office application.
And because it’s web-based with APIs, you can use Visio inside Microsoft Teams so everyone can collaborate on diagrams. If you’re drawing a diagram in Word or PowerPoint, all you can share will be a static image, not something a colleague can make changes to – and you’ll have to crop or save it first. You can combine Visio charts with Power BI reports in Teams, so you can discuss how your processes are performing and see where they can improve.
To deploy a process, you can even take your Visio diagram, open it in Power Automate, and connect different services and data sources to deploy it as an automation process. If you have a data source, you can use Visio to automatically turn that source into a diagram that you can then automate.
Visio also works as an add-in inside Excel, so if you have a list of employees in a spreadsheet, you can turn that list into an org chart, which you can then open in the Visio web app enough to work with more tools, and still get updated diagrams back in Excel.
Free for some
Using Visio as an add-on in Office never requires a Visio license, and you can always add Visio as a tab in Teams, but editing diagrams there requires a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 subscription. Last year , Microsoft added the basic version of the Visio web app to Microsoft 365, making it available without additional licenses to anyone with an Office 365 or Microsoft 365 commercial subscription.
That doesn’t include SME plans like Business Basic and Business Standard, or frontline worker subscriptions, like F1: You need one of the Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 plans Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Apps for business, Office 365 E1, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, Office 365 F3, Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Apps for business, Office 365 A1, Office 365 A3, Office 365 A5, Microsoft 365 A1, Microsoft 365 A3, or Microsoft 365 A5.
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There is no personal version of Visio, although there are models like Home Network that would obviously be useful at home. But Microsoft also still offers Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2 subscriptions, and these get you more diagramming styles for cross-functional and swim-lane diagrams, shapes for network devices and cloud services. cloud as well as support for UML 2.5.
There aren’t a lot of extra options in Plan 1 about what you can do with just Microsoft 365. But Plan 2 has a bunch of more powerful features, such as creating a stencil of multiple shapes that you reusable, use rules to validate the scheme (and correct any errors that don’t follow the rules, such as not connecting more devices to the router than the number of ports on it), model how the process works using the official specification or create data-driven diagrams in Excel, Exchange, or Azure Active Directory .
It also has more visual effects like adding shadows and bevels to objects or grouping them together, as well as layouts for Gantt and PERT charts, ITIL and Six Sigma diagrams, maps, floor plans , mind maps, wireframes that you can use to design apps and websites, and more advanced network layout options and shapes.
If you want to use a Visio diagram in Word or PowerPoint, you still have to save it as an image instead of being able to copy it as a layout that you can continue to edit: Visio Plan 2 allows you to export sketches. diagrams and shapes to Word and PowerPoint, and that’s what you need if you want to bring Visio diagrams into Power Automate to turn them into workflows.
This is the version closest to the desktop version of Visio: It’s also the version you’ll need if there’s a .VSD file you created in Visio on your computer that you want to open and edit online. If there are features you need that aren’t available in the web version of Visio, Plan 2 comes with the Visio desktop app so you can always use it.
For most business users, the free version of Visio included with Microsoft 365 is a step beyond what you can do in Office, but it doesn’t include these powerful integrations.
